Ch. 2 - Early Manhood - Page 2

betrays
itself in all his writings. There is in all of them something cold and
light and thin, something belonging to the imagination alone, which
indicates a man but little disposed to multiply his relations, his
points of contact, with society. If we read the six volumes of
Note-Books with an eye to the evidence of this unsocial side of his
life, we find it in sufficient abundance. But we find at the same time
that there was nothing unamiable or invidious in his shyness, and
above all that there was nothing preponderantly gloomy. The qualities
to which the Note-Books most testify are, on the whole, his serenity
and amenity of mind. They reveal these characteristics indeed in an
almost phenomenal degree. The serenity, the simplicity, seem in
certain portions almost child-like; of brilliant gaiety, of high
spirits, there is little; but the placidity and evenness of temper,
the cheerful and contented view of the things he notes, never belie
themselves. I know not what else he may have written in this copious
record, and what passages of gloom and melancholy may have been
suppressed; but as his Diaries stand, they offer in a remarkable
degree the reflection of a mind whose development was not in the
direction of sadness. A very clever French critic, whose fancy is
often more lively than his observation is deep, M. Emile Montégut,
writing in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, in the year 1860, invents for
our author the appellation of "Un Romancier Pessimiste." Superficially
speaking, perhaps, the title is a happy one; but only superficially.
Pessimism consists in having morbid and bitter views and theories
about human nature; not in indulging in shadowy fancies and conceits.
There is nothing whatever to show that Hawthorne had any such
doctrines or convictions; certainly, the note of depression, of
despair, of the disposition to undervalue the human race, is never
sounded in his Diaries. These volumes contain the record of very few
convictions or theories of any kind; they move with curious evenness,
with a charming, graceful flow, on a level which lies above that of a
man's philosophy. They adhere with such persistence to this upper
level that they prompt the reader to believe that Hawthorne had no
appreciable philosophy at all--no general views that were, in the
least uncomfortable. They are the exhibition of an unperplexed
intellect. I said just now that the development of Hawthorne's mind
was not towards sadness; and I should be inclined to go still further,
and say that his mind proper--his mind in so far as it was a
repository of opinions and articles of faith--had no development that
it is of especial importance to look into. What had a development was
his imagination--that delicate and