The presence of soul and substance together involves
one of the two or three things which most of the Victorians did not
understand--the thing called a sacrament. It is because he had a natural
affinity for this mystical materialism that Meredith, in spite of his
affectations, is a poet: and, in spite of his Victorian Agnosticism (or
ignorance) is a pious Pagan and not a mere Pantheist. Mr. Henry James is
at the other extreme. His thrill is not so much in symbol or mysterious
emblem as in the absence of interventions and protections between mind
and mind. It is not mystery: it is rather a sort of terror at knowing
too much. He lives in glass houses; he is akin to Maeterlinck in a
feeling of the nakedness of souls. None of the Meredithian things, wind
or wine or sex or stark nonsense, ever gets between Mr. James and his
prey. But the thing is a deficiency as well as a talent: we cannot but
admire the figures that walk about in his afternoon drawing-rooms; but
we have a certain sense that they are figures that have no faces.
For the rest, he is most widely known, or perhaps only most widely
chaffed, because of a literary style that lends itself to parody and is
a glorious feast for Mr.
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