Professor Packard, of Bowdoin College, who was then in charge of the study
of English literature, and has survived both of his illustrious pupils,
recalls Hawthorne's exceptional excellence in the composition of English,
even at that date (1821-1825); and it is not impossible that Hawthorne
intended, through the character of Fanshawe, to present some faint
projection of what he then thought might be his own obscure history. Even
while he was in college, however, and meditating perhaps the slender
elements of this first romance, his fellow-student Horatio Bridge, whose
"Journal of an African Cruiser" he afterwards edited, recognized in him
the possibilities of a writer of fiction--a fact to which Hawthorne
alludes in the dedicatory Preface to "The Snow-Image."
G. P. L.
FANSHAWE
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
"Our court shall be a little Academe."--SHAKESPEARE.
In an ancient though not very populous settlement, in a retired corner of
one of the New England States, arise the walls of a seminary of learning,
which, for the convenience of a name, shall be entitled "Harley College."
This institution, though the number of its years is inconsiderable
compared with the hoar antiquity of its European sisters, is not without
some claims to reverence on the score of age; for an almost countless
multitude of rivals, by many of which its reputation has been eclipsed,
have sprung up since its foundation.
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