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XXXVII: Hawthorne's Literary Borrowings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Arlin Turner
Arlin Turner*
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University of Texas
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Extract

Hawthorne was uncommunicative as to the sources on which he drew for the materials underlying his writings. That he had read widely is shown by an examination of the list of books that he borrowed from the Athenæum Library at Salem during his residence of some twenty years in that town. It is perhaps because of Hawthorne's reticence as to his origins that we have as yet learned very little about his literary borrowings; but from time to time articles have appeared touching the specific sources on which Hawthorne relied.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1936 , pp. 543 - 562
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 “Books Read by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1828–1850,” The Essex Institute Historica Publications, lxviii (January, 1932), 65–87.

2 Stewart, Randall, The American Notebooks by Nathaniel Hawthorne (New Haven, 1932).

3 PQ, xii, 196–206. See in this connection Walter Morris Hart, “Hawthorne and the Short Story,” The University Chronicle, iii (June, 1900), 186, 189; Stewart, The American Notebooks, pp. xlvii, l, li, lii; Woodberry, George E., Nathaniel Hawthorne (Boston, 1902), p. 6; Hawthorne, Julian, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife (Boston, 1884), ii, 9.

4 Am. Lit., ii, 54–71.

5 Ibid., iv (November, 1932), 257–269. See also Woodberry, p. 135.

6 Am. Lit., v (1934), 342–348.

7 This article was reprinted in full in Littell's Living Age, ii (Oct. 19, 1844), 643–655.

8 The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. James A. Harrison (New York, 1902), xiii, 141–154.

9 Schönbach, Anton, “Beiträge zur Characteristik Nathaniel Hawthornes,” ESt, vii, (1884), 239–303.

10 Beiden, Henry Marvin, “Poe's Criticism of Hawthorne,” Anglia, xxiii (1901), 376–404.

11 Kern, Alfred A., “The Sources of Hawthorne's ‘Feathertop’,” PMLA, xlvi (Dec., 1931), 1253–1259. See also Just, Walter, Die Romantische Bewegung in der Amerikanischen Literatur (Weimar, 1910), p. 44; Canby, Henry Seidel, The Short Story in English (New York, 1909), p. 247.

12 Woodberry, p. 135.

13 Leisy, Ernest E., ed., The Scarlet Letter (New York, 1929).

14 Scott, J. Hubert, ed., The Twice-Told Tales (Boston, n.d.), p. 555. Most writers on the subject, however, have held that Hawthorne's indebtedness to Scott consists less in the borrowing of materials than in the emulation of Scott's example. See Lang, Andrew, Adventures Among Books (New York, 1905), p. 216; Just, Walter, Die Romantische Bewegung in der Amerikanischen Literatur, p. 73; Munger, Theodore T., “Notes on The Scarlet Letter,” The Atlantic Monthly, xciii (April, 1904), 530; Woodberry, Nathaniel Hawthorne, pp. 32, 33, 125, 135; Woodberry, Hawthorne, How to Know Him (Indianapolis, 1918), pp. 66, 86, 234; Leisy, Ernest E., ed., The Scarlet Letter, p. xi; Erskine, John, Leading American Novelists (New York, 1910), p. 192; Conway, Moncure, “The Scott Centenary,” Harper's New Monthly Magazine, xliv (February, 1884), 341.

For miscellaneous suggestions of minor significance see Brownell, W. C., American Prose Masters (New York, 1925), p. 85; Gorman, Herbert, Hawthorne, a Study in Solitude (New York, 1927), pp. 44, 89; Fields, James T., Yesterdays with Authors (Boston, 1889), p. 110; Arvin, Newton, Hawthorne (Boston, 1929), p. 127; Higginson, T. W., “Hawthorne's Last Bequest,” Scribner's Monthly, v (November, 1872), 104; Montégut, Emile, “Un Roman Socialiste en Amérique,” Revue des Deux Mondes, xvi (April 15, 1852), 816; Conway, Moncure D., “My Hawthorne Experience,” The Critic, xlv (July, 1904), 21; Hawthorne, Julian, Hawthorne Reading (Cleveland, 1902), pp. 22, 64, 80; Hawthorne, Julian, “The Salem of Hawthorne,” The Century Magazine, xxviii (May, 1884), 7; Crawford, Mary Caroline, Old New England Inns (Boston, 1924), p. 207; Woodbridge, B. M., “The Supernatural in Hawthorne and Poe,” Colorado College Publication, Language Series, ii, No. 26, p. 140 (November, 1911); Hutton, Richard Holt, Literary Essays (London, 1903), p. 472; Cross, Wilbur L., The Development of the English Novel (New York, 1922), p. 166; Beers, Henry A., Four Americans (New Haven, 1919), p. 54.

