The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 81, July, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 81, July, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
This is not the occasion for the analysis and valuation of Hawthorne's
genius. If the reader wishes to see a thoughtful and generous estimate
of his powers, and a just recognition of the singular beauty of his
style, he may turn to the number of this magazine published in May,
1860. The last effort of Hawthorne's creative mind is before him in the
chapter here printed. The hand of the dead master shows itself in every
line. The shapes and scenes he pictures slide at once into our
consciousness, as if they belonged there as much as our own homes and
relatives. That limpid flow of expression, never laboring, never
shallow, never hurried nor uneven nor turbid, but moving on with
tranquil force, clear to the depths of its profoundest thought, shows
itself with all its consummate perfections. Our literature could ill
spare the rich ripe autumn of such a life as Hawthorne's, but he has
left enough to keep his name in remembrance as long as the language in
which he shaped his deep imaginations is spoken by human lips.
A SCENE FROM THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE.
Doctor Dolliver, a worthy personage of extreme antiquity, was aroused
rather prematurely, one summer morning, by the shouts of the child
Pansie, in an adjoining chamber, summoning Old Martha (who performed the
duties of nurse, housekeeper, and kitchen-maid, in the Doctor's
establishment) to take up her little ladyship and dress her. The old
gentleman woke with more than his customary alacrity, and, after taking
a moment to gather his wits about him, pulled aside the faded moreen
curtains of his ancient bed, and thrust his head into a beam of sunshine
that caused him to wink and withdraw it again. This transitory glimpse
of good Dr. Dolliver showed a flannel nightcap, fringed round with stray
locks of silvery white hair, and surmounting a meagre and duskily yellow
visage, which was crossed and criss-crossed with a record of his long
life in wrinkles, faithfully written, no doubt, but with such cramped
chirography of Father Time that the purport was illegible. It seemed
hardly worth while for the patriarch to get out of bed any more, and
bring his forlorn shadow into the summer day that was made for younger
folks. The Doctor, however, was by no means of that opinion, being
considerably encouraged towards the toil of living twenty-four hours
longer by the comparative ease with which he found himself going through
the usually painful process of bestirring his rusty joints, (stiffened
by the very rest and sleep that should have made them pliable,) and
putting them in a condition to bear his weight upon the floor. Nor was
he absolutely disheartened by the idea of those tonsorial, ablutionary,
and personally decorative labors which are apt to become so intolerably
irksome to an old gentleman, after performing them daily and daily for
fifty, sixty, or seventy years, and finding them still as immitigably
recurrent as at first. Dr. Dolliver could nowise account for this happy
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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