ole cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not
operate, for the fond fabulist, when judicious not less than fond, as
his best of determinants. That charming principle is always there, at
all events, to keep interest fresh: it is a principle, we remember,
essentially ravenous, without scruple and without mercy, appeased with
no cheap nor easy nourishment. It enjoys the costly sacrifice and
rejoices thereby in the very odour of difficulty--even as ogres, with
their "Fee-faw-fum!" rejoice in the smell of the blood of Englishmen.

Thus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so
speedy, definition of my gentleman's job--his coming out, all solemnly
appointed and deputed, to "save" Chad, and his then finding the young
man so disobligingly and, at first, so bewilderingly not lost that a
new issue altogether, in the connexion, prodigiously faces them, which
has to be dealt with in a new light--promised as many calls on
ingenuity and on the higher branches of the compositional art as one
could possibly desire. Again and yet again, as, from book to book, I
proceed with my survey, I find no source of interest equal to this
verification after the fact, as I may call it, and the more in detail
the better, of the scheme of consistency "gone in" for. As
always--since the charm never fails--the retracing of the process from
point to point brings back the old illusion. The old intentions bloom
again and flower--in spite of all the blossoms they were to have
dropped by the way. This is the charm, as I say, of adventure
TRANSPOSED--the thrilling ups and downs, the intricate ins and outs of
the compositional problem, made after such a fashion admirably
objective, becoming the question at issue and keeping the author's
heart in his mouth. Such an element, for instance, as his intention
that Mrs. Newsome, away off with her finger on the pulse of
Massachusetts, should yet be no less intensely than circuitously
present through the whole thing, should be no less felt as to be
reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest portrayal at
first hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good faith, I say,
once it's unmistakeably there, takes on again an actuality not too much
impaired by the comparative dimness of the particular success.
Cherished intention too inevitably acts and operates, in the book,
about fifty times as little as I had fondly dreamt it might; but that
scarce spoils for me the pleasure of re