He uses it in "David Copperfield,"
where Mr. Micawber (of all people!) plays this trick on Uriah Heep; he
uses it in "Hunted Down"; he was about using it in "Edwin Drood"; he used
it (old Martin and Pecksniff) in "Martin Chuzzlewit." The person of
Roger Chillingworth and his conduct are a little too melodramatic for
Hawthorne's genius.
In Dickens's manner, too, is Hawthorne's long sarcastic address to Judge
Pyncheon (in "The House of the Seven Gables"), as the judge sits dead in
his chair, with his watch ticking in his hand. Occasionally a chance
remark reminds one of Dickens; this for example: He is talking of large,
black old books of divinity, and of their successors, tiny books,
Elzevirs perhaps. "These little old volumes impressed me as if they had
been intended for very large ones, but had been unfortunately blighted at
an early stage of their growth." This might almost deceive the elect as
a piece of the true Boz. Their widely different talents did really
intersect each other where the perverse, the grotesque, and the terrible
dwell.
To myself "The House of the Seven Gables" has always appeared the most
beautiful and attractive of Hawthorne's novels. He actually gives us a
love story, and condescends to a pretty heroine. The curse of "Maule's
Blood" is a good old romantic idea, terribly handled. There is more of
lightness, and of a cobwebby dusty humour in Hepzibah Pyncheon, the
decayed lady shopkeeper, than Hawthorne commonly cares to display.
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