ABSTRACT
‘The Artist of the Beautiful’ was first published in the June 1844 issue of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review and then collected in Mosses from an Old Manse. Nathaniel Hawthorne includes experimental scientists in a number of his works, including the pursuit of the elixir of life in ‘Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,’ genetic transformation in ‘Rapaccini’s Daughter’ and the cosmetic use of poison in ‘The Birthmark.’ These scientists are usually presented ironically as deluded and self-destructive. In his resume of fictional subjects, ‘The Hall of Fantasy’, he comments on ‘inventors of fantastic machines.’ An elderly man, with his pretty daughter on his arm, was passing along the street, and emerged from the gloom of the cloudy evening into the light that fell across the pavement from the window of a small shop.
