In Hawthorne's preface to The House of the Seven Gables, what does he describe himself as?

Hawthorne describes
himself as an author who has opted "to keep undeviatingly within his immunities." By
this, he seems to mean that he has taken artistic license with some aspects of his tale in order
to present a "truth" of his choosing. Further, he says that he would be within his
rights to "manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen
and enrich the shadows of the picture" he paints with his words. He says that it is his
prerogative to "mingle the Marvelous" with the more mundane.

At
first, he appears to denigrate authors that might be tempted to manipulate their audience in
this way, but he concludes by suggesting that it should not be considered a literary crime to do
so. Hawthorne describes this text as "Romantic" in that it tries to connect a time
long ago with the very present.

Hawthorne also describes himself as an author
who "has provided himself with a moral": namely, the idea that the misdeeds committed
by one generation actually do survive into the future generations, becoming a source of mischief
and trouble for those descendants.

He cautions anyone in his audience about
reaping the financial rewards of their ancestors' sins because they will only find that it
causes them more harm than good. If the money is "ill-gotten" for whatever reason, it
can bring nothing but misery and mayhem. Hawthorne does not want to ram this theme through the
story as one might stick a "pin through a butterfly," killing it as it preserves it,
but he will risk it in order to achieve "artistic glory."