thorne instances as a case of remarkable phlegm the fact that Thackeray read the touching last number of The Newcomes to James Russell Lowell and William Story in a cider-cellar. In this connection he remarks: "I cannot but wonder at his coolness in respect to his own pathos, and compare it with my emotions, when I read the last scene of The Scarlet Letter to my wife, just after writing it—tried to read it rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed up and down on an ocean as it subsides after a storm. But I was in a very nervous state then, having gone through a great diversity of emotion, while writing it, for many months. I think I have never overcome my own adamant in any other instance."[1]
The success of the book on its publication in 1856 was immediate and, considering the restrictions put upon novel reading in the days of our fathers and grandfathers, extensive. In a striking passage of a most charming piece of criticism, Henry James records the reverberation of its fame registered in his own then youthful breast, an instrument more than ordinarily sensitive to such impressions, yet reacting in a sufficiently representative fashion to serve as a general indicator:
- ↑ English Note-Books, September 14, 1855, quoted by James.
