_Twice-Told Tales_ and in the second collection, _Mosses from an Old
Manse_, 1846, are more openly allegorical than his later work. Thus
the _Minister's Black Veil_ is a sort of anticipation of Arthur
Dimmesdale in the _Scarlet Letter_. From 1846 to 1849 Hawthorne held
the position of surveyor of the Custom House of Salem. In the preface
to the _Scarlet Letter_ he sketched some of the government officials
with whom this office had brought him into contact in a way that gave
some offense to the friends of the victims and a great deal of
amusement to the public. Hawthorne's humor was quiet and fine, like
Irving's, but less genial and with a more satiric edge to it. The book
last named was written at Salem and published in 1850, just before its
author's removal to Lenox, now a sort of inland Newport, but then an
unfashionable resort among the Berkshire hills. Whatever obscurity may
have hung over Hawthorne hitherto was effectually dissolved by this
powerful tale, which was as vivid in coloring as the implication of its
title. Hawthorne chose for his background the somber life of the early
settlers of New England. Ho had always been drawn toward this part of
American history, and in _Twice-Told Tales_ had given some
illustrations of it in _Endicott's Red Cross_ and _Legends of the
Province House_. Against this dark foil moved in strong relief the
figures of Hester Prynne, the woman taken in adultery; her paramour,
the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale; her husband, old Roger Chillingworth; and
her illegitimate child. In tragic power, in its grasp of the
elementary passions of human nature and its deep and subtle insight
into the inmost secrets of the heart, this is Hawthorne's greatest
book. He never crowded his canvas with figures. In the _Blithedale
Romance_ and the _Marble Faun_ there is the same _parti carré_ or group
of four characters. In the _House of the Seven Gables_ there are five.
The last mentioned of these, published in 1852, was of a more subdued
intensity than the _Scarlet Letter_, but equally original, and, upon