no less than concrete and concrete no less than deprived of that
officious explanation which we know as "going behind"; such as, briefly,
the general service of co-ordination and vivification rendered, on lines
of ferocious, of really quite heroic compression, by the picture of the
assembled group at Mrs. Grendon's, where the "cross-references" of the
action are as thick as the green leaves of a garden, but none the less,
as they have scenically to be, counted and disposed, weighted with
responsibility. Were I minded to use in this connexion a "loud" word--
and the critic in general hates loud words as a man of taste may hate
loud colours--I should speak of the composition of the chapters entitled
"Tishy Grendon," with all the pieces of the game on the table together
and each unconfusedly and contributively placed, as triumphantly
scientific. I must properly remind myself, rather, that the better
lesson of my retrospect would seem to be really a supreme revision of
the question of what it may be for a subject to suffer, to call it
suffering, by over-treatment. Bowed down so long by the inference that
its product had in this case proved such a betrayal, my artistic
conscience meets the relief of having to recognise truly here no traces
of suffering. The thing carries itself to my maturer and gratified sense
as with every symptom of soundness, an insolence of health and joy. And
from this precisely I deduce my moral; which is to the effect that,
since our only way, in general, of knowing that we have had too much of
anything is by FEELING that too much: so, by the same token, when we
don't feel the excess (and I am contending, mind, that in "The Awkward
Age" the multiplicity yields to the order) how do we know that the
measure not recorded, the notch not reached, does represent adequacy or
satiety? The mere feeling helps us for certain degrees of congestion,
but for exact science, that is for the criticism of "fine" art, we want
the notation. The notation, however, is what we lack, and the verdict of
the mere feeling is liable to fluctuate. In other words an imputed