Evidence: |
'The more I read of Mr. Hawthorne's writings the more intense does my admiration become. I
read over the other day a part of his "House of the Seven Gables" and I don't remember any
delineation of character under Shakespeare's that is to me so exquisitely fascinating as his of
Phoebe, and it is the one I think, among all his characters which mark him most of all as a
man of very great genius, for in the hands of any but such a man, instead of being as she is
"A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still and bright
With something of an Angel light."
she would have been a common place stupid creature who only was good because she had not
will to be bad [...] The contrast too of the restless minded metaphysical Holgrave always
searching into the cause of things, and his tremendous delight in watching the development of
character are admirable [underlined]. This latter feature is I am sure a marking characteristic
of Mr. Hawthorne's and I just wish to warn him that though I have in thought [underlined]
quite an agonizing sympathy with him in it, yet when carried to such a pitch as he does in
practice that he won't give a hand to a pair of poor lovers that have fallen into the gutter on a
rainy night because his part is only to be a spectator. I have no patience with him, and beg to
say if I catch him at anything like that I will commit an assault upon him as sure as fate. I
should tell you, as more important than any thing that I can say on the subject, that for the
first time Papa read "The House of the Seven Gables" a few days ago [...] he said that if
anyone wished to give a very favorable notion to a non-German reader of Jean Paul Richter's
style of thought and sentiment they could not do it more successfully than by pointing out
many passages in it [i.e. the Hawthorne], and when I tell you that Papa admires him more
than any Author of his class by far, and has often regretted our not being German scholars
simply on his account you will have an idea....' |