recognise, for that way dishonour lies: he has, that is, but one
to think of--the benefit, whatever it may be, involved in his
having cast a spell upon the simpler, the very simplest, forms of
attention. This is all he is entitled to; he is entitled to
nothing, he is bound to admit, that can come to him, from the
reader, as a result on the latter's part of any act of reflexion
or discrimination. He may ENJOY this finer tribute--that is
another affair, but on condition only of taking it as a gratuity
"thrown in," a mere miraculous windfall, the fruit of a tree he
may not pretend to have shaken. Against reflexion, against
discrimination, in his interest, all earth and air conspire;
wherefore it is that, as I say, he must in many a case have
schooled himself, from the first, to work but for a "living
wage." The living wage is the reader's grant of the least
possible quantity of attention required for consciousness of a
"spell." The occasional charming "tip" is an act of his
intelligence over and beyond this, a golden apple, for the
writer's lap, straight from the wind-stirred tree. The artist may
of course, in wanton moods, dream of some Paradise (for art) where
the direct appeal to the intelligence might be legalised; for to
such extravagances as these his yearning mind can scarce hope
ever completely to close itself. The most he can do is to
remember they ARE extravagances.

All of which is perhaps but a gracefully devious way of saying that
Henrietta Stackpole was a good example, in "The Portrait," of the
truth to which I just adverted--as good an example as I could name
were it not that Maria Gostrey, in "The Ambassadors," then in the
bosom of time, may be mentioned as a better. Each of these persons
is but wheels to the coach; neither belongs to the body of that