- end_line
- 3761
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3699
- text
- HAWTHORNE AND HIS MOSSES
BY A VIRGINIAN SPENDING JULY IN VERMONT
A papered chamber in a fine old farmhouse, a mile from any other
dwelling, and dipped to the eaves in foliage--surrounded by mountains,
old woods, and Indian pools,--this, surely, is the place to write of
Hawthorne. Some charm is in this northern air, for love and duty seem
both impelling to the task. A man of a deep and noble nature has seized
me in this seclusion. His wild, witch-voice rings through me; or, in
softer cadences, I seem to hear it in the songs of the hill-side birds
that sing in the larch-trees at my window.
Would that all excellent books were foundlings, without father or
mother, that so it might be we could glorify them, without including
their ostensible authors! Nor would any true man take exception to this;
least of all, he who writes, ‘When the artist rises high enough to
achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he makes it perceptible to
mortal senses becomes of little value in his eyes, while his spirit
possesses itself in the enjoyment of the reality.’
But more than this. I know not what would be the right name to put on
the title-page of an excellent book; but this I feel, that the names of
all fine authors are fictitious ones, far more so than that of Junius;
simply standing, as they do, for the mystical ever-eluding spirit of all
beauty, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. Purely imaginative
as this fancy may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some warranty
from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author has ever
come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our bodies are
composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences among us?
With reverence be it spoken, that not even in the case of one deemed
more than man, not even in our Saviour, did his visible frame betoken
anything of the augustness of the nature within. Else, how could those
Jewish eyewitnesses fail to see heaven in his glance!
It is curious how a man may travel along a country road, and yet miss
the grandest or sweetest of prospects by reason of an intervening hedge,
so like all other hedges, as in no way to hint of the wide landscape
beyond. So has it been with me concerning the enchanting landscape in
the soul of this Hawthorne, this most excellent Man of Mosses. His Old
Manse has been written now four years, but I never read it till a day or
two since. I had seen it in the book-stores--heard of it often--even had
it recommended to me by a tasteful friend, as a rare, quiet book,
perhaps too deserving of popularity to be popular. But there are so many
books called ‘excellent,’ and so much unpopular merit, that amid the
thick stir of other things, the hint of my tasteful friend was
disregarded, and for four years the Mosses on the Old Manse never
refreshed me with their perennial green. It may be, however, that all
this while the book, likewise, was only improving in flavour and body.
At any rate, it so chanced that this long procrastination eventuated in
a happy result. At breakfast the other day, a mountain girl, a cousin of
mine, who for the last two weeks has every morning helped me to
strawberries and raspberries, which, like the roses and pearls in the
fairy tale, seemed to fall into the saucer from those strawberry-beds,
her cheeks--this delightful creature, this charming Cherry says to
me--‘I see you spend your mornings in the haymow; and yesterday I found
there Dwight’s _Travels in New England_. Now I have something far better
than that, something more congenial to our summer on these hills. Take
these raspberries, and then I will give you some moss.’ ‘Moss!’ said I.
‘Yes, and you must take it to the barn with you, and good-bye to
Dwight.’
- title
- Chunk 1