some of the immediate factors of the weird element in Hawthorne's
fiction; but it deserves remark that only Scott and Hawthorne, besides
George Sand, among modern novelists, have used the supernatural with
real skill and force; and Hawthorne has certainly infused it into his
work by a more subtle and sympathetic gift than even the magic-loving
Scotch romancer owned. After this digressive prelude, the reader will be
ready to hear me announce that "Fanshawe" was a faint reflection from
the young Salem recluse's mind of certain rays thrown across the
Atlantic from Abbotsford. But this needs qualification.

Hawthorne indeed admired Scott, when a youth; and after he had returned
from abroad, in 1860, he fulfilled a tender purpose, formed on a visit
to Abbotsford, of re-reading all the Waverley novels. Yet he had long
before arrived at a ripe, unprejudiced judgment concerning him. The
exact impression of his feeling appears in that delightfully humorous
whimsey, "P.'s Correspondence," which contains the essence of the best
criticism. [Footnote: See Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] In
allusion to Abbotsford, Scott, he says, "whether in verse, prose, or
architecture, could achieve but one thing, although that one in infinite
variety." And he adds: "For my part, I can hardly regret that Sir Walter
Scott had lost his consciousness of outward things before his works went
out of vogue. It was good that he should forget his fame, rather than
that fame should first have forgotten him. Were he still a writer, and
as brilliant a one as ever, he could no longer maintain anything like
the same position in literature. The world, nowadays, requires a more
earnest purpose, a deeper moral, and a closer and homelier truth than he
was qualified to supply it with. Yet who can be to the present
generation even what Scott has been to the past?" Now, in "Fanshawe"
there is something that reminds one of Sir Walter; but the very
resemblance makes the essential unlikeness more apparent.