That, perhaps, is one reason why it is generally--in spite of temporary vogue as pleasant pastime--a little underrated as an intellectual performance. That is why great novelists succeed in it so seldom--or at all events fail in it sometimes--even a novelist like Mr. Hardy, the stretch of whose canvas has never led him into carelessness of detail. Yet with _him_, even, in his short stories, the inequality is greater than befits the work of such an artist, and greater than is to be accounted for wholly by his mood; so that by the side of _The Three Strangers_, or, yet better, that delightful thing, _Interlopers at the Knap_, you have short tales tossed off with momentary indifference--as you can imagine Sheridan, with his braced language of comedy, stooping once to a charade. And if a _master_ nods sometimes--a master like Hardy--does it not almost follow that, by the public at least, the conditions of the short story are not understood, and so, in the estimate of the criticism of the dinner-table, and by the criticism of the academic, the tale is made to suffer by its brevity? But if it is well done, it has done this amazing thing: it has become quintessence; it has eliminated the superfluous; and it has taken _time_ to be brief. Then--amongst readers whose judgments are perfunctory--who have not thought the thing out--it is rewarded by being spoken of as an ‘agreeable sketch,’ ‘a promising little effort,’ an ‘earnest of better things.’ In this wise--not to talk of any other instance--one imagines the big public rewarding the completed charm of _The Author of Beltraffio_ and of _A Day of Days_, though pregnant _brevity_ is not often Mr. James’s strength. And then Mr. James works away at the long novel, and, of course, is clever in it, because with him, _not_ to be clever might require a passiveness more than American. Very good; but I go back from the record of all that ‘Maisie’ ought not to have known, to _The Author of Beltraffio_ and to _A Day of Days_--‘promising little efforts,’ ‘earnests of better things.’ Well, then, the short story is wont to be estimated, not by its quality, but by its size; a mode of appraisement under which the passion of Schumann, with his wistful questionings--in _Warum_, say, or in _Der Dichter spricht_--would be esteemed less seriously than the amiable score of _Maritana_! And a dry-point by Mr. Whistler, two dozen lines laid with the last refinement of charm, would be held inferior to a panorama by Philippoteau, or to the backgrounds of the contemporary theatre. One would have thought that this was obvious. But in our latest stage of civilisation it is sometimes only the obvious that requires to be pointed out.