15 For allusions to Mather see Hawthorne's Works, xviii, 126, 301, 503, 523–524; xii, xv, 91, 102–106, 112–120; ii, 34–35, 251; xvii, 233–235; xvi, 242; i, 6. The text of Hawthorne's works which I have used for this article is the “Old Manse” edition, in twenty-two volumes, edited by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop and Horace E. Scudder, and published at Boston in 1900. This edition is hereafter referred to merely by volume and page, without further designation.

16 Mather, Cotton, The Wonders of the Invisible World (London, 1862).

17 Mather, Cotton, Magnolia Christi Americana; or The Ecclesiastical History of New England (Hartford, 1855); first printed in 1702.

18 See The Wonders of the Invisible World, pp. 80–81, 122, 123–124; the Magnolia Christi, i, 404–405, 418–22, 474.

19 Hawthorne's assertion (iv, 117), “Some affirm that the lady of the governor was there,” derives from the circumstance that the wife of Governor Phips was accused of witchcraft.

20 iv, 120.

21 iii, 101.

22 The Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 159. See also Samuel Sewall's Diary ed., Mark Van Doren (New York, 1927), p. 108, John Neal's Portland Illustrated (Portland, 1874), p. 33, Joseph Felt's Annals of Salem (Salem, 1845–1849), ii, 475–476, the Magnolia Christi, ii, 471–473, and Julian Hawthorne's “Scenes of Hawthorne's Romances,” The Century Magazine, xviii (July, 1884), 390.

So, too, Mather's witch accounts in The Wonders of the Invisible World may have supplied material for Hawthorne's “The Hollow of the Three Hills,” an account of a witch's summoning up for a sinning young woman the voices of her parents, her husband, and her child. Several of the “divine judgments” of which Cotton Mather writes were visited upon young women who had broken the hearts of their parents, proved untrue to their husbands, and neglected or even murdered their children (see also similar passages in the Magnolia Christi, ii, 404–405, 416–422). The hollow told of in the tale is the place of frequent witch meetings and contains a small pool, in which is often enacted just such an “impious baptismal rite” as Mather mentions (The Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 61). The witch tradition as recorded in The Wonders of the Invisible World may possibly be echoed by Hawthorne also in the witch passages in The Scarlet Letter. The proposal by Mistress Hibbins that Hester accompany her to a witch meeting is typical of the Mather witch tradition, which included, in accordance with the well known passage in The Scarlet Letter, the signing in the devil's book with an iron pen and with blood for ink (vi, 165–166; see the Magnolia Christi, ii, 465–472; The Wonders of the Invisible World, pp. 15, 80–81, 169, 206).

23 The Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 91.

24 Idem, p. 182.

25 Idem, p. 91.

26 Magnolia Christi, i, 139.

27 xvii, 228–238.

28 The American Magazine of Useful Knowledge, ii, 395–397.

29 Magnolia Christi, ii, 634–636. A brief note touching on the experiences of Mrs. Duston appears in Sewall's Diary (p. 143). The fact that Hawthorne's sketch was composed for The American Magazine during his editorship helps to explain his method of working with his sources here.

30 One allusion to Mather and two quotations from his book show that Hawthorne made no attempt to conceal his source. He changed a few details, to be sure, his alterations representing touches of the artist supplementing the bare facts recorded by Mather. For example, he differentiates the seven Duston children, as the father recalls something in particular about each one and is unable to choose one to be saved if the others are to perish. Throughout the piece Hawthorne opposes the position taken by Mather, who praises Mrs. Duston and is glad to see the Indians murdered inasmuch as they are Catholics.

31 Magnolia Christi, i, 171–172.

32 xii, 74–75.

33 xii, 70; Mather (Magnalia Christi, i, 166) has the same words “fair brick-house” and “in the Green-lane of North-Boston.”

