Indeed, it may be that Hawthorne himself was of the resemblance. “An individual of Clifford’s character,” he remarks, “can always be pricked more acutely through his sense of the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart.” And he suggests that, if Clifford had not been so long in prison, his aesthetic zeal Indeed, it may be that Hawthorne himself was aware of the resemblance. “An individual of Clifford’s character,” he remarks, “can always be pricked more acutely through his sense of the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart.”
And he suggests that, if Clifford had not been so long in prison, his aesthetic zeal “might have eaten out or filed away his affections.” This was what befell Harold Skimpole–himself “in prisons often”–at Coavinses! The Judge Pyncheon of the tale is also a masterly study of swaggering black-hearted respectability, and then, in addition to all the poetry of his style, and the charm of his haunted air, Hawthorne favours us with a brave conclusion of the good sort, the old sort. They come into money, they marry, they are happy ever after. This is doing things handsomely, though some of our modern novelists think it coarse and degrading. Hawthorne did not think so, and they are not exactly better artists than Hawthorne.
Yet he, too, had his economies, which we resent. I do not mean his not telling us what it was that Roger Chillingworth saw on Arthur Dimmesdale’s bare breast. To leave that vague is quite legitimate. But what had Miriam and the spectre of the Catacombs done? Who was the spectre? What did he want? To have told all this would have been better than to fill the with padding about Rome, sculpture, and the Ethics of Yet he, too, had his economies, which we resent. I do not mean his not telling us what it was that Roger Chillingworth saw on Arthur Dimmesdale’s bare breast. To leave that vague is quite legitimate. But what had Miriam and the spectre of the Catacombs done? Who was the spectre? What did he want? To have told all this would have been better than to fill the novel with padding about Rome, sculpture, and the Ethics of Art. As the silly saying runs: “the people has a right to know” about Miriam and her ghostly acquaintance. {10} But the “Marble Faun” is not of Hawthorne’s best period, beautiful as are a hundred passages in the tale.
