never run dry. The stream of inspiration flows brimful in a
predetermined direction, unaffected by the periods of drought, untroubled
in its clearness by the storms of the land of letters, without languor or
violence in its force, never running back upon itself, opening new
visions at every turn of its course through that richly inhabited country
its fertility has created for our delectation, for our judgment, for our
exploring. It is, in fact, a magic spring.

With this phrase the metaphor of the perennial spring, of the
inextinguishable youth, of running waters, as applied to Mr. Henry
James's inspiration, may be dropped. In its volume and force the body of
his work may be compared rather to a majestic river. All creative art is
magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening,
familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind, pinned down by
the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most
insignificant tides of reality.

Action in its essence, the creative art of a writer of fiction may be
compared to rescue work carried out in darkness against cross gusts of
wind swaying the action of a great multitude. It is rescue work, this
snatching of vanishing phases of turbulence, disguised in fair words, out
of the native obscurity into a light where the struggling forms may be
seen, seized upon, endowed with the only possible form of permanence in
this world of relative values--the permanence of memory. And the
multitude feels it obscurely too; since the demand of the individual to
the artist is, in effect, the cry, "Take me out of myself!" meaning
really, out of my perishable activity into the light of imperishable
consciousness. But everything is relative, and the light of
consciousness is only enduring, merely the most enduring of the things of
this earth, imperishable only as against the short-lived work of our