34 xvii, 16.

35 xvii 1–12; Magnolia Christi, ii, 516–517.

36 xii, 24–28.

37 Magnolia Christi, ii, 484.

38 xvi, 183.

39 In July, 1838, Hawthorne himself visited the grave of Nathaniel Mather, as he tells us in The American Notebooks (xviii, 135–136).

40 See the Magnolia Christi, i, 63; ii, 523–531, 644–652. A brief account of the Quaker persecutions appears in Grandfather's Chair (xii, 44–46).

41 i, 84–87.

42 i, 128.

43 Magnolia Christi, ii, 529–531.

44 Idem, ii, 526.

45 In Grandfather's Chair (xii, 45) Hawthorne notes: “This Mary Dyer had entered the mint-master's dwelling, clothed in sack-cloth and ashes, and seated herself in our great chair with a sort of dignity and state. Then she proceeded to deliver what she called a message from Heaven, but in the midst of it they dragged her to prison.” This report and Mather's statement (Magnolia Christi, ii, 527) that “two women of their sect … came stark naked as ever they were born into our publick assemblies” may be echoed in Catharine's ranting speech in the church. Quaker persecution is again alluded to in the second chapter of The Scarlet Letter (vi, 68–69).

46 See the Magnolia Christi, ii, 397–398.

47 Magnolia Christi, ii, 404–405.

48 vi, 91–96. Mather's account (Magnolia Christi, ii, 546–551) of a wicked imposter who posed as a preacher and seduced several members of his congregation, finally getting one with child, possibly contributed to Hawthorne's thoughts in framing the character of Dimmesdale. In this connection the following note from John Dunton's Life and Errors (London, 1705), p. 125, which Hawthorne is known to have read (see xvii, 275), is of interest: “An English-Woman, admitting some unlawful Freedom with an Indian, was forc'd Twelve Months, to wear upon her Right Arm an Indian cut in Red Cloth.”

49 Increase Mather is alluded to twice in Hawthorne's works (xvii, 17, 276). The first of these references gives the Remarkable Providences (London, 1890) as the source for the episode recorded about Dr. Bullivant. Bullivant, however, is not mentioned in Mather's book; and Hawthorne errs in saying that the Remarkable Providences was written when “a lapse of nearly forty years should have tamed the fierceness of party animosity” (xvii, 276). Dr. Bullivant's imprisonment occurred in 1688 or 1689, at the accession of William of Orange to the throne; and Increase Mather's book appeared in 1693. Bullivant is discussed at some length in John Dunton's Life and Errors (pp. 134–135), a book to which Hawthorne refers his reader in the sketch “Dr. Bullivant” (xvii, 275), but Dunton makes no mention of the prison episode of Hawthorne's sketch.

50 Remarkable Providences, p. 219.

51 Remarkable Providences, pp. 216–219. In this connection we recall that Ethan Brand's heart had turned to stone and was converted into lime in the lime-kiln (iii, 139).

52 Hawthorne tells us in “The Custom House” (vi, 41) that he read Felt's book; and his son informs us, “The Salem of Hawthorne,” The Century Magazine, xxviii (May, 1884), 7, of having seen Sophia's copy of the book. Hawthorne drew the book from the Salem Athenæum Library in 1834; see “Books Read by Nathaniel Hawthorne,” The Essex Institute Historical Collections, lxviii (January, 1932), 65–87.

53 Annals of Salem, ii, 387.

54 Winthrop, John, Journal, ed. James Kendall Hosmer (New York, 1908).

55 xvii, 11.

56 Winthrop's Journal, i, 266–268.

57 Among other New England histories alluded to by Hawthorne as sources are “the annals of Massachusetts Bay” by Thomas Hutchinson (iii, 293), evidently the History of Massachusetts Bay (first published in 1764); Caleb Hopkins Snow's History of Boston (Boston, 1825), in which he found an engraving of the Liberty Tree (xviii, 302; Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Love Letters [Chicago, 1907], pp. 46–47); James Sullivan's The History of the District of Maine (first published at Boston, 1795), the avowed source of the tradition mentioned in “The Great Carbuncle” (i, 196); William Dunlap's History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design (i, 223), in which Hawthorne declares he found the idea for “The Prophetic Pictures,” and which he took from the Salem Athenæum Library on March 9, 1836 (see “Books Read by Nathaniel Hawthorne,” The Essex Institute Historical Publications, lxviii [Jan., 1932], 65–87), the year preceding the publication of the story; “Mr. Upham's biography of Vane” (xii, 28); a biography “written by Mr. Peabody, of Springfield” (xii, 120); the history written by his friend George Bancroft (iv, 2), five volumes of which had appeared by 1852; a history of the Quakers (i, 86); a history of withcraft (xvi, 225); and “Glanville's marvellous book, entitled the History of Witches, or the Wonders of the Invisible World Displayed” (xvi, 273).

