biography is in these somewhat abated, so that they have been of
incalculable use in assisting the popular eye to see him as he really
was. Other material for illustration of his daily life is somewhat
meagre; and yet, on one account, this is perhaps a cause for rejoicing.
There is a halo about every man of large poetic genius which it is
difficult for the world to wholly miss seeing, while he is alive.
Afterward, when the biographer comes, we find the actual dimensions, the
physical outline, more insisted upon. That is the biographer's business;
and it is not altogether his fault, though partly so, that the public
regard is thus turned away from the peculiar but impalpable sign that
floats above the poet's actual stature. But, under this subtile
influence, forgetting that old, luminous hallucination (if it be one),
we suddenly feel the want of it, are dissatisfied; and, not perceiving
that the cause lies largely with us, we fall to detracting from the
subject. Thus it is fortunate that we have no regular biography of
Shakespere authoritative enough to fade our own private conceptions of
him; and it is not an unmixed ill that some degree of similar mystery
should soften and give tone to the life of Hawthorne. Not that Hawthorne
could ever be seriously disadvantaged by a complete record; for behind
the greatness of the writer, in this case, there stands a person eminent
for strength and loveliness as few men are eminent in their private
lives. But it is with dead authors somewhat as it proved with those
Etruscan warriors, who, seen through an eyehole lying in perfect state
within their tombs, crumbled to a powder when the sepulchres were
opened. The contact of life and death is too unsympathetic. Whatever
stuff the writer be made of, it seems inevitable that he should suffer
injury from exposure to the busy and prying light of subsequent life,
after his so deep repose in death.

"Would you have me a damned author?" exclaims Oberon, in "The Devil in