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“ [187] say?” and sometimes, like a conjurer, urges particularly upon you the card he does not intend you to accept. He seems not quite to know whether Arthur Dimmesdale really had a fiery scar on his breast, or whether Donatello had furry ears, or what finally became of Miriam and her lover. He will gladly share with you any information he possesses, and, indeed, has several valuable hints to offer; but that is all. The result is, that you place yourself by his side to look with him at his characters, and gradually share with him the conviction that they must be real. Then, when he has you in his possession, he leaves you to discover the profound spiritual truth involved in the story. I have always thought him in this respect to have been influenced, or at least anticipated, by a writer who has been too much overlooked, and whose influence upon him seems to me quite perceptible, although his biographer, Prof. Woodberry, is disposed to set it entirely aside. This was William Austin, the author of Peter Rugg, the Missing man, a delineation more Hawthornesque, in my opinion, than anything in Scott, to whom Prof. Woodberry rightfully assigns some slight influence
Boston, New York and Chicago. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1903.
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