angeais" in terms of strong
if somewhat swollen passion, cuts the knot by the derangement of the
hero's clock. Such personages and incidents belong to the novel of
character; they are out of place in the high society of the passions;
when the passions are introduced in art at their full height, we look to
see them, not baffled and impotently striving, as in life, but towering
above circumstance and acting substitutes for fate.

And here I can imagine Mr. James, with his lucid sense, to intervene. To
much of what I have said he would apparently demur; in much he would,
somewhat impatiently, acquiesce. It may be true; but it is not what he
desired to say or to hear said. He spoke of the finished picture and its
worth when done; I, of the brushes, the palette, and the north light. He
uttered his views in the tone and for the ear of good society; I, with
the emphasis and technicalities of the obtrusive student. But the point,
I may reply, is not merely to amuse the public, but to offer helpful
advice to the young writer. And the young writer will not so much be
helped by genial pictures of what an art may aspire to at its highest,
as by a true idea of what it must be on the lowest terms. The best that
we can say to him is this: Let him choose a motive, whether of character
or passion; carefully construct his plot so that every incident is an
illustration of the motive, and every property employed shall bear to it
a near relation of congruity or contrast; avoid a sub-plot, unless, as
sometimes in Shakespeare, the sub-plot be a reversion or complement of
the main intrigue; suffer not his style to flag below the level of the
argument; pitch the key of conversation, not with any thought of how men
talk in parlours, but with a single eye to the degree of passion he may
be called on to express; and allow neither himself in the narrative, nor
any character in the course of the dialogue, to utter one sentence that
is not part and parcel of the business of the story or the discussion of
the problem involved. Let him not regret if this shortens his book; it
will be better so; for to add irrelevant matter is not to lengthen but
to bury. Let him not mind if he miss a thousand qualities, so that he
keeps unflaggingly in pursuit of the one he has chosen. Let him not care
particularly if he miss the tone of conversation, the pungent material
detail of the day's manners, the reproduction of the atmosphere and the
environment. These elements