Since finishing the foregoing essay, the publication of some volumes by Hawthorne and Brown have led to notices in “The Tribune,” which, with a review of Longfellow’s poems, are subjoined to eke out the statement as to the merits of those authors.
MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE: By Nathaniel Hawthorne.—In Two Parts. New-York: Wiley and Putnam. 1846.
We have been seated here the last ten minutes, pen in hand, thinking what we can possibly say about this book that will not be either superfluous or impertinent.
Superfluous, because the attractions of Hawthorne’s writings cannot fail of one and the same effect on all persons who possess the common sympathies of men. To all who are still happy in some groundwork of unperverted Nature, the delicate, simple, human tenderness, unsought, unbought and therefore precious morality, the tranquil elegance and playfulness, the humour which never breaks the impression of sweetness and dignity, do an inevitable message which requires no comment of the critic to make its meaning clear. Impertinent, because the influence of this mind, like that of some loveliest aspects of Nature, is to induce silence from a feeling of repose. We do not think of any thing particularly worth saying about this that has been so fitly and pleasantly said.
Yet it seems unfit that we, in our office of chronicler of intellectual advents and apparitions, should omit to render open and audible honour to one whom we have long delighted to honour. It may be, too, that this slight notice of ours may awaken the attention of those distant or busy who might not otherwise search for the volume, which comes betimes in the leafy month of June.
So we will give a slight account of it, even if we cannot say
