under the unity of the whole. As truly, to the lack of such
architectural design, of a single, almost visual, image, vigorously
informing an entire, perhaps very intricate, composition, which shall
be austere, ornate, argumentative, fanciful, yet true from first to
last to that vision within, may be attributed those weaknesses of
conscious or unconscious repetition of word, phrase, motive, or
member of the whole matter, indicating, as Flaubert was aware, an
original structure in thought not organically complete. With such
foresight, the actual conclusion will most often get itself written
out of hand, before, in the more obvious sense, the work is finished.
With some strong and leading sense of the world, the [24] tight hold
of which secures true composition and not mere loose accretion, the
literary artist, I suppose, goes on considerately, setting joint to
joint, sustained by yet restraining the productive ardour, retracing
the negligences of his first sketch, repeating his steps only that he
may give the reader a sense of secure and restful progress,
readjusting mere assonances even, that they may soothe the reader, or
at least not interrupt him on his way; and then, somewhere before the
end comes, is burdened, inspired, with his conclusion, and betimes
delivered of it, leaving off, not in weariness and because he finds
himself at an end, but in all the freshness of volition. His work
now structurally complete, with all the accumulating effect of
secondary shades of meaning, he finishes the whole up to the just
proportion of that ante-penultimate conclusion, and all becomes
expressive. The house he has built is rather a body he has informed.
And so it happens, to its greater credit, that the better interest
even of a narrative to be recounted, a story to be told, will often
be in its second reading. And though there are instances of great
writers who have been no artists, an unconscious tact sometimes
directing work in which we may detect, very pleasurably, many of the