Who, on stepping from the cathedral dusk, the growl¹ and boom of the organ still in the ears, and the eyes still shaded to observe better whatever intricacy of carving² or richness of marble may there be concealed³, can breast the stir of the street and instantly and briskly sum up and deliver his impressions? How discriminate⁴, how formulate⁵? How, Henry James may be heard grimly asking, dare you pronounce any opinion whatever upon me? In the first place only by taking cover under some such figure as implies that, still dazed and well-nigh drowned, our gesture at the finish is more one of exclamation⁶ than of interpretation⁷. To soothe⁸ and to inspirit there comes, a moment later, the consciousness that, although in the eyes of Henry James our attempt is foredoomed to failure, nevertheless his blessing¹⁰ is upon it. Renewal¹¹ of life, on such terms as we can grant it, upon lips, in minds, here in London, here among English men and women, would receive from him the most generous acknowledgment; and with a royal complacency, he would admit that our activities could hardly be better employed. Nor are we left to grope without a guide. It would not be easy to find a difficult task better fulfilled than by Mr. Percy Lubbock in his introduction and connecting pararaphs.* It seems to us, and this not only before reading the letters but more emphatically afterwards, that the lines of interpretation he lays down are the true ones. They end — as he is the first to declare — in the heart of darkness; but any understanding that we may have won of a difficult problem is at every point

分享到：