Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/115

89 HENRY JAMES 89 tions : the resolve to respect and mirror the modesty of human nature; the resolve to reveal the treasure of the humble and bring out the romance of the familiar. Instantly, that state of keen consciousness has to be tightened up terrifically. Only uncommon eyes — the eyes of a Touchett or a Searle — can see the common things of life with any vividness : it takes the palate of an epicure to appreciate the flavour of dry bread. Set among smashes and crashes — tiger- hunts, earthquakes, pirates, and doubloons — Mr. James's characters might have managed to observe Rule I (that rule of self-awareness), and still remain pretty normal and sound: even a stockbroker could take fairly clear impression from a tomahawk. But to feel with intensity more usual things than tomahawks requires a character proportionately unusual; and in that invincible see-saw — situation down, temperament up — you get the central movement that has eternally teased the spiritual balance of Mr. James's art. It forms the capital letter of his Tale. In order to accomplish his democratic task he had to breed a race of rare aristocrats. In order to make his reader see and understand the excellence of the normal human scene he had to usher him into a recondite world of studios and salons and hushed leisure, where the faculty of observation is cultured like an orchid and every influence that might coarsen it is quelled. And the reader as he tiptoed in might well feel disturbed. Very strange it is, even a little terrifying, to see the subtle ways in which this hush has reacted on the inhabitants. The people who move here display the blanched signs of seclusion ; almost they seem like the subjects of some ominous experiment, caged in a crystal bell, sensitized by subtle arts, refined away to the naked nerve. Regard the men. To keep their