And just there, I suppose, is the reason why our great novelists have
shunned great books as subject-matter. It is fortunate for us (jarring
though it is to our patriotic sense) that Mr. Henry James was not born
an Englishman, that he was born of a race of specialists--men who are
impenitent specialists in whatever they take up, be it sport,
commerce, politics, anything. And it is fortunate for us that in
Paris, and in the straitest literary sect there, his method began to
form itself, and the art of prose fiction became to him a religion. In
that art he finds as much inspiration as Swinburne found in the art of
poetry. Just as Swinburne was the most learned of our poets, so is Mr.
James the most learned of our--let us say `our'--prose-writers. I
doubt whether the heaped total of his admirations would be found to
outweigh the least one of the admirations that Swinburne had. But,
though he has been a level-headed reader of the works that are good
enough for him to praise, his abstract passion for the art of fiction
itself has always been fierce and constant. Partly to the Parisian,
partly to the American element in him we owe the stories that he, and
of `our' great writers he only, has written about books and the
writers of books.

Here, indeed, in these incomparable stories, are imaginary great books
that are as real to us as real ones are. Sometimes, as in `The Author
of "Beltraffio,"' a great book itself is the very hero of the story.
(We are not told what exactly was the title of that second book which
Ambient's wife so hated that she let her child die rather than that he
should grow up under the influence of its author; but I have a queer
conviction that it was THE DAISIES.) Usually, in these stories, it is
through the medium of some ardent young disciple, speaking in the
first person, that we become familiar with the great writer. It is
thus that we know Hugh Vereker, throughout whose twenty volumes was