The editor's name evidently carried
great weight, even then. "The mere announcement, 'edited by Nathaniel
Hawthorne,'" said one of the critics, "is enough to entitle this book to
a place among the American classics." I dwell upon this, because an
attempt has been made to spread the idea that Hawthorne up to the time
of writing "The Scarlet Letter" was still obscure and discouraged, and
that only then, by a timely burst of appreciation in certain quarters,
was he rescued from oblivion. The truth is, that he had won himself an
excellent position, was popular, and was himself aware by this time of
the honor in which he was held. Even when he found that the small
profits of literature were forcing him into office again, he wrote to
Bridge: "It is rather singular that I should need an office: for
nobody's scribblings seem to be more acceptable than mine." The
explanation of this lies in the wretchedly dependent state of native
authorship at that time. The law of copyright had not then attained to
even the refined injustice which it has now reached. "I continue," he
wrote, in 1844, "to scribble tales with good success so far as regards
empty praise, some notes of which, pleasant enough to my ears, have come
from across the Atlantic. But the pamphlet and piratical system has so
broken up all regular literature, that I am forced to work hard for
small gains."
Besides the labors already enumerated, he edited for the "Democratic"
some "Papers of an old Dartmoor Prisoner" (probably some one of his
"sea-dog" acquaintance in Salem).
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