It is in the impartial
practice of life, if anywhere, that the promise of perfection for his art
can be found, rather than in the absurd formulas trying to prescribe this
or that particular method of technique or conception. Let him mature the
strength of his imagination amongst the things of this earth, which it is
his business to cherish and know, and refrain from calling down his
inspiration ready-made from some heaven of perfections of which he knows
nothing. And I would not grudge him the proud illusion that will come
sometimes to a writer: the illusion that his achievement has almost
equalled the greatness of his dream. For what else could give him the
serenity and the force to hug to his breast as a thing delightful and
human, the virtue, the rectitude and sagacity of his own City, declaring
with simple eloquence through the mouth of a Conscript Father: "I have
not read this author's books, and if I have read them I have forgotten
. . ."
HENRY JAMES--AN APPRECIATION--1905
The critical faculty hesitates before the magnitude of Mr. Henry James's
work. His books stand on my shelves in a place whose accessibility
proclaims the habit of frequent communion.
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