adds, "were it not for the influence of a student whom we have
dismissed from college." The biographer quotes a letter from Hawthorne
to one of his sisters, in which the writer says, in allusion to this
remark, that it is a great mistake to think that he has been led away
by the wicked ones. "I was fully as willing to play as the person he
suspects of having enticed me, and would have been influenced by no
one. I have a great mind to commence playing again, merely to show him
that I scorn to be seduced by another into anything wrong." There is
something in these few words that accords with the impression that the
observant reader of Hawthorne gathers of the personal character that
underlay his duskily-sportive imagination--an impression of simple
manliness and transparent honesty.

He appears to have been a fair scholar, but not a brilliant one; and
it is very probable that as the standard of scholarship at Bowdoin was
not high, he graduated none the less comfortably on this account. Mr.
Lathrop is able to testify to the fact, by no means a surprising one,
that he wrote verses at college, though the few stanzas that the
biographer quotes are not such as to make us especially regret that
his rhyming mood was a transient one.

"The ocean hath its silent caves,
Deep, quiet and alone.
Though there be fury on the waves,
Beneath them there is none."

That quatrain may suffice to decorate our page. And in connection with
his college days I may mention his first novel, a short romance
entitled _Fanshawe_, which was published in Boston in 1828, three
years after he graduated. It was probably also written after that