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

CHARLES ELIOT NORTON

331

where the streams already flowed and the soil had already
borne an abiding fruit.
He had come to Italy and to England early in life; he had
repeated his visits to these countries with infinite relish and as
often as possible-though never, as a good New Englander,
without certain firm and, where they had to be, invidious discriminations; he was attached to them by a hundred intellectual and social ties; but he had been from the first incapable
of doubting that the best activity and the liveliest interest lay
where it always, given certain conditions, lies in America-in a
measure of response to intellectual and esthetic " missionary t"
labour more traceable and appreciable, more distinguishably
attested and registered, more directly and artlessly grateful, in
a word, than in the thicker elemental mixture of Europe. On
the whole side of taste and association his choice was thus betimes for conscious exile and for a considerably, though doubtless not altogether irremediably, deprived state; but it was at
the same time for a freedom of exhortation and a play of ironic
comment less restricted, after all, in the clear American air,
than on ground more pretentiously enclosed-less restricted,
that is, from the moment personal conviction might be absolute
and indifference to every form of provincial bewilderment
equally patient and complete. The incontestable crdnerie of his
attitude-a thing that one felt to be a high form of sincerityalways at last won success; the respect and affection that more
and more surrounded him and that finally made his situation
sole of its kind and pre-eminently happy, attest together the
interesting truth that unqualified confidence in oneTs errand,
the serenest acceptance of a responsibility and the exercise of
a critical authority never too apt to return critically upon itself,
only require for beneficent action that they be attended at once
with a fund of illustration and a fund of good humour.
Professor Norton's pre-eminent work in the interpretation
of Dante-by which I mean his translation, text and notes, of
the " Divine Comedy " and the " New Life," an achievement
of infinite piety, patience and resource; his admirable volume