ers, he must be content with the shapeless, incoherent
visions that respond when the recollection of them is invoked.

It is scarcely to be wondered at if criticism is not very precise, not
very exact in the use of its terms, when it has to work at such a
disadvantage. Since we can never speak of a book with our eye on the
object, never handle a book--the real book, which is to the volume as
the symphony to the score--our phrases find nothing to check them,
immediately and unmistakably, while they are formed. Of a novel, for
instance, that I seem to know well, that I recall as an old
acquaintance, I may confidently begin to express an opinion; but when,
having expressed it, I would glance at the book once more, to be
satisfied that my judgement fits it, I can only turn to the image,
such as it is, that remains in a deceiving memory. The volume lies
before me, no doubt, and if it is merely a question of detail, a name
or a scene, I can find the page and verify my sentence. But I cannot
catch a momentary sight of the book, the book itself; I cannot look
up from my writing and sharpen my impression with a straight,
unhampered view of the author's work; to glance at a book, though the
phrase is so often in our mouths, is in fact an impossibility. The
form of a novel--and how often a critic uses that expression too--is
something that none of us, perhaps, has ever really contemplated. It
is revealed little by little, page by page, and it is withdrawn as
fast as it is revealed; as a whole, complete and perfect, it could
only exist in a more tenacious memory than most of us have to rely on.
Our critical faculty may be admirable; we may be thoroughly capable of
judging a book justly, if only we could watch it at ease. But fine
taste and keen perception are of no use to us if we cannot retain the
image of the book; and the image escapes and evades us like a cloud.

We are so well accustomed to this disability that I may seem to make
too much of it. In theory, certainly, the book is never present in the
critic's mind, never there in all its completeness; but enough of it,
in a commonly good memory, remains to be discussed and criticized--the
book as we remember it, the book that survives, is sufficient for
practical purposes. Such we assume to be the case, and our criticism
is very little troubled by the thought that it is only directed at
certain fragments of the book which the author wrote, the rest of it
having ceased to exist