r of romance. One can imagine
him neither making haste to furnish "copy" nor pausing by the
way for ornament's sake. He knew that the only proper decoration
was an integral efflorescence of structure. He looked beyond to
the fabric's design: a man decently poor in this world's gear,
he was more concerned with good work than with gain. Of such are
art's kingdom of heaven.

Are there flaws in the weaving? They are small indeed. His
didacticism is more in evidence in the tales than in the
romances, where the fuller body allows the writer to be more
objective: still, judged by present-day standards, there are
times when he is too obviously the preacher to please modern
taste. In "The Great Stone Face," for instance, it were better,
one feels, if the moral had been more veiled, more subtly
implied. As to this, it is well to remember that criticism
changes its canons with the years and that Hawthorne simply
adapted himself (unconsciously, as a spokesman of his day) to
contemporaneous standards. His audience was less averse from the
principle that the artist should on no account usurp the
pulpit's function. If the artist-preacher had a golden mouth, it
was enough. This has perhaps always been the attitude of the
mass of mankind.

A defect less easy to condone is this author's attempts at
humor. They are for the most part lumbering and forced: you feel
the effort. Hawthorne lacked the easy manipulation of this gift
and his instinct served him aright when he avoided it, as most
often he did. A few of the short stories are conceived in the
vein of burlesque, and such it is a kindness not to name. They
give pain to any who love and revere so mighty a spirit. In the
occasional use of humor in the romances, too, he does not always
escape just condemnation: as where Judge Pincheon is described
taking a walk on a snowy morning down the village street, his
visage wreathed in such spacious smiles that the snow on either
side of his progress melts before the rays.

For some the style of Hawthorne may now be felt to possess a
certain artificiality: the price paid for that effect of
stateliness demanded by the theme and suggestive also of the
fact that the words were written over half a century ago. In
these days of photographic realism of word and idiom, our
conception of what is fit in diction has suffered a sea-change.
Our ear is adjusted to another tune. Admirable as have been the
gains in broadening the native resources of spee