The next year it puts out two more shoots,
and the ends of these are again nipped off. Thus it continues to grow
under severe restrictions and forms at length a large thorn-bush, from
which finally the tree is able to shoot up beyond the cow's reach and
bears its proper fruit. So no doubt Hawthorne in his youth, being a
tender plant, was greatly annoyed by brutal and inconsiderate people. A
sensitive, proud and refined nature inevitably becomes a target for all
the cheap wits and mischievous idlers in the neighborhood. To escape
from this we may suppose that Hawthorne surrounded himself with an
invisible network of reserve, behind which his pure and lofty spirit
could develop itself in a harmonious manner.
This he certainly succeeded in doing. In purity of expression and a
graceful diction Hawthorne takes the lead of his century. He was the
romance writer of the Anglo-Saxon race; in that line only Goethe has
surpassed him. Nor is it possible for pure and beautiful work to emanate
from a mind which is not equally pure and beautiful. Wells of English
undefiled cannot flow from a turbid spring.
In purity Emerson probably equaled him, but not in his sense of beauty.
Where he surpassed Hawthorne was in manliness, and in his broad
humanitarian interests. Otherwise no two men could be more unlike than
these, and it would seem to be part of the irony of fate that they
should have lived on the same street, and been obliged to meet and speak
with each other.
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