 that there are
degrees of merit in subjects - in spite of the fact that to treat even one of
the most ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for the feverish and
prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its dignity as possibly absolute.
What it comes to, doubtless, is that even among the supremely good - since with
such alone is it one's theory of one's honour to be concerned - there is an
ideal beauty of goodness the invoked action of which is to raise the artistic
faith to its maximum. Then truly, I hold, one's theme may be said to shine, and
that of »The Ambassadors,« I confess, wore this glow for me from beginning to
end. Fortunately thus I am able to estimate this as, frankly, quite the best,
all round, of all my productions; any failure of that justification would have
made such an extreme of complacency publicly fatuous.
    I recall then in this connexion no moment of subjective intermittence, never
one of those alarms as for a suspected hollow beneath one's feet, a felt
ingratitude in the scheme adopted, under which confidence fails and opportunity
seems but to mock. If the motive of »The Wings of the Dove,« as I have noted,
was to worry me at moments by a sealing-up of its face - though without
prejudice to its again, of a sudden, fairly grimacing with expression - so in
this other business I had absolute conviction and constant clearness to deal
with; it had been a frank proposition, the whole bunch of data, installed on my
premises like a monotony of fine weather. (The order of composition, in these
things, I may mention, was reversed by the order of publication; the earlier
written of the two books having appeared as the later.) Even under the weight of
my hero's years I could feel my postulate firm; even under the strain of the
difference between those of Madame de Vionnet and those of Chad Newsome, a
difference liable to be denounced as shocking, I could still feel it serene.
Nothing resisted, nothing betrayed, I seem to make out, in this full and sound
sense of the matter; it shed from any side I could turn it to the same golden
glow. I rejoiced in the promise of a hero so mature, who would give me thereby
the more to bite into - since it's only into thickened motive and accumulated
character, I think, that the painter of life bites more than a little. My poor
friend should have accumulated character,
