{"id":"01KG6GMNZVSA30RNQ4TBTS34RV","cid":"bafkreiaw43eusqfdpr2ataso3rwvx2tw7blxbt44wsin5bq7dz6q3mbhmq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3943,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 3","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":3900,"text":"one word, the world is mistaken in this Nathaniel Hawthorne. He himself\r\nmust often have smiled at its absurd misconception of him. He is\r\nimmeasurably deeper than the plummet of the mere critic. For it is not\r\nthe brain that can test such a man; it is only the heart. You cannot\r\ncome to know greatness by inspecting it; there is no glimpse to be\r\ncaught of it, except by intuition; you need not ring it, you but touch\r\nit, and you find it is gold.\r\n\r\nNow, it is that blackness in Hawthorne, of which I have spoken, that so\r\nfixes and fascinates me. It may be, nevertheless, that it is too largely\r\ndeveloped in him. Perhaps he does not give us a ray of light for every\r\nshade of his dark. But however this may be, this blackness it is that\r\nfurnishes the infinite obscure of his background,--that background,\r\nagainst which Shakespeare plays his grandest conceits, the things that\r\nhave made for Shakespeare his loftiest but most circumscribed renown, as\r\nthe profoundest of thinkers. For by philosophers Shakespeare is not\r\nadored, as the great man of tragedy and comedy:--‘Off with his head; so\r\nmuch for Buckingham!’ This sort of rant interlined by another hand,\r\nbrings down the house,--those mistaken souls, who dream of Shakespeare\r\nas a mere man of Richard the Third humps and Macbeth daggers. But it is\r\nthose deep far-away things in him; those occasional flashings-forth of\r\nthe intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probings at the very axis\r\nof reality;--these are the things that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare.\r\nThrough the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and\r\nIago, he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things which we feel\r\nto be so terrifically true, that it were all but madness for any good\r\nman, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them.\r\nTormented into desperation, Lear, the frantic king, tears off the mask,\r\nand speaks the same madness of vital truth. But, as I before said, it is\r\nthe least part of genius that attracts admiration. And so, much of the\r\nblind, unbridled admiration that has been heaped upon Shakespeare, has\r\nbeen lavished upon the least part of him. And few of his endless\r\ncommentators and critics seem to have remembered, or even perceived,\r\nthat the immediate products of a great mind are not so great as that\r\nundeveloped and sometimes undevelopable yet dimly-discernible greatness,\r\nto which those immediate products are but the infallible indices. In\r\nShakespeare’s tomb lies infinitely more than Shakespeare ever wrote. And\r\nif I magnify Shakespeare, it is not so much for what he did do as for\r\nwhat he did not do, or refrained from doing. For in this world of lies,\r\nTruth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and\r\nonly by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and\r\nother masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth,--even though it be\r\ncovertly and by snatches.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 3"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6GKYHSPTY1FRSQBD1DWF45","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6GMNZXJC8G8GMJBSGF75E1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6GMNZXQDJRMGVG4CCVX2ED","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:07.643Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:55:16.011Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}