“Whipple’s notices have done more than pleased me, for they have helped me to see my book.  Much of the censure I recognize as just; I wish I could feel the praise to be so fully deserved.  Being better (which I insist it is) than ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ I have never expected it to be so popular (this steel pen makes me write awfully). ——­ ——­ Esq., of Boston, has written to me, complaining that I have made his grandfather infamous!  It seems there was actually a Pyncheon (or Pynchon, as he spells it) family resident in Salem, and that their representative, at the period of the Revolution, was a certain Judge Pynchon, a Tory and a refugee.  This was Mr. ——­’s grandfather, and (at least, so he dutifully describes him) the most exemplary old gentleman in the world.  There are several touches in my account of the Pyncheons which, he says, make it probable that I had this actual family in my eye, and he considers himself infinitely wronged and aggrieved, and thinks it monstrous that the ‘virtuous dead’ cannot be suffered to rest quietly in their graves.  He further complains that I speak disrespectfully of the ——­’s in Grandfather’s Chair.  He writes more in sorrow than in anger, though there is quite enough of the latter quality to give piquancy to his epistle.  The joke of the matter is, that I never heard of his grandfather, nor knew that any Pyncheons had ever lived in Salem, but took the name because it suited the tone of my book, and was as much my property, for fictitious purposes, as that of Smith.  I have pacified him by a very polite and gentlemanly letter, and if ever you publish any more of the Seven Gables, I should like to write a brief preface, expressive of my anguish for this unintentional wrong, and making the best reparation possible else these wretched old Pyncheons will have no peace in the other world, nor in this.  Furthermore, there is a Rev. Mr. ——­, resident within four miles of me, and a cousin of Mr. ——­, who states that he likewise is highly indignant.  Who would have dreamed of claimants starting up for such an inheritance as the House of the Seven Gables!

“I mean, to write, within six weeks or two months next ensuing, a book of stories made up of classical myths.  The subjects are:  The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch, Pandora’s Box, The Adventure of Hercules in quest of the Golden Apples, Bellerophon and the Chimera, Baucis and Philemon, Perseus and Medusa; these, I think, will be enough to make up a volume.  As a framework, I shall have a young college student telling these stories to his cousins and brothers and sisters, during his vacations, sometimes at the fireside, sometimes in the woods and dells.  Unless I greatly mistake, these old fictions will work up admirably for the purpose; and I shall aim at substituting a tone in some degree Gothic or romantic, or any such tone as may best please myself, instead of the classic coldness, which is as repellant as the touch of marble.