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- 1173
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- 2026-01-30T20:47:56.335Z
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- 1110
- 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 hillside 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 flavor 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-by to Dwight."
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