l
eld and feverish haste and total lack of literary training, as against
the romantic instinct of the lady who created the Rev. Charles Hailing?
'THE GIFT OF GIFTS was acclaimed as a masterpiece by all the first-class
critics.' Also, it very soon 'brought in' ten times as much money as
was needed to pay off the debts of its author's eldest son. Nor, though
Charles Hailing died some months later, are we told that he died from
the strain of composition. We are left merely to rejoice at knowing he
knew at the last 'that his whole family was provided for.'

I wonder why it is that, whilst these Charles Hailings and Aylmer Deanes
delightfully abound in the lower reaches of English fiction, we have so
seldom found in the work of our great novelists anything at all about
the writing of a great book. It is true, of course, that our great
novelists have never had for the idea of literature itself that passion
which has always burned in the great French ones. Their own art has
never seemed to them the most important and interesting thing in life.
Also it is true that they have had other occupations--fox-hunting,
preaching, editing magazines, what not. Yet to them literature must,
as their own main task, have had a peculiar interest and importance. No
fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil
and doubt. It is nonsense to imagine that our great novelists have
just forged ahead or ambled along, reaching their goal, in the good old
English fashion, by sheer divination of the way to it. A fine book, with
all that goes to the making of it, is as fine a theme as a novelist
can have. But it is a part of English hypocrisy--or, let it be more
politely said, English reserve--that, whilst we are fluent enough in
grumbling about small inconveniences, we insist on making light of
any great difficulties or griefs that may beset us. And just there, I
suppose, is the reason why our great novelists have shunned great books
as subject-matter. It is fortunate for us (jarring though it is to our
patriotic sense) that Mr. Henry James was not born an Englishman, that
he was born of a race of specialists--men who are impenitent specialists
in whatever they take up, be it sport, commerce, politics, anything. And
it is fortunate for us that in Paris, and in the straitest literary sect
there, his method began to form itself, and the art of prose fiction
became to him a religion. In that art he finds as much inspiration as
Swin