Notes on novelists, with some other notes, by Henry James.

THE NEW NOVEL

249

THE NEW NOVEL
I914
WE feel it not to be the paradox it may at the first blush seem
that the state of the novel in England at the present time is
virtually very much the state of criticism itself; and this moreover, at the risk perhaps of some added appearance of perverse
remark, by the very reason that we see criticism so much in
abeyance. So far as we miss it altogether how and why does
its " state "t matter, and why and how can it or should it, as an
absent force, enjoy a relation to that constant renewal of our
supply of fiction which is a present one so far as a force at all e
The relation is this, in the fewest words: that no equal outpouring of matter into the mould of literature, or what roughly
passes for such, has been noted to live its life and maintain its
flood, its level at least of quantity and mass, in such free and
easy independence of critical attention. It constitutes a condition and a perversity on the part of this element to remain
irresponsive before an appeal so vociferous at least and so incessant; therefore how can such a neglect of occasions, so
careless a habit in spite of marked openings, be better described
than as responsibility declined in the face of disorder ~ The
disorder thus determines the relation, from the moment we
feel that it might be less, that it might be different, that something in the way of an order even might be disengaged from it
and replace it; from the moment in fact that the low critical
pitch is logically reflected in the poetic or, less pedantically
speaking, the improvisational at large. The effect, if not the
prime office, of criticism is to make our absorption and our
enjoyment of the things that feed the mind as aware of itself
as possible, since that awareness quickens the mental demand,
which thus in turn wanders further and further for pasture.
This action on the part of the mind practically amounts to a
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