58 See Sewall's Diary, p. 52. For Hawthorne's allusions to Sewall see xviii, 349; iii, 40.

59 See Mather's Magnolia Christi, i, 141–142; and also Sewall's Diary, p. 100.

60 See The Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 166; and the Annals of Salem, ii, 47.6.

61 See The Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 156.

62 See the Magnolia Christi, i, 87; ii, 30, 31, 59, 610; also Sewall's Diary, p. 25.

63 See the Magnolia Christi, ii, 622.

64 Ibid., i, 67; ii, 31; see also Felt's Annals of Salem, i, 55, 267; ii, 101, 523, 524; and Felt, Joseph B., A Historical Account of Massachusetts Currency (Boston, 1839), pp. 18, 245, 249. Hawthorne himself mentions the name “Pyncheon” in The American Notebooks (xviii, 97). It is surprising, then, that, when a Pyncheon objected to the use of his family name in The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne wrote to his friend James T. Fields (see Yesterdays with Authors, p. 58): “The joke … is, that I never heard of his grandfather, nor knew that any Pyncheons had ever lived in Salem, but took the name because it suited the tone of my book, and was as much my property, for fictitious purposes, as that of Smith.”

65 See the Annals of Salem, i, 350, 411; ii, 24, 587, 590; the Magnolia Christi, ii, 644–645; Sewall's Diary, p. 127. The full name “Thomas Maule,” that of a descendent of old Matthew Maule in Hawthorne's romance (vii, 282), is the name of the most illustrious Maule in colonial history.

66 See the Annals of Salem, i, 170; ii, 320; also Sewall's Diary, p. 173.

67 See the Annals of Salem, i, 172, 420.

68 Idem, ii, 163.

69 Idem, ii, 163.

70 Idem, i, 65, 424; ii, 44.

71 v, 132.

72 i, 40. Alice Morse Earle notes in The Sabbath in Puritan New England (New York, 1892), p. 285, the “deep melancholy which was shown in its highest type in ‘Handkerchief Moody’, who preached and prayed and always appeared in public with a handkerchief over his face, and gave to Hawthorne the inspiration for his story of ‘The Black Veil’.”

73 The Blackstone mentioned in this story (i, 77) as the minister at Merry Mount is a historical character (see the Magnalia Christi, i, 243), as is also Nicholas Biddle, mentioned in The Ancestral Footstep (xiv, 382).

74 The basic incident of this story is narrated in the Magnolia Christi (ii, 499), in Winthrop's Journal (i, 139, 149–150), and in Sewall's Diary (p. 40).

75 Fields, Yesterdays with Authors, p. 54.

76 Hawthorne's only piece dealing with historical incidents and characters outside of New England colonial history is “The Antique Ring,” a narrative involving Queen Elizabeth, Essex, Cecil, Raleigh, and the Countess of Shrewsbury; see also v, 353.

77 See particularly “Roderick, the Last of the Goths,” Part ii, ll. 1–256.

78 Southey describes a cave containing a spring which resembles the cave and spring in “The Man of Adamant.”

79 v, 44. Julian Hawthorne tells us (Hawthorne Reading, p. 66) that his father possessed a copy of Southey's complete poems.

80 xviii, 140.

81 iv, 227. The allusion here appears to be to Part ii, ll. 144–168, of “The Curse of Kehama,” where Ladurlad jumps into the river to save his daughter and finds that the water does not touch him; see also Part xvi, ll. 1 ff.

82 See v, 35–36.

83 iii, 122, 135.

84 See vi, 221.

85 xiv, 315–328.

86 “The Curse of Kehama,” Part xviii, ll. 104 ff.; Part xxiv, ll. 205 ff.

