No: I for various reasons cannot judge _Steel_, nor _The Bright Shawl_, nor _Balisand_; about my extreme fondness for _The Presbyterian Child_ here is no need to speak; and as to _Cytherea_ I shall likewise say not anything. For the man talks to me--talks all abeam and generally reminiscent of a time-battered cherub who fell long ago with Lucifer, but only as far as Pennsylvania,--about the book he is going to write. I, meekly attendant, warm alike to his notion and to his cordial delight in himself. And by and by he publishes a volume which, to cold reason, would seem, I daresay, very faintly suggestive of the book he talked about. But I do not ever read the published volume in the light of cold reason. Instead, I read with comprehension. Not only do I understand and by ordinary applaud the changes from his original conception, the changes based upon logic and expediency and upon Mr. Hergesheimer's virtually inerrant technical skill: I also read into the actual book those fine first ideas which, for one cause or another, proved impracticable, and were omitted wholly. I read the book, in brief, with a comprehending sympathy that befogs judgment, and with such passionate unwillingness to find fault anywhere as makes for no very valuable critical appraisements. I know it is all most gratifyingly good. But just how good, I have no notion.... No: here is an artist whom I can no longer criticize with any feeling of security; and so about his later books (which, indeed, do not bear weightily upon the point I would now emphasize) I shall here say nothing. Yet I must in this place confess that I read sundry criticisms of his playing--which you may, if you like, call "work,"--with a half-fretted sense of wonder. Joseph Hergesheimer is, to my mind, a fact, a largish, a significant, and an enduring fact. The regret of brilliant and earnest-minded reviewers that Joseph Hergesheimer is not in one or another feature different, seems a small and ephemeral fact: and I candidly wonder why the critic thinks the regret worth stating. It really does, when appraised from any utilitarian standpoint, suggest the squandered insolence of the gentleman who spoke disrespectfully of the equator. I do not contemplate with seriousness the notion that some reviewer here or there may imagine that his disapproval will cause Joseph Hergesheimer, or, for that matter, any other self-centered creating romanticist, to follow in his next book the critic's advice, because such a delusion cannot be harbored, I hope, by anybody. For the artist plays the especial game he chooses: the diversion he gets out of such playing is for him the one veritably important thing in life: and when you tell him you do not approve of all the by-products of his diversion, he very frequently does not damn your impudence quite audibly; but he invariably wonders why you should be telling, of all persons, him about your disapproval, rather as if you expected him to do something about it. § 71