Bacon, who had set her heart upon it. Hawthorne's solicitude about her when she was at Stratford-on-Avon was touching. For his sake I travelled there to see her several times. I saw that her mind was unhinged. She told me that she had resolved to die at Stratford-on-Avon, and had arranged with the sexton to have her grave dug close to the church wall, on a line with Shakespeare's, and the wall pierced so that her spirit might have free intercourse with that of Shakespeare. The insanity afterwards took the form of anger against Hawthorne, who was so kind and tender with her from first to last."

Of this tenderness and solicitude I heard from friends in Stratford-onAvon. It was, I think, at Hawthorne's request that the distraught lady was

permitted to sit alone in the church all night, of course, carefully watched by the concealed sexton. In fact, a genius like his own might write a romance which would show Hawthorne unconsciously going through in real life a drama somewhat like that he had imagined in the interviews of Miles Coverdale and Zenobia. It is even possible that Hawthorne knew or suspected that in poor Delia also there was a heart wounded by disappointment in love. However this may be, it has long been a deep satisfaction to my own heart to know that during those years in which his genius seemed to be imprisoned in a consulate Hawthorne was ministering to this lady in her prison of air as sweetly as the doves he presently pictured visiting Hilda in her tower at Rome.

IN Mr. Mackail's "Life of William Morris, we find a characterization of Morris that might with equal justice be applied to Emerson, different as the two men were in all other ways. Morris, his biographer declares, was "one of the people to whom personal matters bear far less than their normal share in life .he had the capacity for loyal friendships and for deep affections; but even of these one might almost say that they did not penetrate to the central part of him." And in contrast Rossetti's temperament is instanced as Morris himself once described it: "The truth is, he cared for nothing but individual and personal matters, chiefly of course in relation to art and literature." Certainly Hawthorne and Rossetti were also as far asunder as the poles in most of their characteristics, yet in Hawthorne this same concern for the individual and personal was marked. The two types of the human soul find their representatives in every land and time and in the art of literature nothing shows more

clearly than the attitude of the artist toward human relations.

In his household and among his neighbors Emerson was lovable and tender, letting his kind spirit rest with unutterable benignity upon the least of his comrades, and demanding from them neither service nor sacrifice to his genius. It would be a false conception of his nature that permitted the adjective "cold" to be used in connection with it. As Lowell wrote to Dr. Holmes about his poetry, if it "show no sensuous passion there is spiritual and intellectual passion enough and to spare-a paler flame, but quite as intense in its way." But though his affections themselves were of this pale intensity, they were not intrinsic, not inseparable from the essence of his being.

His love for his first child, the "hyacinthine boy" whose death within half a dozen years of his birth wrung from Emerson the noblest of his poems, seems to contradict such an assumption. Immediately after the loss the mourning father wrote to Carlyle,

the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, no more. I cannot get it nearer to me. If to-morrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps for many years, but it would leave me as it found me, neither better nor worse. So it is with this calamity; it does not touch me; something which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me and leaves no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature. The Indian who was laid under a curse that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. The dearest events are summer rain and we the Para coats that shed every drop.

This avowal, so appalling in the naked truth of its statement, is of the same substance as the more generalized counsel of the well-known essays on

"Friendship" and "Love": "Why

should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? me a spirit.

Let him be to The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond are not to be seen if the eye is too near.' These are the expressions of one more reverent than ardent. They suggest the attitude of Charles Lamb in the Bodleian Library, unwilling to open the books, unwilling to profane the leaves, and content to "inhale learning" by walking among them.

It is not difficult to realize the optimism of a nature so detached from the perishable world;

What is excellent

As God lives is permanent,

and if we could thus cast off transitory emotion, depending solely upon that which we are told by the inner voice

endures, we all could be sufficiently serene in the presence of multitudinous calamity. Such serenity is not, however, commonly achieved by those to whom persons are of elemental importance. Hawthorne could not achieve it, nor, had he done so, should we have won from his genius "The Scarlet Letter."

Mr. Julian Hawthorne, writing with discrimination of his father and Emerson, thus outlines their complementary traits:

For

My father was Gothic, Emerson was Roman and Greek. But each was profoundly original and independent. My father was the shyer and more solitary of the two, and yet persons in need of human sympathy were able to reach a more interior region in him than they could in Emerson. the latter's thought was concerned with types and classes, while the former had the individual touch. He distrusted rules but had faith in exceptions and idiosyncrasies. Emerson was nobly and magnanimously public: my father was exquisitely and inevitably private; together they met the needs of nearly all that is worthy in human nature.

