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It is easy to see why Melville, himself a prey to the deepest forebodings about the optimism of his day, recognized at once his kinship of spirit with Hawthorne. "There is a certain tragic phase of humanity which, in our opinion (he wrote), was ....

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... of their books. Hawthorne, in the famous letter to his publisher, Fields, spoke of fearing that his novel would "weary very many people and disgust some" by keeping so close, and with so little diversification, to "the same dark idea." Would he have an audience receptive to his peculiar view of things? The Greek and Elizabethan dramatists or Racine or even the poet of Job could count on an audience culturally predisposed through myth, theater, or racial view to accept at once a drama of direness. Hawthorne had to make his own audience, to lead it by easy stages, as it were, into the dark idea. Hence the familiar, reassuring tone of th ...