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Hawthorne (NATHANIEL an years old)

NATHANIEL, an years old, his father, a sea-captain, died in a distant land, and from that time his mother lived in complete seclusion. Thus home influences as well as an inborn disinclination for action made Hawthorne something of a recluse. The happiest time of his childhood was a period spent on Lake Sebago, in Maine, from which he was sent back to Salem to complete his preparation for college. At health failed rapidly after his return to Concord in 1860, and he died May 19, 1864.

Besides his tales and Hawthorne left voluminous note-books, romances, written in America and abroad, which constitute a record of his reading and meditation. These afford valuable clues to his view of life, show the germs out of which his masterpieces grew, and illus- 1 !

HAY trate the way in which he used simple incidents as symbols of truth. His material comes most often from legends and incidents of colonial New England.

In the "Twice-Told Tales" we find simple descriptive sketches, which have little narrative but suggest types and symbols of experience, as yet without interpretation. We also find stories and legends of early colonial history, without significance except as simple narratives, but es but giving promise of the deeper study of Puritan character that was to follow.

A third group is made up of tales, mainly legendary, which have symbolic or allegorical meaning, such "The Minister's Black Veil," "The Wedding Knell," "The Lily's Quest." The pursuit of happiness is an illusion; there is a veil that separates one personality from another. In such a tale as "The Maypole of Merrymount," two racial ideals, the pagan tradition of old England and the Puritan tradition, are brought into collision, the more dramatic because the setting is the primeval forest of New England, with an untamed nature, the beasts of the forest, and the Indians as a background. as Hawthorne's work suggests the allegory of medieval and Elizabethan times. He uses symbols constantly as a means to perception of spiritual truth.

The riddle of the soul's growth is Lis theme, in "The Minister's Black Veil" and in the series of the great romances, -in Dimmesdale, in Pyncheon, in the Faun. These symbols he worked out with exquisite skill. He described himself as a man sitting by the wayside of life and looking upon it as if under enchantment. Sitting thus, he observes the pilgrimage of the life of man and paints it for us with a careful realism that is also conscious of the spiritual truth which these realities reveal to the seeing eye.