tragic guilt. He solicits judgment on the ground which the most gentle-spirited Transcendentalist may take, and so save himself from dissolution in sympathy, namely, that we should abide firmly by the law we have till the higher law is ready. The method of Hawthorne's moral appeal is the method of tragic poetry: the image of anguish that never fades, the cadenced cry that, like the despairing wail of Lady Macbeth, lingers in the memory—"Is there not shade enough in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of Roger Chillingworth?"
