CHAPTER II.

EARLY MANHOOD.


The twelve years that followed were not the happiest or most brilliant
phase of Hawthorne's life; they strike me indeed as having had an
altogether peculiar dreariness. They had their uses; they were the
period of incubation of the admirable compositions which eventually
brought him reputation and prosperity. But of their actual aridity the
young man must have had a painful consciousness; he never lost the
impression of it. Mr. Lathrop quotes a phrase to this effect from one
of his letters, late in life. "I am disposed to thank God for the
gloom and chill of my early life, in the hope that my share of
adversity came then, when I bore it alone." And the same writer
alludes to a touching passage in the English Note-Books, which I shall
quote entire:--

"I think I have been happier this Christmas (1854) than ever
before--by my own fireside, and with my wife and children
about me--more content to enjoy what I have, less anxious
for anything beyond it, in this life. My early life was
perhaps a good preparation for the declining half of life;
it having been such a blank that any thereafter would
compare favourably with it. For a long, long while, I have
occasionally been visited with a singular dream; and I have
an impression that I have dreamed it ever since I have been