e, in spite of the fact that much of
his work has begun to feel the disintegrating force of hostile
criticism, and "the unimaginable touch of time."

For one thing, American fiction, for the past fifty years, has been
taking a direction quite the contrary of his. Run over the names that
will readily occur of modern novelists and short-story writers, and ask
yourself whether the vivid coloring of these realistic schools must not
inevitably have blanched to a still whiter pallor those visionary tales
of which the author long ago confessed that they had "the pale tints of
flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade." With practice has gone
theory; and now the critics of realism are beginning to nibble at the
accepted estimates of Hawthorne. A very damaging bit of dissection is
the recent essay by Mr. W. C. Brownell, one of the most acute and
unsparingly analytic of American critics. It is full of cruelly clever
things: for example, "Zenobia and Miriam linger in one's memory rather
as brunettes than as women." And again, _a propos_ of Roger
Chillingworth in "The Scarlet Letter,"--"His characters are not
creations, but expedients." I admire these sayings; but they seem to me,
like most epigrams, brilliant statements of half-truths. In general, Mr.
Brownell's thesis is that Hawthorne was spoiled by allegory: that he
abused his naturally rare gift of imagination by declining to grapple
with reality, which is the proper material for the imagination, but
allowing his fancy--an inferior faculty--to play with dreams and
symbols; and that consequently he has left but one masterpiece.

This is an old complaint. Long ago, Edgar Poe, who did not live to read
"The Scarlet Letter," but who wrote a favorable review of "The
Twice-Told Tales," advised the author to give up allegory. In 1880, Mr.
Henry James wrote a life of Hawthorne for the English Men of Letters
series. This was addressed chiefly to the English public and was thought
in this country to be a trifle unsympathetic; in particular in its
patronizing way of dwelling upon the thinness of the American social
environment and the consequent provincialism of Hawthorne's books. The
"American Note Books," in particular, seem to Mr. James a chronicle of
small beer, and he marvels at the triviality of an existence which could
reduce the diarist to recording an impression that "the aromatic odor of
peat smoke in the sunny autumnal air is very pleasant." This peat-smoke
entry has becom