in the preface to "The Scarlet
Letter." The room could be filled with the ghosts of old dwellers in it;
faint, yet distinct, all the life that had passed through it came back,
and spoke with him, and inspired him. He kept his eyes on these figures,
tangled in some rare knot of Fate, and of Desire: these he painted, not
attending much to the bustle of existence that surrounded them, not
permitting superfluous elements to mingle with them, and to distract him.

The method of Hawthorne can be more easily traced than that of most
artists as great as himself. Pope's brilliant passages and disconnected
trains of thought are explained when we remember that "paper-sparing," as
he says, he wrote two, or four, or six couplets on odd, stray bits of
casual writing material. These he had to join together, somehow, and
between his "Orient Pearls at Random Strung" there is occasionally "too
much string," as Dickens once said on another opportunity. Hawthorne's
method is revealed in his published note-books. In these he jotted the
germ of an idea, the first notion of a singular, perhaps supernatural
moral situation. Many of these he never used at all, on others he would
dream, and dream, till the persons in the situations became characters,
and the thing was evolved into a story. Thus he may have invented such a
problem as this: "The effect of a great, sudden sin on a simple and
joyous nature," and thence came all the substance of "The Marble Faun"
("Transformation"). The original and germinal idea would naturally
divide itself into another, as the protozoa reproduce themselves. Another
idea was the effect of nearness to the great crime on a pure and spotless
nature: hence the character of Hilda. In the preface to "The Scarlet
Letter," Hawthorne shows us how he tried, by reflection and dream, to
warm the vague persons of the first mere notion or hint into such life as
characters in romance inherit. While he was in the Civil Service of his
country, in the Custom House at Salem, he could not do this; he needed
freedom. He was dismissed by political opponents from office, and
instantly he was himself again, and wrote his most popular and, perhaps,
his best book. The evolution of his work was from the prime notion
(which he confessed that he loved best when "strange") to the short
story, and thence to the full and rounded novel. All his work was
leisurely. All his language was picked, though not with affectation. He
did not