occasion" in the history
and intercourse of the characters concerned, and would bring out to
the full the latent colour of the scene in question and cause it to
illustrate, to the last drop, its bearing on my theme. I revelled in
this notion of the Occasion as a thing by itself, really and completely
a scenic thing, and could scarce name it, while crouching amid the thick
arcana of my plan, with a large enough O. The beauty of the conception
was in this approximation of the respective divisions of my form to the
successive Acts of a Play--as to which it was more than ever a case for
charmed capitals. The divine distinction of the act of a play--and
a greater than any other it easily succeeds in arriving at--was, I
reasoned, in its special, its guarded objectivity. This objectivity, in
turn, when achieving its ideal, came from the imposed absence of that
"going behind," to compass explanations and amplifications, to drag out
odds and ends from the "mere" storyteller's great property-shop of aids
to illusion: a resource under denial of which it was equally perplexing
and delightful, for a change, to proceed. Everything, for that matter,
becomes interesting from the moment it has closely to consider, for full
effect positively to bestride, the law of its kind. "Kinds" are the
very life of literature, and truth and strength come from the complete
recognition of them, from abounding to the utmost in their respective
senses and sinking deep into their consistency. I myself have scarcely
to plead the cause of "going behind," which is right and beautiful and
fruitful in its place and order; but as the confusion of kinds is the
inelegance of letters and the stultification of values, so to renounce
that line utterly and do something quite different instead may become in
another connexion the true course and the vehicle of effect. Something
in the very nature, in the fine rigour, of this special sacrifice (which
is capable of affecting the form-lover, I think, as really more of a
projected form than any other) lends it moreover a coercive charm; a
charm that grows in proportion as the appeal to it tests and stretches
and strains it, puts it powerfully to the touch. To make the presented
occasion tell all its story itself, remain shut up in its own presence
and yet on that patch of staked-out ground become thoroughly interesting
and remain thoroughly clear, is a process not remarkable, no doubt,
so long as a very light weight is laid