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As already stated, Hawthorne's best study was Latin, and in that he acquired good proficiency; but he was slow in mathematics, as artistic minds usually are, and in his other studies he only exerted himself sufficiently to pass his examinations in a creditable manner. We may presume that he took the juice and left the rind; which was the sensible thing to do.
Hawthorne's position on the Continent has perhaps not been so much one of conquest as of receiving an abstract admiration; but he has taken much stronger hold of the Anglo-Saxon mind than either of the others, and it is probable that his share in inspiring noble literature in America will as it has already begun to show itself an important one become vastly greater in future.
It was from Worcester that he derived his excellent knowledge of Latin, the single study of which he was fond; and it is his preference for words derived from the Latin which gives grace and flexibility to Hawthorne's style, as the force and severity of Emerson's style come from his partiality for Saxon words.
Hawthorne's European letter-bag in 1862 is chiefly interesting for Henry Bright's statement that the English people might have more sympathy with the Union cause in the War if they could understand clearly what the national government was fighting for; and that Lord Houghton and Thomas Hughes were the only two men he had met who heartily supported the Northern side. Perhaps Mr.
Fields was just the man to warm Hawthorne's genius into action, cordial, whole-souled, and happily not so much a man of letters as to repel him with that alienation which he certainly felt in his contact with authors by profession like Emerson and his other contemporaries.
This portion of Hawthorne's diary is intensely interesting to those who have walked on classic ground.
Ellery Channing came with a man named Buttrick to borrow Hawthorne's boat for the search, and Hawthorne went with them. As it happened, they were the ones who found the corpse, and Hawthorne's account in his diary of its recovery is a terribly accurate description, softened down and poetized in the rewritten statement of "The Blithedale Romance."
His works consist of four novels and the fragment of another, five volumes of short tales, a collection of sketches, and a couple of story-books for children. And yet some account of the man and the writer is well worth giving. Whatever may have been Hawthorne's private lot, he has the importance of being the most beautiful and most eminent representative of a literature.
Hawthorne's mother had many characteristics in common with her distinguished son, she also being a reserved and thoughtful person. Those who knew the family describe the son's affection for her as of the deepest and tenderest nature, and they remember that when she died his grief was almost insupportable.
After dinner they looked over several volumes of autographs, in which Oliver Cromwell's was the only one that would to-day be more valuable than Hawthorne's own. A breakfast at Monckton Milnes's usually included the reading of a copy of verses of his own composition, but perhaps he had not yet reached that stage on the present occasion.
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