"I shall return home in three weeks from next Wednesday."
Here the dim record of his collegiate days ceases, leaving him on the
threshold of the world, a fair scholar, a budding genius, strong, young,
and true, yet hesitant; halting for years, as if gathering all his
shy-souled courage, before entering that arena that was to echo such
long applause of him. Yet doubt not that the purpose to do some great
thing was already a part of his life, together with that longing for
recognition which every young poet, in the sweet uncertain certainty of
beginning, feels that he must some day deserve. Were not these words,
which I find in "Fanshawe," drawn from the author's knowledge of his own
heart?
"He called up the years that, even at his early age, he had spent in
solitary study,--in conversation with the dead,--while he had scorned to
mingle with the living world, or to be actuated by any of its motives.
Fanshawe had hitherto deemed himself unconnected with the world,
unconcerned in its feelings, and uninfluenced by it in any of his
pursuits. In this respect he probably deceived himself. If his inmost
heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that
dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a
thousand realities."
Already, while at Bowdoin, Hawthorne had begun to write verses, and
perhaps to print some of them anonymously in the newspapers. From some
forgotten poem of his on the sea, a single stanza has drifted down to
us, like a bit of beach-wood, the relic of a bark too frail to last.
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