After all, there is something pastoral, elemental, well aerated, about a peasant lad.

But a mere poor lad! really, James, _really_--!!!] P.S .-- Since writing the above I have looked through the proof-sheets of this book, and found, with some access of respect for my youth, that it is a fiction of the first order.

By this I do not mean that it is a masterpiece in that order, or even a pleasant example of it, but simply that, such as it is, it is one of those fictions in which the morality is original and not readymade.

Now this quality is the true diagnostic of the first order in literature, and indeed in all the arts, including the art of life.

It is, for example, the distinction that sets Shakespear's Hamlet above his other plays, and that sets Ibsen's work as a whole above Shakespear's work as a whole.