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

THE NEW NOVEL

267

a subject. Yet again, though so little encouraged or " backed,"
a subject after a fashion makes itself, even as it has made itself
in " The Old Wives' Tale " and in " Clayhanger," in " Sons
and Lovers," where, as we have hinted, any assistance rendered
us for a view of one most comfortably enjoys its absence, and in
Mr. Hugh Walpole's newest novel, where we wander scarcely
less with our hand in no guiding grasp, but where the author's
good disposition, as we feel it, to provide us with what we lack
if he only knew how, constitutes in itself such a pleading
liberality. We seem to see him in this spirit lay again and
again a flowered carpet for our steps. If we do not include
Mr. Compton Mackenzie to the same extent in our generalisation it is really because we note a difference in him, a difference
in favour of his care for the application. Preoccupations seem
at work in " Sinister Street," and withal in " Carnival," the
brush of which we in other quarters scarce even suspect and
at some of which it will presently be of profit to glance. " I
answer for it, you know," we seem at any rate to hear Mr.
Gilbert Cannan say with an admirably genuine young pessimism, " I answer for it that they were really like that, odd or
unpleasant or uncontributive, and therefore tiresome, as it may
strike you;" and the charm of Mr. Cannan, so far as up or
down the rank we so disengage a charm, is that we take him
at his word. His guarantee, his straight communication, of his
general truth is a value, and values are rare-the flood of
fiction is apparently capable of running hundreds of miles
without a single glint of one-and thus in default of satisfaction we get stopgaps and are thankful often under a genial
touch to get even so much. The value indeed is crude, it would
be quadrupled were it only wrought and shaped; yet it has
still the rude dignity that it counts to us for experience or at
least for what we call under our present pitch of sensibility
force of impression. The experience, we feel, is ever something to conclude upon, while the impression is content to wait;
to wait, say, in the spirit in which we must accept this younger
bustle if we accept it at all, the spirit of its serving as a rather
presumptuous lesson to us in patience. While we wait, again,