Mosses from an Old Manse, Volume II

As we turn over these volumes we feel that the pieces that spring most directly from his fancy, constitute, as I have said (putting his four novels aside), his most substantial claim to our attention. It would be a mistake to insist too much upon them; Hawthorne was himself the first to recognize that. . . . the valuable element in these things was not what Hawthorne put into them consciously, but what passed into them without his being able to measure it -- the element of simple genius, the quality of imagination. This is the real charm of Hawthorne's writing -- this purity and spontaneity and naturalness of fancy. -- Henry James