gn which he meant them to express; and his
vacillation prevents them from expressing it. How would he have
treated the story, supposing that he had kept hold of his original
reason throughout? Are we prepared to improve upon his method, to
re-write his book as we think it ought to have been written? Well, at
any rate, it is possible to imagine the different effect it would show
if a little of that large, humane irony, so evident in the tone of the
story at the start, had persisted through all its phases. It would not
have dimmed Natasha's charm, it would have heightened it. While she is
simply the heroine of a romance she is enchanting, no doubt; but when
she takes her place in a drama so much greater than herself, her
beauty is infinitely enhanced. She becomes representative, with all
her gifts and attractions; she is there, not because she is a
beautiful creature, but because she is the spirit of youth. Her charm
is then universal; it belongs to the spirit of youth and lasts for
ever.

With all this I think it begins to be clear why the broad lines of
Tolstoy's book have always seemed uncertain and confused. Neither his
subject nor his method were fixed for him as he wrote; he ranged
around his mountain of material, attacking it now here and now there,
never deciding in his mind to what end he had amassed it. None of his
various schemes is thus completed, none of them gets the full
advantage of the profusion of life which he commands. At any moment
great masses of that life are being wasted, turned to no account; and
the result is not merely negative, for at any moment the wasted life,
the stuff that is not being used, is dividing and weakening the effect
of the picture created out of the rest. That so much remains, in spite
of everything, gives the measure of Tolstoy's genius; _that_ becomes
the more extraordinary as the chaotic plan of his book is explored. He
could work with such lordly neglect of his subject and yet he could
produce such a book--it is surely as much as to say that Tolstoy's is
the supreme genius among novelists.

V

And next of the different methods by which the form of a novel is
created--these must be watched in a very different kind of book from
Tolstoy's. For a sight of the large and general masses in which a
novel takes shape, War and Peace seemed to promise more than another;
but something a great deal more finely controlled is to be looked for,
when it is a question of following