. . . It would be difficult to pick out
a page which could be omitted without loss to the development of
the narrative and the idea, which are always mutually illustrative to
a degree not often attained in any species of modern art. . . . His
language, though extraordinarily accurate, is always light and
free. . . . We know of nothing equal to it, in its way [the portrayal
of Dimmesdale], in the whole circle of English literature;' and much
more in the same superlative vein."
But if my father could weigh his artistic success with the precision
of a coal-heaver, who will ever be able to weigh and gauge the genius
which carries methods and philosophies and aims into an atmosphere of
wonderful power, where the sunlight and the color and the lightning
and frowning clouds transfigure the familiar things of life in
glorious haste and inspiration? While following his rules and habits
my father was constantly attended by the rapturous spirit of such a
genius, transmuting swarming reality into a few symbolic types.
Another way in which he effected telling labor was to conserve his
force in the matter of wrangling. He kept his temper. He was not
without the fires of life, but he banked them. He did not permit
disgust at others or at the adverse destiny of the moment to absorb
his vitality, by throwing it off in long harangues of rage, long
seasons of the sulks. There are no such good calculators as men of
consummate genius. They dread the squandering of energy of an Edgar
Allan Poe or of a boiling Walter Savage Landor.
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