come over against the mouth of the burning pit, one of the wicked ones got behind him and stepped up softly to him, and, whisperingly, suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had proceeded from his own mind." I need not enlarge upon the similar drift of these two extracts; still less mark the matured, detailed, and vividly human and dramatic superiority of Hawthorne's use of the element common to both. For other reading in early boyhood he had Spenser (it is said that the first book which he bought with his own money was "The Faery Queen," for which he kept a fondness all his life), Froissart's "Chronicles," and Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion." The incident of Dr. Johnson's penance in Uttoxeter Market dwelt so intimately in Hawthorne's mind (he has treated it in the "True Stories," and touches very tenderly upon it in "Our Old Home," where he says that he "has always been profoundly impressed" by it), that I fancy a childish impression must have endeared it to him; and Boswell may have been one of his acquisitions at this time. Perhaps Dr. Worcester made the book known to him; and he would not be at a loss to find endless entertainment there. It was in November, 1813, that the accident at ball disabled him. In June of the same year an event had taken place which must have entered strongly into his heart, as into that of many another Salem boy. Young Lawrence, of the American navy,--who had won honors for himself at Tripoli and in the then prevailing war with Great Britain,--had just been promoted, for gallant achievements off the coast of Brazil, to a captaincy, and put in command of the frigate "Chesapeake," at Boston. A British frigate, the "Shannon," had been cruising for some time in the neighborhood, seeking an encounter with the "Chesapeake," and the valiant Lawrence felt compelled to go out and meet her, though he had only just assumed command, had had no time to discipline his crew (some of whom were disaffected), and was without the proper complement of commissioned officers. Americans know the result; how the "Chesapeake" was shattered and taken in a fifteen minutes' fight off Marblehead, and how Lawrence fell with a mortal wound, uttering those unforgotten words, "Don't give up the ship." The battle was watched by crowds of people from Salem, who swarmed upon the hillsides to get a glimpse of the result.