much more elaborate attempt to embody the idea in the volume which
I have entitled Doctor Grimshawe's Secret. All these, in short, are
studies of one subject, and they were all unsatisfactory to the author.
The true vein of which he had been in search was finally discovered in
The Dolliver Romance, but the author's death prevented its completion.

In this series of posthumous manuscripts there is a unique opportunity
for making a study of the esoteric qualities of my father's style and
methods, and on a future occasion I hope to present the result of my
investigations in this direction. There is, furthermore, in connection
with them, a mass of material of a yet more interesting and interior
character. While writing the Grimshawe, he was deeply perplexed by
certain details of the plot; the meaning of the Pensioner, and his
proper function in the story, was one of these stumbling-blocks. But
the prosperity of the tale depended directly upon the solution of this
problem. Constantly, therefore, in the midst of the composition, he
would break off and enter upon a wrestling-match with the difficulty.
These wrestling-matches are of an absorbing significance; they reveal to
us the very inmost movements of the author's mind. He tries, and
tries again, to get at the idea that continues to elude him; he forms
innumerable hypotheses; he sets forth on the widest excursions; he gets
out of patience with himself and with his Pensioner, and often damns
the latter in good set terms; but he will not give up the struggle; his
resolve to conquer is adamantine, and the conflict is always renewed.
And there it all stands in black and white; one of the most instructive
chapters in literary criticism in the world--the battle of a great
writer with himself. The final issue, after all, was hardly decisive,
for although a tolerable modus vivendi was reached and a truce declared,
it is evident that Hawthorne regarded the entire scheme of the story as
a mistake, and it is concluded in a perfunctory and indifferent manner.

But it may be doubted whether anything of this sort ever took place
in the making of any of the other stories. These depend but in a
subordinate degree upon what is called technically plot interest. The
author's method was to take a natural, even a familiar incident, and
to transmute it into immortal gold by simply elucidating its inner
spiritual significance. The Scarlet Letter is a mere plain story of love
and jealousy; there i