Early American Literature discussion

Discussion thread for P.'s Correspondence.

Well now, this one is DIFFERENT! 😅 I'm still trying to figure out what Mr. Hawthorne meant by it. Is it supposed to be a joke?! I'm used to extracting some deep moral from his tales, but this one just has me completely befuddled!

The writer of this letter is not in his right mind, he makes that clear. So he thinks he's meeting authors that were already dead, such as Byron, Keats, Burns, and Wordsworth. And the authors still living he says are dead! Just listen to a few of these passages!

Only think of my good fortune! The venerable Robert Burns—now, if I mistake not, in his eighty-seventh year—happens to be making a visit to London, as if on purpose to afford me an opportunity of grasping him by the hand. For upwards of twenty years past he has hardly left his quiet cottage in Ayrshire for a single night, and has only been drawn hither now by the irresistible persuasions of all the distinguished men in England. They wish to celebrate the patriarch's birthday by a festival. It will be the greatest literary triumph on record. Pray Heaven the little spirit of life within the aged bard's bosom may not be extinguished in the lustre of that hour! I have already had the honor of an introduction to him at the British Museum, where he was examining a collection of his own unpublished letters, interspersed with songs, which have escaped the notice of all his biographers.
Poh! Nonsense! What am I thinking of? How should Burns have been embalmed in biography when he is still a hearty old man?

I had expectations from a young man,—one Dickens,—who published a few magazine articles, very rich in humor, and not without symptoms of genuine pathos; but the poor fellow died shortly after commencing an odd series of sketches, entitled, I think, the Pickwick Papers. Not impossibly the world has lost more than it dreams of by the untimely death of this Mr. Dickens.

Somewhat later there was Whittier, a fiery Quaker youth, to whom the muse had perversely assigned a battle-trumpet, and who got himself lynched, ten years agone, in South Carolina. I remember, too, a lad just from college, Longfellow by name, who scattered some delicate verses to the winds, and went to Germany, and perished, I think, of intense application, at the University of Gottingen. Willis—what a pity!—was lost, if I recollect rightly, in 1833, on his voyage to Europe, whither he was going to give us sketches of the world's sunny face. If these had lived, they might, one or all of them, have grown to be famous men.

Much of this sketch I skimmed through- I was starting to get tired and could not concentrate - but it does sound like Hawthorne was picking fun of himself and his friends!