Cooper achieved his greatest
success in presenting the Indians and the stalwart figure of the pioneer
against the mysterious forest as a background. Hawthorne occasionally
availed himself of the older romantic materials, as in _The Snow Image_,
Rappaccini's Daughter_, and _Young Goodman Brown_, but he was more often
attracted by the newer elements, the strange and the unusual, as in _The
Scarlet Letter_ and _The House of the Seven Gables_. Poe followed with a
combination of all the romantic materials,--the supernatural, the
terrible, and the unusual. Bret Harte applied his magnifying glass to
unusual crises in the strange lives of the western pioneers. By a skillful
use of light and shadow, Mark Twain heightened the effect of the strange
scenes through which he passed in his young days. Almost all the southern
writers, from Simms to Cable and Harris, loved to throw strong lights on
unusual characters and romantic situations.
The question which the romanticists, or idealists, as they were often
called in later times, had accustomed themselves to ask, was, "Have these
characters or incidents the unusual beauty or ugliness or goodness
necessary to make an impression and to hold the attention?" The masters of
the new eastern school of fiction took a different view, and asked, "Is our
matter absolutely true to life?"
REALISM IN FICTION.
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