harmingly thin
one, was in fact originally dreamt of. For its proposed scale the
little idea seemed happy--happy, that is, above all in having come very
straight; but its proposed scale was the limit of a small square canvas.
One had been present again and again at the exhibition I refer to--which
is what I mean by the "coming straight" of this particular London
impression; yet one was (and through fallibilities that after all had
their sweetness, so that one would on the whole rather have kept them
than parted with them) still capable of so false a measurement. When I
think indeed of those of my many false measurements that have resulted,
after much anguish, in decent symmetries, I find the whole case, I
profess, a theme for the philosopher. The little ideas one wouldn't
have treated save for the design of keeping them small, the developed
situations that one would never with malice prepense have undertaken,
the long stories that had thoroughly meant to be short, the short
subjects that had underhandedly plotted to be long, the hypocrisy of
modest beginnings, the audacity of misplaced middles, the triumph of
intentions never entertained--with these patches, as I look about, I see
my experience paved: an experience to which nothing is wanting save, I
confess, some grasp of its final lesson.

This lesson would, if operative, surely provide some law for the
recognition, the determination in advance, of the just limits and the
just extent of the situation, ANY situation, that appeals, and that yet,
by the presumable, the helpful law of situations, must have its reserves
as well as its promises. The storyteller considers it because it
promises, and undertakes it, often, just because also making out, as
he believes, where the promise conveniently drops. The promise, for
instance, of the case I have just named, the case of the account to
be taken, in a circle of free talk, of a new and innocent, a wholly
unacclimatised presence, as to which such accommodations have never had
to come up, might well have appeared as limited as it was lively; and
if these pages were not before us to register my illusion I should never
have made a braver claim for it. They themselves admonish me, however,
in fifty interesting ways, and they especially emphasise that truth of
the vanity of the a priori test of what an idee-mere may have to give.
The truth is that what a happy thought has to give depends immensely
on the general turn of the mind ca