The business of criticism in the matter of fiction seems clear, at any rate. There is nothing more that can usefully be said about a novel until we have fastened upon the question of its making and explored it to some purpose. In all our talk about novels we are hampered and held up by our unfamiliarity with what is called their technical aspect, and that is consequently the aspect to confront. That Jane Austen was an acute observer, that Dickens was a great humourist, that George Eliot had a deep knowledge of provincial character, that our living romancers are so full of life that they are neither to hold nor to bind--we know, we have repeated, we have told each other a thousand times; it is no wonder if attention flags when we hear it all again. It is their books, as well as their talents and attainments, that we aspire to see--their books, which we must recreate for ourselves if we are ever to behold them. And in order to recreate them durably there is the one obvious way--to study the craft, to follow the process, to read constructively. The practice of this method appears to me at this time of day, I confess, the only interest of the criticism of fiction. It seems vain to expect that discourse upon novelists will contain anything new for us until we have really and clearly and accurately seen their books. And after all it is impossible--that is certain; the book vanishes as we lay hands on it. Every word we say of it, every phrase I have used about a novel in these pages, is loose, approximate, a little more or a little less than the truth. We cannot exactly hit the mark; or if we do, we cannot be sure of it. I do not speak of the just judgement of quality; as for that, any critic of any art is in the same predicament; the value of a picture or a statue is as bodiless as that of a book. But there are times when a critic of literature feels that if only there were one single tangible and measurable fact about a book--if it could be weighed like a statue, say, or measured like a picture--it would be a support in a world of shadows. Such an ingenuous confession, I think it must be admitted, goes to the root of the matter--could we utter our sense of helplessness more candidly? But still among the shadows there is a spark of light that tempts us, there is a hint of the possibility that behind them, beyond them, we may touch a region where the shadows become at least a little more substantial. If that is so, it seems that our chance must lie in the direction I have named. The author of the book was a craftsman, the critic must overtake him at his work and see how the book was made. INDEX Ambassadors, The, 145 _ff._, 156 _ff._, 189. Anna Karenina, 15, 52, 236 _ff._ Austen, Jane, 272. Awkward Age, The, 189 _ff._ Balzac, 48, 119, 203 _ff._, 220 _ff._, 241, 250. Barry Lyndon, 145. Bleak House, 129, 212 _ff._ Bronte, Charlotte, 145. Clarissa Harlowe, 7, 152 _ff._ Crime and Punishment, 144. Cure de Village, Le, 205.