and still more obscurely stated in the dramatized version of their relationship called "The Fugitive," in which Soames and Irene become George and Clare Dedmond, and Bosinney, the architect-lover, becomes Malise, the journalist-lover. It is true that the differences which break a marriage are sometimes the result of fundamental things which cannot be described with the clarity of the items in an auctioneer's catalogue; but the business of an artist is to make obscure things plain and understandable, and the success of his work depends upon the way in which he impresses his readers with the vagueness and obscurity of these things and yet at the same time makes them realize how substantial they are. Soames and Irene Forsyte may not be able to say why they cannot live together, but Mr. Galsworthy must be able to do so and he must empower his readers to do so, too. A novelist gives a sense of inarticulateness in a character, not by making him so inarticulate that the readers cannot hear or understand a word he is saying, but by making his inarticulateness articulate. The danger into which many writers tumble headlong is that they will spend all their energies on getting the details right and will leave the general effect obscure. One sees signs of this in Mr. Galsworthy's work. He is so busy endowing his people with a sense of property that he occasionally omits to endow them with a sense of humanity. If one compares the Forsyte novels, say, "In Chancery," with Mrs. Edith Wharton's latest book, "The Age of Innocence," one discovers that in each case, the theme is concerned with the institution of the family, with the tribal instinct which makes the majority of minds seek identity rather than dissimilarity. But in Mrs. Wharton's book, this tribal instinct is humanly expressed, whereas in Mr. Galsworthy's it is not. I recognize Mrs. Wharton's people as human beings, but I am sceptical about Mr. Galsworthy's people. Old Mrs. Mingott, in "The Age of Innocence," has affinity with old Jolyon Forsyte in "The Man of Property" and "The Indian Summer of a Forsyte." (He is the most human figure in the Saga.) But the rest of the cast in the Forsyte Saga has less relevance to humanity than the rest of the cast in "The Age of Innocence," and the reason is, I think, that Mr. Galsworthy has allowed his theory to get the better of his people, whereas Mrs. Wharton, whatever her theory may be, has kept her eye very steadfastly on human beings. The Countess Olenska in "The Age of Innocence" has verisimilitude which is absent from the figure of Irene Forsyte in "The Man of Property" or Clare Dedmond in "The Fugitive." We can comprehend Ellen Olenska, but Irene Forsyte utterly eludes us. V