87 See xiv, 322–324; i, 323.

88 Professor Woodberry writes of “The Celestrial Railroad” that “the cleverness is Hawthorne's, but Bunyan wrote the piece.” See also Hawthorne Reading, p. 22; Arvin, Hawthorne, p. 129; Just, Die Romantische Bewegung in der Amerikanischen Literatur, p. 39; Lathrop, George Parsons, A Study of Hawthorne (Boston, 1891), pp. 31–36.

89 I quote part of Browne's passage in The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. Simon Wilkin (London, 1852), ii, 272–273, the first sentence of which Hawthorne copied into The American Notebooks (xviii, 252):

“A story there passeth of an Indian King, that sent unto Alexander a fair woman, fed with aconites and other poisons, with this intent, either by converse or copulation complexionally to destroy him. For my part, although the design were true, I should have doubted the success. For, though it be possible that poisons may meet with tempers whereto they may become aliments, and we observe from fowls that feed on fishes, and others fed with garlick and onions, that simple aliments are not always concocted beyond their vegetable qualities; and therefore that even after carnal conversion, poisons may yet retain some portion of their natures; yet are they so refracted, cicurated, and subdued, as not to make good their first and destructive malignities. And therefore [to] the stork that eateth snakes, and the stare that feedeth upon hemlock; [these], though no commendable aliments, are not destructive poisons. For, animals that can inoxiously digest these poisons, become antidotal upon the poison digested. And therefore, whether their breath be attracted, or their flesh ingested, the poisonous relicks go still along with their antidote; whose society will not permit their malice to be destructive.

90 A note to Browne's work (ii, 272) added by Dean Wren, which Hawthorne may likewise have seen, states that the Portuguese were killed by copulation with the women of the “eastern islands.” Professor Stewart points out this source (p. lxxi); and he draws attention to a quotation in his edition of The American Notebooks (p. 98), from Mme. Calderon de la Barca's Life in Mexico (Boston, 1843), ii, 414, which appears to be another source for “Rappaccini's Daughter.” The quotation tells of persons who inoculate themselves against rattlesnake poison by pricking themselves with rattlesnake fangs.

91 Combe, Andrew, The Principles of Physiology (New York, 1835).

92 Idem, 233–234.

93 xviii, 356.

94 This source has been suggested by Julian Hawthorne, in Hawthorne Reading, p. 84; see also Stewart, p. xxv. I owe it to myself to say that I came across this source before I had discovered Julian Hawthorne's reference to it.

95 King, William, Political and Literary Anecdotes of His Own Times (London, 1819), pp. 237–245.

96 i, 172. Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library (London, 1899), i, 191, says that he believes “Wakefield” had its origin in “King's Anecdotes.”

97 xvi, 44–45.

98 Beckford, William, Vathek (New York, n.d.), p. 15.

99 Maturin, Charles Robert, Melmoth, the Wanderer (London, 1892), i, 44.

100 Idem, i, 44–45.

101 Hawthorne's Works, iii, 119, 137.

102 vii, 123–139.

103 The Castle of Otranto (New York, n.d.), pp. 15–16.

A note in Hawthorne's journal (Stewart, p. 100), which had, as Professor Stewart notes, its origin in Walpole's Reminiscences (ed. Paget Toynbee [Oxford, 1924], pp. 27, 134), is in turn the source of an item in “A Virtuoso's Collection,” the raven “in which the soul of King George I revisited his lady love, the Duchess of Kendall.”

104 Charles Brockden Brown undoubtedly influenced Hawthorne's use of the supernatural and the Gothic machinery. See Brown's Wieland (ed. F. L. Pattee [New York, 1926], pp. 31, 37, 40, 62, 71, 106, 166, 171, 184, 197, 216, 261) for matters which may have influenced Hawthorne. Brown's treatment of the pestilence in Arthur Mervyn is suggestive of Hawthorne's “Lady Eleanore's Mantle.”

105 As were Fanshawe, Oberon in “The Devil in Manuscript,” and Oberon again in “Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man.”

106 See, for example, Ellen in Fanshawe.

107 See Butler in Fanshawe, and Westervelt in The Blithedale Romance.

108 Examples are the old women at the death of Widow Butler in Fanshawe (xvi, 143 ff.) and the old maid in “The White Old Maid.”

