English Men of Letters
EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY
HAWTHORNE
BY
Henry James, Junr.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO
1879
CONTENTS.
HAWTHORNE.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY YEARS.
It will be necessary, for several reasons, to give this short sketchthe form rather of a critical essay than of a biography. The data fora life of Nathaniel Hawthorne are the reverse of copious, and even ifthey were abundant they would serve but in a limited measure thepurpose of the biographer. Hawthorne's career was probably as tranquiland uneventful a one as ever fell to the lot of a man of letters; itwas almost strikingly deficient in incident, in what may be called thedramatic quality. Few men of equal genius and of equal eminence canhave led on the whole a simpler life. His six volumes of Note-Booksillustrate this simplicity; they are a sort of monument to anunagitated fortune. Hawthorne's career had few vicissitudes orvariations; it was passed for the most part in a small and homogeneoussociety, in a provincial, rural community; it had few perceptiblepoints of contact with what is called the world, with public events,with the manners of his[2] time, even with the life of his neighbours.Its literary incidents are not numerous. He produced, in quantity, butlittle. His works consist of four novels and the fragment of another,five volumes of short tales, a collection of sketches, and a couple ofstory-books for children. And yet some account o