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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Short studies of American authors, Hawthorne. (search)
in terms of monosyllables. For all these merits he paid one high and inexorable penalty,--the utter absence of all immediate or dazzling success. His publisher, Goodrich, tells us, in his Reminiscences, Vol. II., p 269. that Hawthorne and Willis began to write together in The Token, in 1827, and that the now-forgotten Willis rose rapidly to fame, while Hawthorne's writings did not attract the slightest attention. The only recognition of his merits that I have been able to find in the coWillis rose rapidly to fame, while Hawthorne's writings did not attract the slightest attention. The only recognition of his merits that I have been able to find in the contemporary criticism of those early years is in The New-England Magazine for October, 1834, where he is classed approvingly with those who were then considered the eminent writers of the day,--Miss Sedgwick, Miss Leslie, Verplanck, Greenwood, and John Neal. To them, the critic says, we may add an anonymous author of some of the most delicate and beautiful prose ever published this side of the Atlantic,--the author of The Gentle Boy. New-England Magazine, October, 1834, p. 331. For twenty ye
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Short studies of American authors, Poe. (search)
mosphere can be more belittling than that of his New York Literati: it is a mass of vehement dogmatism and petty personalities; opinions warped by private feeling, and varying from page to page. He seemed to have absolutely no fixed standard of critical judgment, though it is true that there was very little anywhere in America during those acrimonious days, when the most honorable head might be covered with insult or neglect, while any young poetess who smiled sweetly on Poe or Griswold or Willis might find herself placed among the Muses. Poe complimented and rather patronized Hawthorne, but found him only peculiar and not original; Works, ed. 1853, III., 202. saying of him, He has not half the material for the exclusiveness of literature that he has for its universality, whatever that may mean; and finally he tried to make it appear that Hawthorne had borrowed from himself. He returned again and again to the attack on Longfellow as a wilful plagiarist, denouncing the trivial r