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- 1673
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- 1620
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- of them, that it would in some degree render them doubtful of their own
powers, did they hear much and vociferous braying concerning them in
the public pastures. True, I have been braying myself (if you please to
be witty enough to have it so), but then I claim to be the first that
has so brayed in this particular matter; and, therefore, while pleading
guilty to the charge, still claim all the merit due to originality.
But with whatever motive, playful or profound, Nathaniel Hawthorne has
chosen to entitle his pieces in the manner he has, it is certain that
some of them are directly calculated to deceive--egregiously deceive,
the superficial skimmer of pages. To be downright and candid once
more, let me cheerfully say, that two of these titles did dolefully
dupe no less an eager-eyed reader than myself; and that, too, after
I had been impressed with a sense of the great depth and breadth
of this American man. "Who in the name of thunder" (as the country
people say in this neighborhood), "who in the name of thunder, would
anticipate any marvel in a piece entitled _Young Goodman Brown_?" You
would of course suppose that it was a simple little tale, intended as
a supplement to _Goody Two Shoes_. Whereas, it is deep as Dante; nor
can you finish it, without addressing the author in his own words--"It
shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of
sin".... And with Young Goodman, too, in allegorical pursuit of his
Puritan wife, you cry out in your anguish:
"Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation;
and the echoes of the forest mocked him, crying, "Faith! Faith!" as if
bewildered wretches were seeking her all through the wilderness.
Now this same piece entitled _Young Goodman Brown_, is one of the two
that I had not all read yesterday; and I allude to it now, because it
is, in itself, such a strong positive illustration of the blackness
in Hawthorne, which I had assumed from the mere occasional shadows of
it; as revealed in several of the other sketches. But had I previously
perused _Young Goodman Brown_, I should have been at no pains to draw
the conclusion, which I came to at a time when I was ignorant that the
book contained one such direct and unqualified manifestation of it.
The other piece of the two referred to, is entitled _A Select Party_,
which, in my first simplicity upon originally taking hold of the book,
I fancied must treat of some pumpkin-pie party in old Salem; or some
chowder party on Cape Cod. Whereas, by all the gods of Peedee, it is
the sweetest and sublimest thing that has been written since Spenser
wrote. Nay, there is nothing in Spenser that surpasses it, perhaps
nothing that equals it. And the test is this. Read any canto in _The
Faerie Queene_ and then read _A Select Party_, and decide which
pleases you most,--that is, if you are qualified to judge. Do not be
frightened at this; for when Spenser was alive, he was thought of
very much as Hawthorne is now,--was generally accounted just such a
"gentle" harmless man. It may be, that to common eyes, the sublimity
of Hawthorne seems lost in his sweetness,--as perhaps in that same
_Select Party_ of his; for whom he has builded so august a dome of
sunset clouds, and served them on richer plate than Belshazzar when he
banqueted his lords in Babylon.
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