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Fanshawe By: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) |
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FANSHAWE BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
[Illustration] INTRODUCTORY NOTE. FANSHAWE. In 1828, three years after graduating from Bowdoin College, Hawthorne
published his first romance, "Fanshawe." It was issued at Boston by Marsh
& Capen, but made little or no impression on the public. The motto on the
title page of the original was from Southey: "Wilt thou go on with me?" Afterwards, when he had struck into the vein of fiction that came to be
known as distinctively his own, he attempted to suppress this youthful
work, and was so successful that he obtained and destroyed all but a few
of the copies then extant. Some twelve years after his death it was resolved, in view of the interest
manifested in tracing the growth of his genius from the beginning of his
activity as an author, to revive this youthful romance; and the reissue of
"Fanshawe" was then made. Little biographical interest attaches to it, beyond the fact that Mr.
Longfellow found in the descriptions and general atmosphere of the book a
decided suggestion of the situation of Bowdoin College, at Brunswick,
Maine, and the life there at the time when he and Hawthorne were both
undergraduates of that institution. 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. At no time, indeed, during an
existence of nearly a century, has it acquired a very extensive fame; and
circumstances, which need not be particularized, have, of late years,
involved it in a deeper obscurity. There are now few candidates for the
degrees that the college is authorized to bestow. On two of its annual
"Commencement Days," there has been a total deficiency of baccalaureates;
and the lawyers and divines, on whom doctorates in their respective
professions are gratuitously inflicted, are not accustomed to consider the
distinction as an honor. Yet the sons of this seminary have always
maintained their full share of reputation, in whatever paths of life they
trod. Few of them, perhaps, have been deep and finished scholars; but the
college has supplied what the emergencies of the country demanded a set
of men more useful in its present state, and whose deficiency in
theoretical knowledge has not been found to imply a want of practical
ability. The local situation of the college, so far secluded from the sight and
sound of the busy world, is peculiarly favorable to the moral, if not to
the literary, habits of its students; and this advantage probably caused
the founders to overlook the inconveniences that were inseparably
connected with it... Continue reading book >>
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