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

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NOTES ON NOVELISTS

practice appears bent on showing us all it can do and how far
or to what appointed shores, what waiting havens and inviting
inlets, the current that is mainly made a current by looseness,
by want of observable direction, shall succeed in carrying it.
We respond to any sign of an intelligent view or even of a
lively instinct-which is why we give the appearance so noted
the benefit of every presumption as to its life and health. It
may be that the dim sense is livelier than the presentable reason,
but even that is no graceless fact for us, especially when the
keenness of young curiosity and energy is betrayed in its pace,
and betrayed, for that matter, in no small abundance and
variety. The new or at least the young novel is up and doing,
clearly, with the best faith and the highest spirits in the world;
if we but extend a little our measure of youth indeed, as we
are happily more and more disposed to, we may speak of it as
already chin-deep in trophies. The men who are not so young
as the youngest were but the other day very little older than
these: Mr. Joseph Conrad, Mr. Maurice Hewlett and Mr.
Galsworthy, Mr. H. G. Wells and Mr. Arnold Bennett, have
not quite perhaps the early bloom of Mr. Hugh Walpole, Mr.
Gilbert Cannan, Mr. Compton Mackenzie and Mr. D. H.
Lawrence, but the spring unrelaxed is still, to our perception,
in their step, and we see two or three of them sufficiently
related to the still newer generation in a quasi-parental way
to make our whole enumeration as illustrational as we need it.
Mr. Wells and Mr. Arnold Bennett have their strongest mark,
the aspect by which we may most classify them, in commoneven if their three named contemporaries are doubtless most
interesting in one of the connections we are not now seeking
to make. The author of " Tono-Bungay " and of " The New
Machiavelli," and the author of " The Old Wives' Tale " and
of " Clayhanger," have practically launched the boat in which
we admire the fresh play of oar of the author of " The Duchess
of Wrexe," and the documented aspect exhibited successively
by " Round the Comer," by " Carnival t" and " Sinister
Street," and even by " Sons and Lovers " (however much we
may find Mr. Lawrence, we confess, hang in the dusty rear).