failure of the earlier edition to produce a sensation (it had been
published in two volumes, at four years apart), may appear to
contradict my assertion that, though he was not recognised
immediately, he was recognised betimes. In 1850, when _The Scarlet
Letter_ appeared, Hawthorne was forty-six years old, and this may
certainly seem a long-delayed popularity. On the other hand, it must
be remembered that he had not appealed to the world with any great
energy. _The Twice-Told Tales_, charming as they are, do not
constitute a very massive literary pedestal. As soon as the author,
resorting to severer measures, put forth _The Scarlet Letter_, the
public ear was touched and charmed, and after that it was held to the
end. "Well it might have been!" the reader will exclaim. "But what a
grievous pity that the dulness of this same organ should have operated
so long as a deterrent, and by making Hawthorne wait till he was
nearly fifty to publish his first novel, have abbreviated by so much
his productive career!" The truth is, he cannot have been in any very
high degree ambitious; he was not an abundant producer, and there was
manifestly a strain of generous indolence in his composition. There
was a loveable want of eagerness about him. Let the encouragement
offered have been what it might, he had waited till he was lapsing
from middle-life to strike his first noticeable blow; and during the
last ten years of his career he put forth but two complete works, and
the fragment of a third.

It is very true, however, that during this early period he seems to
have been very glad to do whatever came to his hand. Certain of his
tales found their way into one of the annuals of the time, a
publication endowed with the brilliant title of _The Boston Token and
Atlantic Souvenir_. The editor of this graceful repository was S. G.
Goodrich, a gentleman who, I suppose, may be called one of the