Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/128

102 102 HENRY JAMES — a diet of pur© Phiz, taken solitary, is simply an invitation to delirium tremens. Extraordinarily in- teresting it would be to work this influence out with thoroughness, using the theatre memories in this book as a base — discovering that Milly Theale had an ancestress in Uncle Toms Cabin and that Daisy Miller once lived in Melbourne House.) But recog- nition of that credulity ought not to make us incredulous. To allow that would exactly be to refuse to receive the benefits bought for us by his sacrifice. True for him or not, it is all solid truth for us. That " dim little gentleman " may actually have been neither a martyr nor hero, but for us he is certainly both ; the water is wine when we get it. There are pages of supreme prose in this book — passages that will come to be regarded as some of the permanent blessings of letters, incomparable ex- hibitions of technical counterpoint as well as superb testimonies to the romance and the radiance of life ; and it is significant that the best of these, such as the prolonged Dream-fugue (pages 360-4), occur when credulity is frankest and hallucination itself hovers unashamed. There is no space here now to quote much, but two brief examples may be given. Each takes up a theme that is quite threadbare and domestic (a children's party in one case, a walk round some shops in the other), but each dwells on it so wonder- ingly, distils its essence so sweetly, that in a moment it has become a motif idyllic, triumphant, leading the melody into wide enchantments and strange chords. Here are the first and last bars of each : — They were numerous, the members of this family ; they were beautiful ; they partook of their meals, or were at that moment partaking of one, out of doors. . . . But the romance of the hour was particularly in the fact that the children, my enter- tainers, riveted my gaze to stockingless and shoeless legs and feet, conveying somehow that they were not poor and destitute