109 See Dr. Dolliver, as well as characters in “Rappaccini's Daughter,” “The Prophetic Pictures,” “The Birthmark,” and “The Artist of the Beautiful.”

110 The Wizard in “Alice Doane's Appeal,” and the devil in “Young Goodman Brown” are good examples.

111 See Melmoth in Fanshawe, and also Dr. Grimshawe.

112 See, for instance, the analysis of Redclyffe's sensation in Doctor Grimshawe's Secret (xv, 358) while he is intoxicated from drinking wine, and again after he has been shot (xv, 164–170).

113 See the entrance of the proud lady in “Lady Eleanore's Mantle” (ii, 56–57), the forewarning of the mother in “The Ambitious Guest” (ii, 289–290), and the omen in “The Lily's Quest.”

114 See examples of second sight in “Howe's Masquerade,” and in the rumor regarding Priscilla in The Blithedale Romance (viii, 176).

115 See the vision in the sky seen by Dimmesdale and others on the night of the Governor's death (vi, 220–223); see also the ghost of Alice, and Maule's Well in The House of the Seven Gables (vii, 123–129), the legend of the Bloody Footstep in The Ancestral Footstep and elsewhere, and the supernatural pictures in “The Prophetic Pictures” and in “Edward Randolph's Portrait.”

116 “The Veiled Lady” in The Blithedale Romance (vii, 151–164, 276–290) is a tale of mesmerism, as also the story of Alice in The House of the Seven Gables (vii, 271–306).

117 The shroud appears in “The Wedding Knell” and in “The Shaker Bridal.”

118 See, for instance, the death of Widow Butler in Fanshawe (xvi, 162 ff.), of Judge Pyncheon in The House of the Seven Gables (vii, 390–414), of the young lover in “The White Old Maid,” and of the bride in “The Shaker Bridal”; also the flowers growing from a grave in Septimius Felton (xiv, 334), and the vegetation which, so we are told in The Blithedale Romance (viii, 349), grew from Zenobia's heart in the grave.

119 As the lost property deed in The House of the Seven Gables, as also the manuscript containing the story of Alice (vii, 20–21, 270), and the old Greek and Latin manuscript taken from the body of the dead British soldier in Septimius Felton (xiv, 134).

120 See the House of the Seven Gables, the old house beside the graveyard in Doctor Grimshawe's Secret (xv, 264–268), the ancestral mansions in England appearing in Doctor Grimshawe's Secret and The Ancestral Footstep, with their hidden doors, concealed rooms, and long dark passages (xv, 377; xiv, 345, 381, 420).

121 The graveyards described by Hawthorne include the catacombs and the Capuchin burial ground in The Marble Faun (ix, 33–45, 248–271), and the graveyard adjoining the house in Doctor Grimshawe's Secret (xv, 3–4, 110–145).

122 Such a library appears in Doctor Grimshawe's Secret (xv, 319–325).

123 The slow beginning is best illustrated in Hawthorne by “Alice Doane's Appeal,” in which the opening description of the setting sun is much like the beginning of Ivanhoe.

124 Poe himself suggested twice that Hawthorne borrowed from him—once in a general statement in the Marginalia (Poe's Works, ed. Harrison, xvi, 42–43): “I am not quite sure, even, that he [Hawthorne] has not borrowed an idea or two from a gentleman whom I know very well, and who is honored in the loan,” and again in his review in 1842 of the Twice-Told Tales for Graham's Magazine (ibid., xi, 112), where he shows that the paragraphs of “Howe's Masquerade” in which Howe draws his sword and orders the muffled figure to halt and reveal itself (ii, 21) corresponds to a section of his own “William Wilson” (Poe's Works, iii, 324) in which Wilson cries out to his double and stabs it with his sword. Hawthorne's story was published, however, in 1838, one year before the appearance of “William Wilson.”

125 Carlyle's translation of Tieck's stories “The Runenberg,” “The Elves,” “The Goblet,” “The Fair-Haired Egbert,” and a few others appeared in his German Romance in 1827; and several others of Tieck's stories were translated by 1839; see Beiden, Henry Marvin, “Poe's Criticism of Hawthorne,” Anglia, xxiii (1901), 380–390.