Morris thought Rossetti's lack of concern for types and classes due to his lack of optimism, and Hawthorne's similar tendency also has been ascribed to his gloomy temper of mind; yet sometimes it is hard to think of him

as other than radiant, exultant, and mirthful. In his letters the lambent

play of his humor and the salient touches of eager affection for his wife and children give an impression not perhaps of a merry man, but of one spiritually buoyant in whom the fire and fervor of youth were inextinguishable. His son describes his incomparable companionship during the first weeks in Rome before the illness of his daughter. It was the custom of the

family to play cards in the evening, and upon these occasions it was he who 'made the life and jollity of the amusement." The glimpse given of his zeal in Mrs. Battle's dearest game is irresistible:

Everybody wanted to be his partner, not because he always won, for he did not, but because either good or evil fortune was delightful in alliance with him. He was charming in victory; but I am not sure that he was not more charming in defeat. . . .

of the contest. When he was beaten he defrauded his opponents of none of their legitimate triumph by affecting indifference and when he captured the odd trick he made no pretense of not caring. It was a genuine struggle all the way through, and refreshing however it turned out.

This cheerful picture is curiously different from that drawn by Mr. Curtis of his first meeting, at Emerson's house, with a dumb, bright-eyed gentleman whose indomitable silence presently engrossed Curtis to the exclusion of everything else, and drew from Emerson after the guest had departed the pungent comment, "Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night."

Both the silence and the sociability were wholly characteristic of the withdrawn, peculiar soul that held in its depths such infinite sweetness and brightness for those who could penetrate there. Like Emerson, Hawthorne was willing that any angel or mortal capable of full sympathy should see into his heart and know all its secrets. "But he must find his own way there," he added, "I can neither guide nor enlighten him." And he further reflected that this "involuntary reserve" was no doubt responsible for the objectivity of his writings. "When people think that I am pouring myself out in a tale or an essay, I am merely telling what is common to human nature, not what is peculiar to myself.' Emerson, on the contrary, poured himself out aboundingly in his philosophies, but so large and general was his nature that he was safer than almost any other man of his time in assuming a general application of his individuality.

When personal sorrow knocked at the door, the essential difference between the two reached its highest manifestation. Then indeed did Hawthorne ride his horse of the night. His mind instinctively turned toward the darkest issue, and he could not find the relief gained by many in turning their feelings into words through which something of the poisonous quality usually evaporates. His face darkened visibly

fever, he settled with himself from the first that she must die. Though her illness proved not to be fatal it left her more or less of an invalid, and it left • Hawthorne himself a broken man. It was not for him to learn from grief the lesson of its shallowness. He paid with his vitality the costly claims of his anxious suffering, and actually died-if no other cause for his decline existed than is suggested by the "Life"-of this influx of powerful feeling.

Hawthorne, as he said, looked outside himself for the facts of human destiny recorded in his work and for the characteristics of the actors in his tragic dramas. Yet in all that he has written we find suggestions of him. Art will not have it otherwise. There are the subtle dim recesses, the "cloudy veil" which stretched, he said, "over the abyss" of his nature, the ample vesture of human associations, the magic element to which Mr. James refers as "constantly clearing and disinfecting his so-called gloom"; the concentrated emotion, the pure sweetness and sympathy, all calling from his pages to every one who has followed his shy, vivid personality in its fleet passage through life. Emerson, whose hopefulness outshone the sun, was repelled by his sense of the vast tragedy of existence, but those among us who share his sensitiveness to the passionate despairs and exultant joys poured into life through personal channels, will find him fitted to our human experiences more closely than the impersonal optimist who leaves us dreary in the face of death. The sombre melancholy of Hawthorne's comments upon sin and death is the outcome of that very sensitiveness which can feel overwhelming delight in the fair aspect of virtuous life while human intercourse is free from dread and pain. If Emerson's high serenity leads us into regions of remote spiritual interests very worthy of exploration, it cannot be denied that the intensity of Hawthorne's affections. brings him nearer and shows him more intimate and winning within his shelter

THE earlier question, "Was Hawthorne morbid?" is recurring in this centenary year. A review of his life and fiction, with this aspect before one, seems to emphasize the conviction that in his earlier years there were distinct traces of gloom which might have become morbidity. From such result he was rescued by certain outward agencies reacting upon his latent sanity and faith. No one would say that sombreness of mind was superseded by geniality, for, to the end of his life, as Mr. Stedman has poetized,

Two natures in him strove

Like night with day, his sunshine and his gloom;
To him the stern forefather's creed descended,
The weight of some inexorable Jove
Prejudging from the cradle to the tomb;

Nor from his work was ever absent quite The presence which, o'er cast it as we may, Things far beyond our reason can suggest; There was a drifting light

In Donatello's cell,-a fitful ray

Of sunshine came to hapless Clifford's breast.

This dual self, which has been the portion of many of the world's greatest teachers, passed through experiences which at first threatened and then germinated the nobler qualities of the man and author. With the brooding, stern mentality of his ancestors were mingled vigor of body, beauty of imagination, and keenness of observation which, under fostering circumstances, developed into a deep sympathy with tragic problems of conscience and soul. Over the memories of loneliness of heart came pervasive cheer, domestic and literary joys. The brighter influences became dominant, but, to the end, he suffered moods of darkness when, with Donatello, his "heart shivered," and he would confess his captivity by "one of those unreasonable sadnesses that you know not how to deal with, because it involves nothing for common-sense to clutch."

