Page:Nathaniel Hawthorne (Woodbury).djvu/145

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like a prophet come back from the dead to deliver the people. The composition, the development, the focusing are in Scott's manner; it is from him that this dramatic presentation of history in a single scene, as here, or by a succession of scenes carrying on a story, is derived; partly pictorial, partly theatrical, always dramatic, this is the method which Hawthorne applied, the art of "The Author of Waverley," who was its great master in English fiction. "Endicott and the Red Cross" is a small study of the same sort; and in that sketch, and elsewhere, it is noticeable that in bearing and language the characters resemble the Covenanters, as Scott fixed the type in literature, more than they recall the real New England Puritans. Hawthorne's interest in colonial history found its most complete early expression in the "Tales of the Province House," in which he for once succeeded in grouping a series in a natural and effective way so as to make a larger whole. "Sir William Howe's Masquerade" is told by a succession of scenes, quite in the manner described, and the suggestion of mystery, the supernatural intention felt in the incident though not explicitly present in the fact, which in this story attends the last descending figure of the line of royal governors, as it also attended the figure of the Gray Champion, is also in Scott's manner, though more subtly effected. In "Edward Randolph's Portrait" the appearance of the picture on the faded canvas is mechanically accounted for, but at the