would break off and enter upon a wrestling-match with the difficulty.
These wrestling-matches are of an absorbing significance; they reveal
to us the very inmost movements of the author's mind. He tries, and
tries again, to get at the idea that continues to elude him; he forms
innumerable hypotheses; he sets forth on the widest excursions; he
gets out of patience with himself and with his Pensioner, and often
damns the latter in good set terms; but he will not give up the
struggle; his resolve to conquer is adamantine, and the conflict is
always renewed. And there it all stands in black and white; one of
the most instructive chapters in literary criticism in the world--the
battle of a great writer with himself. The final issue, after all,
was hardly decisive, for although a tolerable modus vivendi was
reached and a truce declared, it is evident that Hawthorne regarded
the entire scheme of the story as a mistake, and it is concluded in a
perfunctory and indifferent manner.

But it may be doubted whether anything of this sort ever took place in
the making of any of the other stories. These depend but in a
subordinate degree upon what is called technically plot interest. The
author's method was to take a natural, even a familiar incident, and
to transmute it into immortal gold by simply elucidating its inner
spiritual significance. The Scarlet Letter is a mere plain story of
love and jealousy; there is no serious attempt to hide the identity of
Roger Chillingworth or the guilt of the minister. The only surprise in
The House of the Seven Gables consists in the revelation of the fact
that Maule reappears after several generations in the person of his
modern descendant. The structure of The Blithedale Romance appears
more complicated; but that is mainly because, in a masterly manner,
the author keeps the structural lines out of sight and concentrates
attention upon the interplay of character. The scaffolding upon which