That Hawthorne should have lived for twelve years of manhood, in addition to the boyhood period, in the dark, unnatural atmosphere of his Salem home, and that his writings, born within that that experience, have SO little morbidness is sufficient testimony to the poise and nobility of his nature. Undoubtedly he was kept from severing those narrow bonds and beginning earlier his true life by the reserve and lack of self-confidence which never were wholly overcome. With pertinence his friend Bridge regretted that he could not impart some of his "brass" to his college chum. If this friend and others had not brought practical aid to stimulate Hawthorne's stifled yearnings for escape, one may well question whether he might not have settled into a recluse like his own Wakefield, from whose life he has drawn a lesson of warning to any one who carelessly "steps aside from the well-adjusted system of the world." Writing to Longfellow he said: "I have made a captive of myself, and put me in a dungeon; and now I cannot find the key to let myself out, and if the door were open, I should be almost afraid to come out."

That Hawthorne did not become morbid was due, in large measure, to the wonderful imagination and the observation which were his, enabling him, from behind closed shutters and in lonely walks, to study humanity and interweave romance from his mingled intuitions and fancies. Though aloof from actualities he loved mankind, and, as the lonely years passed leaving him conscious of their chilling effects upon his soul, he tried to open intercourse with the world" by his tales. These were "memorials of very tranquil and not unhappy years." Indulged longer, the solitude might have arrested development of both mind and heart. Though he could not forget the oppressive hours of gloom, yet he recalled also the "unsubstantial pleasures here in the

shade which I might have missed in the sunshine." Possibly we have overestimated the sadness and overlooked the compensations of this earlier. period. In retrospect he confided to his journal: "Living in solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth and the freshness of my heart. Had I sooner made my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by rude encounters with the multitude.' may accept this analysis as true. years of isolation kept pure and poetic an imagination which, under premature storm and stress, might have wrought bitterness in his complex nature. Later struggles could not destroy the sensitiveness of soul.

One

The

Turning to the revelation of these years in Salem, found in his writings, one recalls those many weird suggestions in his Note-Books for use in fiction, but which, fortunately, never saw publication. Here is recorded the vision of a simultaneous resurrection of all the dead within a certain lake, or, again, "a series of strange, mysterious, dreadful events to occur, wholly destructive of a person's happiness. It is not necessary to enumerate these hints of necromancy and haunting spell which were conceived, in the main, during the years of undeveloped life. Possibly some of them found expression in the scores of sketches which, according to the testimony of Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Hawthorne had declared were "some of the most powerful things he had written," but which he deliberately burned because "he felt they were morbid. And he remarked that, when he found, on re-reading anything that it had not the healthiness of nature, he felt as if he had been guilty of a lie." Such words proved the sanity and rectitude of his mind. Poe's imagination, with all its magic, was at times disordered and even diseased; Hawthorne's never lost its delicacy.

It is useless to deny that there is "a mild melancholy," as Mr. Whipple affirmed, in the "Twice-Told Tales"

which reflect the years of solitariness. Such quality adds an elusive charm. The charge often made, that the tales are morbid, or even unhealthy for the normal reader, is here refuted. They deal with tragic and even frightful incidents in New England history and legend, but they are free from undue emphasis of the sensuous horror. A marked example of artistic restraint is in the tale, "The Ambitious Guest,' with omission of all details of the traditional holocaust. Even in one of the most haunting tales, when truth conquers deceit," the organ's peal of solemn triumph drowned the Wedding Knell.” The gloom of "Night Sketches" is pierced by a rainbow of faith.

The first influence which changed the trend of Hawthorne's life, away from the quicksands of gloom into broader and happier streams, was acquaintance with the Peabody family and the resultant marriage, the true crisis in his literature as well as his life. Though we may smile, in semi-sarcasm, at the efforts of Elizabeth Peabody to enlarge the social circle of Hawthorne's friends and overcome his shyness, and her importunate plan to "bring Emerson to his knees" and compel him to become an appreciative reader of Hawthorne, yet we must not forget that she was, in a way, the earliest friend to establish rapport between him and the smaller world wherein he found first recognition. There was fore

ordained affinity in the lives of Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody, whose delicacy was transformed, by the power of love and more judicious treatment, into practical strength and ideal sympathy, which were the most potent factors in the fulfilment of Hawthorne's literary mission. The familiar revelations of their love are too sacred for mere iteration. In a general acceptance of the bright home-influence which she created, with "the radiant smile' so often recalled by her son in his latest memorial, we may lose sight of the woman's distinctive personality. With true insight Mr. Henry Bright wrote of her to her children: "Justice has never been done to your mother. Of course she was overshadowed by him,