inextinguishable youth, of running waters, as applied to Mr. Henry

James's inspiration, may be dropped. In its volume and force the
body of his work may be compared rather to a majestic river. All

creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms
persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the

edification of mankind, pinned down by the conditions of its
existence to the earnestconsideration of the most insignificant

tides of reality.
Action in its essence, the creative art of a writer of fiction may

be compared to rescue work carried out in darkness against cross
gusts of wind swaying the action of a great multitude. It is

rescue work, this snatching of vanishing phases of turbulence,
disguised in fair words, out of the native obscurity into a light

where the struggling forms may be seen, seized upon, endowed with
the only possible form of permanence in this world of relative

values--the permanence of memory. And the multitude feels it
obscurely too; since the demand of the individual to the artist is,

in effect, the cry, "Take me out of myself!" meaning really, out of
my perishable activity into the light of imperishable

consciousness. But everything is relative, and the light of
consciousness is only enduring, merely the most enduring of the

things of this earth, imperishable only as against the short-lived
work of our industrious hands.

When the last aqueduct shall have crumbled to pieces, the last
airship fallen to the ground, the last blade of grass have died

upon a dying earth, man, indomitable by his training in resistance
to misery and pain, shall set this undiminished light of his eyes

against the feeble glow of the sun. The artisticfaculty, of which
each of us has a minute grain, may find its voice in some

individual of that last group, gifted with a power of expression
and courageous enough to interpret the ultimate experience of

mankind in terms of his temperament" target="_blank" title="n.气质；性格">temperament, in terms of art. I do not
mean to say that he would attempt to beguile the last moments of

humanity by an ingenious tale. It would be too much to expect--
from humanity. I doubt the heroism of the hearers. As to the

heroism of the artist, no doubt is necessary. There would be on
his part no heroism. The artist in his calling of interpreter

creates (the clearest form of demonstration) because he must. He
is so much of a voice that, for him, silence is like death; and the

postulate was, that there is a group alive, clustered on his
threshold to watch the last flicker of light on a black sky, to

hear the last word uttered in the stilled workshop of the earth.
It is safe to affirm that, if anybody, it will be the imaginative

man who would be moved to speak on the eve of that day without to-
morrow--whether in austereexhortation or in a phrase of sardonic

comment, who can guess?
For my own part, from a short and cursory acquaintance with my

kind, I am inclined to think that the last utterance will
formulate, strange as it may appear, some hope now to us utterly

inconceivable. For mankind is delightful in its pride, its
assurance, and its indomitable tenacity. It will sleep on the

battlefield among its own dead, in the manner of an army having won
a barrenvictory. It will not know when it is beaten. And perhaps

it is right in that quality. The victories are not, perhaps, so
barren as it may appear from a purely strategical, utilitarian

point of view. Mr. Henry James seems to hold that belief. Nobody
has rendered better, perhaps, the tenacity of temper, or known how

to drape the robe of spiritual honour about the drooping form of a
victor in a barrenstrife. And the honour is always well won; for

the struggles Mr. Henry James chronicles with such subtle and
direct insight are, though only personal contests, desperate in

their silence, none the less heroic (in the modern sense) for the
absence of shouted watchwords, clash of arms and sound of trumpets.

Those are adventures in which only choice souls are ever involved.
And Mr. Henry James records them with a fearless and insistent

fidelity to the PERIPETIES of the contest, and the feelings of the
combatants.

The fiercest excitements of a romance DE CAPE ET D'EPEE, the
romance of yard-arm and boarding pike so dear to youth, whose

knowledge of action (as of other things) is imperfect and limited,
are matched, for the quickening of our maturer years, by the tasks

set, by the difficulties presented, to the sense of truth, of
necessity--before all, of conduct--of Mr. Henry James's men and

women. His mankind is delightful. It is delightful in its
tenacity; it refuses to own itself beaten; it will sleep on the

battlefield. These warlike images come by themselves under the
pen; since from the duality of man's nature and the competition of

individuals, the life-history of the earth must in the last
instance be a history of a really very relentlesswarfare. Neither

his fellows, nor his gods, nor his passions will leave a man alone.
In virtue of these allies and enemies, he holds his precarious

dominion, he possesses his fleetingsignificance; and it is this
relation in all its manifestations, great and little, superficial

or profound, and this relation alone, that is commented upon,
interpreted, demonstrated by the art of the novelist in the only

possible way in which the task can be performed: by the
independent creation of circumstance and character, achieved

against all the difficulties of expression, in an imaginative
effort finding its inspiration from the reality of forms and

sensations. That a sacrifice must be made, that something has to
be given up, is the truth engraved in the innermost recesses of the

fair temple built for our edification by the masters of fiction.
There is no other secret behind the curtain. All adventure, all

love, every success is resumed in the supremeenergy of an act of
renunciation. It is the uttermost limit of our power; it is the

most potent and effective force at our disposal on which rest the
labours of a solitary man in his study, the rock on which have been

built commonwealths whose might casts a dwarfing shadow upon two
oceans. Like a natural force which is obscured as much as

illuminated by the multiplicity of phenomena, the power of
renunciation is obscured by the mass of weaknesses, vacillations,

secondary motives and false steps and compromises which make up the
sum of our activity. But no man or woman worthy of the name can

pretend to anything more, to anything greater. And Mr. Henry
James's men and women are worthy of the name, within the limits his

art, so clear, so sure of itself, has drawn round their activities.
He would be the last to claim for them Titanic proportions. The

earth itself has grown smaller in the course of ages. But in every
sphere of human perplexities and emotions, there are more

greatnesses than one--not counting here the greatness of the artist
himself. Wherever he stands, at the beginning or the end of

things, a man has to sacrifice his gods to his passions, or his
passions to his gods. That is the problem, great enough, in all

truth, if approached in the spirit of sincerity and knowledge.
In one of his critical studies, published some fifteen years ago,

Mr. Henry James claims for the novelist the standing of the
historian as the only adequate one, as for himself and before his

audience. I think that the claim cannot be contested, and that the
position is unassailable. Fiction is history, human history, or it

is nothing. But it is also more than that; it stands on firmer
ground, being based on the reality of forms and the observation of

social phenomena, whereas history is based on documents, and the
reading of print and handwriting--on second-handimpression. Thus

fiction is nearer truth. But let that pass. A historian may be an
artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the preserver, the

keeper, the expounder, of human experience. As is meet for a man
of his descent and tradition, Mr. Henry James is the historian of

fine consciences.
Of course, this is a general statement; but I don't think its truth

will be, or can be questioned. Its fault is that it leaves so much
out; and, besides, Mr. Henry James is much too considerable to be

put into the nutshell of a phrase. The fact remains that he has
made his choice, and that his choice is justified up to the hilt by

the success of his art. He has taken for himself the greater part.
The range of a fine conscience covers more good and evil than the

range of conscience which may be called, roughly, not fine; a
conscience, less troubled by the nice discrimination of shades of

conduct. A fine conscience is more concerned with essentials; its
triumphs are more perfect, if less profitable, in a worldly sense.

There is, in short, more truth in its working for a historian to
detect and to show. It is a thing of infinitecomplication and

suggestion. None of these escapes the art of Mr. Henry James. He
has mastered the country, his domain, not wild indeed, but full of

romantic glimpses, of deep shadows and sunny places. There are no
secrets left within his range. He has disclosed them as they

should be disclosed--that is, beautifully. And, indeed, ugliness
has but little place in this world of his creation. Yet, it is

always felt in the truthfulness of his art; it is there, it
surrounds the scene, it presses close upon it. It is made visible,