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LIONEL TRILLING
himself from the fierce aggressions and self-assertions of the literary
life; he seems to ask from his readers a tender and cherishing affection
rather than the stern regard which we give to the more violent or
demonic personalities-or, simply, to the personalities more overtly
masculine- whose assault upon us we learn to forgive. Then too, it is
not hard to understand that James, in the full pride of his still youthful
powers, might have been tempted to slight a predecessor, no matter
how truly admired- a predecessor who, although he did indeed show
how much could be accomplished in the way of art, did not achieve
a body of work which, in bulk and fierce affronting power, equals
that which his successor planned for himself in sublime confidence.
But when our student of Hawthorne has canvassed the reasons to
be found in the personal circumstances of either man, he is bound to
•
see that something beyond the personal is at work to produce James's
reserve or condescension. He will understand that his explanation
must ultimately refer to a cultural assumption to which James has
given expression. And this assumption, when he examines
it,
will force
upon him the awareness that, in the degree that he feels close to
Hawthorne, the breach between his own contemporary culture and
that of Henry James is very great. James's little book appeared (in
the
English Men of Letters
series) in 1879, and in the time between
then and now there has taken place a revision of critical sensibility
the extent of which can scarcely be overestimated.
In his third chapter, which deals with
Mosses from an Old Manse
and
Twice-Told Tales,
James sets forth his view of the nature
of
Hawthorne's artistic enterprise by taking issue with the opinion of
Emile Montegut, an able French critic, notable to us for his special
and informed interest in American literature. In 1860, in an essay
called ((
Un romancier pessimiste
," Montegut had dealt extensively
with Hawthorne, representing him as a writer of dark and, indeed,
misanthropic mind. He spoke at length of Hawthorne's concern with
conscience, sin, and hell, and with "the tortures of a heart closed
before man and open to God," subjects for which the descendant of
a long line of Puritans would naturally show a predilection. Montegut
has but little sympathy to give to the Puritan mentality and he speaks
in harsh terms of what he takes to be Hawthorne's exemplification of
it, yet it is clear that he understands Hawthorne's dark preoccupation
to constitute his chief interest, the very substance of his seriousness.
