Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/89



While those who honestly admired the living Hawthorne have, perhaps, been emboldened to emphasize their admiration more strongly since his death, it is quite probable that he has made but few new friends. It is to be feared that a generation, accustomed to look upon Irving and Cooper as representative American writers, and which has purchased so many editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, must pass away before he will become the fashion. Popular opinion, which has a generous belief in "neglected genius," and is Only too apt to canonize right and left on the mere provocation of mortality, would perhaps assent that much of Hawthorne's reputation is posthumous. Every one who loved Hawthorne will, of course, deny this; yet they will be thankful for that present popularity, which has lately brought forward these posthumous Note- Books; which has helped them to a nearer knowledge of that subtile spirit, of whose individuality even they knew but little; which has shown them, in the chips gathered from his literary workshop, how honestly this man worked and how exquisite was his finish; how great was his performance, and how vast his possibilities.

In the preface to the English Note-Books, Mrs. Hawthorne suggests that the materials for a biography of her late husband may be found in those pages. She meets the objections which some have urged against this apparent intrusion upon the sanctity of his intellectual solitude, gracefully, if not altogether logically. It might be fairly doubted if a man of Hawthorne's habitual reserve would be apt to make his half-literary diary the best witness of his private, personal character, while, on 'the other hand, if he had done so, it is equally questionable whether it should have been offered to the public eye. Although we do not believe that he has here revealed any thing more of himself than those peculiar mental habits with which we are already familiar, there are some memoranda which were evidently intended for future revision; and we can not help thinking that his artistic fastidiousness, visible even in the composition of these confidences, should have been more respected.

The English Note-Books cover three years of Mr. Hawthorne's Liverpool Consulship, from which he extracted more profit—albeit of quite another kind—than most of his predecessors, even in the most lucrative days of that office. It is made up of studies of English life, character, and scenery — some of which have been rewritten and extended in Our Old Home. Being in the form of a diary, they rarely attempt more than a record of the superficial and external aspect of things that interested the author, and the occasional moral or analysis is due rather to the writer's mental habit than a deliberate attitude of criticism. Mr. Hawthorne evidently intended to revise these first impressions in after-years—some of them have been already revised in Our Old Home—but yet they are, on the whole, remarkably felicitous, truthful, and complete. It does not seem possible for the author to better either the style or wisdom of some of these reflections en passant. And when the reader observes how sparingly Mr. Hawthorne has drawn upon these materials for the finished sketches he has already given us, and how much is still left to be given, he will learn to appreciate the loss which literature sustained when his hand "let fall the pen and left the tale half-told." No lesser artist than the diarist could avail himself of the diary.

England would have undoubtedly fascicinated Mr. Hawthorne, if his critical and introspective faculty had not, as usual, sat in judgment on his taste. As it was, he brought