lderly
composer was working at his posthumous quartets, and offered him a
commission for a work in the style of his jejune septet. Beethoven drove
the Colonel out of the house with objurgation. I think that was uncivil.
There is a time for the septet, and a time for the posthumous quartets.
It is true that if a man called on me now and asked me to write
something like The Irrational Knot I should have to exercise great
self-control. But there are people who read Man and Superman, and then
tell me (actually to my face) that I have never done anything so good as
Cashel Byron's Profession. After this, there may be a public for even
The Irrational Knot; so let it go.

LONDON, _May_ 26, 1905.

[Footnote A: James, having read the above in proof, now protests he
never called me a peasant lad: that being a decoration by the
sub-editor. The expression he used was "a poor lad." This is what James
calls tact. After all, there is something pastoral, elemental, well
aerated, about a peasant lad. But a mere poor lad! really, James,
_really_--!!!]

P.S.--Since writing the above I have looked through the proof-sheets of
this book, and found, with some access of respect for my youth, that it
is a fiction of the first order. By this I do not mean that it is a
masterpiece in that order, or even a pleasant example of it, but simply
that, such as it is, it is one of those fictions in which the morality
is original and not readymade. Now this quality is the true diagnostic
of the first order in literature, and indeed in all the arts, including
the art of life. It is, for example, the distinction that sets
Shakespear's Hamlet above his other plays, and that sets Ibsen's work as
a whole above Shakespear's work as a whole. Shakespear's morality is a
mere reach-me-down; and because Hamlet does not feel comfortable in it,
and struggles against the misfit, he suggests something better, futile
as his struggle is, and incompetent as Shakespear shews himself in his
effort to think out the revolt of his feeling against readymade
morality. Ibsen's morality is original all through: he knows well that
the men in the street have no use for principles, because they can
neither understand nor apply them; and that what they can understand and
apply are arbitrary rules of conduct, often frightfully destructive and
inhuman, but at least definite rules enabling the common stupid man to
know where he stands and what he may do and not do without getting into