eatment, prove that
I haven't so shaken them together as the conjurer I profess to be MUST
consummately shake, and I consent but to parade as before a booth at the
fair." The exemplary closeness of "The Awkward Age" even affects me, on
re-perusal, I confess, as treasure quite instinctively and foreseeingly
laid up against my present opportunity for these remarks. I have
been positively struck by the quantity of meaning and the number of
intentions, the extent of GROUND FOR INTEREST, as I may call it, that
I have succeeded in working scenically, yet without loss of
sharpness, clearness or "atmosphere," into each of my illuminating
occasions--where, at certain junctures, the due preservation of all
these values took, in the familiar phrase, a good deal of doing.

I should have liked just here to re-examine with the reader some of the
positively most artful passages I have in mind--such as the hour of Mr.
Longdon's beautiful and, as it were, mystic attempt at a compact with
Vanderbank, late at night, in the billiard-room of the country-house at
which they are staying; such as the other nocturnal passage, under Mr.
Longdon's roof, between Vanderbank and Mitchy, where the conduct of so
much fine meaning, so many flares of the exhibitory torch through the
labyrinth of mere immediate appearances, mere familiar allusions, is
successfully and safely effected; such as the whole array of the terms
of presentation that are made to serve, all systematically, yet without
a gap anywhere, for the presentation, throughout, of a Mitchy "subtle"
no less than concrete and concrete no less than deprived of that
officious explanation which we know as "going behind"; such as, briefly,
the general service of co-ordination and vivification rendered, on lines
of ferocious, of really quite heroic compression, by the picture of the
assembled group at Mrs. Grendon's, where the "cross-references" of the
action are as thick as the green leaves of a garden, but none the less,
as they have scenically to be, counted and disposed, weighted with
responsibility. Were I minded to use in this connexion a "loud"
word--and the critic in general hates loud words as a man of taste may
hate loud colours--I should speak of the composition of the chapters
entitled "Tishy Grendon," with all the pieces of the game on the
table together and each unconfusedly and contributively placed, as
triumphantly scientific. I must properly remind myself, rather, that
the better l