Also his curiosity is limited. He seems to me to have been
specially created to be admired by super-dilettanti. (I do not say that to
admire him is a proof of dilettantism.) What it all comes to is merely
that his subject-matter does not as a rule interest me. I simply state my
personal view, and I expressly assert my admiration for the craftsman in
him and for the magnificent and consistent rectitude of his long artistic
career. Further I will not go, though I know that bombs will now be laid
at my front door by the furious faithful. As for "The Finer Grain," it
leaves me as I was--cold. It is an uneven collection, and the stories
probably belong to different periods. The first, "The Velvet Glove,"
strikes me as conventional and without conviction. I should not call it
subtle, but rather obvious. I should call it finicking. In the
sentence-structure mannerism is pushed to excess. All the other stories
are better. "Crafty Cornelia," for instance, is an exceedingly brilliant
exercise in the art of making stone-soup. But then, I know I am in a
minority among persons of taste. Some of the very best literary criticism
of recent years has been aroused by admiration for Henry James. There is a
man on the _Times Literary Supplement_ who, whenever he writes about Henry
James, makes me feel that I have mistaken my vocation and ought to have
entered the Indian Civil Service, or been a cattle-drover.
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