From: The Dial, Vol. I, No. III (Jan. 1841)
Author:
Published: Weeks Jordan and Company 1841 Boston
Grandfather’s Chair: A History for Youth. By Nathaniel Hawthorne, Author of Twice Told Tales. Boston: E. P. Peabody. New York: Wiley and Putnam. 1840.
We are glad to see this gifted author employing his pen to raise the tone of children’s literature; for if children read at all, it is desirable that it should be the productions of minds able to raise themselves to the height of childhood’s innocence, and to the airy home of their free fancy. No one of all our imaginative writers has indicated a genius at once so fine and rich, and especially with a power so peculiar in making present the past scenes of our own history. There is nothing in this volume quite equal to the sketch of “Endicott and his Men,” in one of the Tokens. But the ease with which he changes his tone from the delicate satire that characterizes his writings for the old, to the simpler and more venerable tone appropriate to his earnest little auditors, is an earnest of the perfect success which will attend this new direction of his powers. We are glad to learn that he is engaged in other writings for the little friends, whom he has made in such multitudes by Grandfather’s Chair. Yet we must demand from him to write again to the older and sadder, and steep them in the deep well of his sweet, humorsome musings.
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