126 From E. T. A. Hoffman, Hawthorne possibly received certain ideas for his treatment of fate and for his symbolic characters who are only half real. The hero in Hoffman's tale of “Master Martin the Cooper” combines belief in omens and supernatural manifestations with utter practicality, much as do Drowne, Dr. Grimshawe, and others of Hawthorne's characters (see Hoffman, E. T. A., Weird Tales [New York, 1923], i, 68–148). The “fixed idea” which dominates almost all of Hoffman's characters and warps them to the extent of partial insanity is perhaps adumbrated in such of Hawthorne's characters as Hollingsworth, Chillingworth, and Dr. Grimshawe (see especially the tales in The Serapion Bretheren). Hoffman's “The Sandman” (Weird Tales, i, 168–215), the story of a mechanical woman created by two scientists and operated by means of clock-work, and loved by a man who becomes insane when he learns that she exists no more, appears to have contributed something to “Feathertop.” For the suggestion of a debt to Hoffman see Jessup, Alexander, and Canby, Henry Seidel, The Book of the Short Story (New York, 1907). p. 10.

127 Chamisso, Adelbert von, Peter Schlemihls Wundersame Geschichte (München, 1908). The story was translated in 1824.

128 v, 110, 357.

129 Peter Schlemihl's losing his sweetheart when she and her parents find that he has no shadow may be echoed in the catastrophe of “Feathertop,” in which Feathertop loses Polly Gookin when she sees his true reflection in the mirror.

130 ix, 202.

131 I shall call attention further to several miscellaneous details in Hawthorne's writings which appear to have had specific sources. Dicon, the servant of Mother Rigby in “Feathertop,” seems to go back to “Diccon the Bedlem” in Gammer Gurton's Needle. Diccon is, in that play as well as in the morality plays, the fun-maker and the personification of vice. Pope's The Dunciad (Book i, l. 290) possibly contributed the name “Dr. Heidegger” in “Dr. Heidegger's Experiment.” Still, Hawthorne might have seen the name “Heidegger” in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters and Works (ed. Lord Wharncliffe [London, 1861], i, 495), which he is known to have read. The name “P. P., Clerk of this Parish,” in “The Custom House” (vi, 1, 57), involves an allusion to “Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this Parish,” a part of the satiric Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, written chiefly by John Arbuthnot but published in Pope's Works (ed. Whitwell Elwin and William John Courthope, [London, 1886], x, 434–444). Keats's “Ode on a Grecian Urn” seems to be echoed in the puppet show described in “The Seven Vagabonds,” in which the statues preserve “an eternal semblance of labor that was ended, and pleasure that could be felt no more” (ii, 159). The description of certain pictures in The Blithedale Romance seems also to go back to Keats's poem:

“There were pictures, too, of gallant revellers,—those of the old time,—Flemish, apparently,—with doublets and slashed sleeves,— drinking their wine out of fantastic long-stemmed glasses; quaffing joyously, quaffing forever, with inaudible laughter and song, while the champagne bubbled immortally against their mustaches, or the purple tide of Burgundy ran inexhaustibly down their throats (viii, 250).”

Dr. Samuel Johnson's penance in Ottoxeter Market suggested to Hawthorne the idea of making each of a man's successes a pain because of some fundamental error in his early life (xviii, 247)—an idea forming the basis of “The Christmas Banquet.” Henry Fielding possibly suggested to Hawthorne his use of auctorial comment, which at the chapter beginnings and at places within the chapters of The Blithedale Romance could pass for parts of Tom Jones.

132 See v, 9–10.—It is possible, of course, that Milton's pictures of Adam and Eve in Eden influenced Hawthorne's conception in some way, but it is far more probable that Hawthorne went directly to the Bible.

133 ii, 69.

134 xvi, 211.

135 iii, 226–237.—“The Celestial Railroad” is largely Biblical, though its immediate source was The Pilgrim's Progress. Again and again there are Biblical echoes and allusions in Hawthorne's stories. For a quotation from the Bible see xvi, 140; for paraphrases of Biblical passages see xvi, 148; iii, 172; for briefer Biblical allusions see i, 197; iii, 169, 226, 227; iv, 283, 285, 286; v, 67, 335, 337, 347; vi, 7; xv, 83; xvi, 121, 290, 304; xviii, 281, 299; Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, ii., 113, 279.