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

38

NOTES ON NOVELISTS

was by that time not to recognise in it the mere triumph of a
mechanical art, a "receipt" applied with the skill of long
practice, but to do much more than this-that is really to
give a name to the particular shade of blindness that could
constitute a trap for so great an artistic intelligence. The presumptuous volume, without sweetness, without antecedents,
superficial and violent, has the minimum instead of the maximum of value; so that it betrayed or " gave away " just in this
degree the state of mind on the author's part responsible for its
inflated hollowness. To put one's finger on the state of mind was
to find out accordingly what was, as we say, the matter with him.
It seemed to me, I remember, that I found out as never
before when, in its turn, " Fecondit " began the work of
crowning the edifice. " Fecondit " is physiological, whereas
"Rome " is not, whereas " Verit " likewise is not; yet these
three productions joined hands at a given moment to fit into the
lock of the mystery the key of my meditation. They came to
the same thing, to the extent of permitting me to read into them
together the same precious lesson. This lesson may not, barely
stated, sound remarkable; yet without being in possession of
it I should have ventured on none of these remarks " The
matter with" Zola then, so far as it goes, was that, as the
imagination of the artist is in the best cases not only clarified but
intensified by his equal possession of Taste (deserving here if
ever the old-fashioned honour of a capital), so when he has
lucklessly never inherited that auxiliary blessing the imagination itself inevitably breaks down as a consequence. There is
simply no limit, in fine, to the misfortune of being tasteless; it
does not merely disfigure the surface and the fringe of your
performance-it eats back into the very heart and enfeebles the
sources of life. When you have no taste you have no discretion,
which is the conscience of taste, and when you have no discretion you perpetrate books like "Rome," which are without
intellectual modesty, books like " Fecondite," which are without a sense of the ridiculous, books like " Verite," which are
without the finer vision of human experience.