another; and the fact that it is an ideal shape, with no existence in
space, only to be spoken of in figures and metaphors, makes it all the
more important that in our thought it should be protected by no
romantic scruple. Or perhaps it is not really the book that we are
shy of, but a still more fugitive phantom--our pleasure in it. It
spoils the fun of a novel to know how it is made--is this a reflection
that lurks at the back of our minds? Sometimes, I think.

But the pleasure of illusion is small beside the pleasure of creation,
and the greater is open to every reader, volume in hand. How a
novelist finds his subject, in a human being or in a situation or in a
turn of thought, this indeed is beyond us; we might look long at the
very world that Tolstoy saw, we should never detect the unwritten book
he found there; and he can seldom (he and the rest of them) give any
account of the process of discovery. The power that recognizes the
fruitful idea and seizes it is a thing apart. For this reason we judge
the novelist's eye for a subject to be his cardinal gift, and we have
nothing to say, whether by way of exhortation or of warning, till his
subject is announced. But from that moment he is accessible, his
privilege is shared; and the delight of treating the subject is acute
and perennial. From point to point we follow the writer, always
looking back to the subject itself in order to understand the logic of
the course he pursues. We find that we are creating a design, large or
small, simple or intricate, as the chapter finished is fitted into its
place; or again there is a flaw and a break in the development, the
author takes a turn that appears to contradict or to disregard the
subject, and the critical question, strictly so called, begins. Is
this proceeding of the author the right one, the best for the subject?
Is it possible to conceive and to name a better? The hours of the
author's labour are lived again by the reader, the pleasure of
creation is renewed.

So it goes, till the book is ended and we look back at the whole
design. It may be absolutely satisfying to the eye, the expression of
the subject, complete and compact. But with the book in this condition
of a defined shape, firm of outline, its form shows for what it is
indeed--not an attribute, one of many and possibly not the most
important, but the book itself, as the form of a statue is the statue
itself. If the form is to the eye imperfect, it means that t