Henry James: Hawthorne

Certainly, I am inclined to think, if one had encountered these delicate, dusky flowers in the blossomless garden of American journalism, one would have plucked them with a very tender hand; one would have felt that here was something essentially fresh and new; here, in no extraordinary force or abundance, but in a degree distinctly appreciable, was an original element in literature. When I think of it, I almost envy Hawthorne's earliest readers; the sensation of opening upon The Great Carbuncle, The Seven Vagabonds, or The Threefold Destiny in an American annual of forty years ago, must have been highly agreeable.