to explain otherwise why, as Mr Lubbock puts it, "the satisfaction of his wish"—to return to Europe—"was delayed for as long as it was." He had ample means, and "his doubtful health," as Mr Lubbock says, "can hardly have amounted to a hindrance, and the authority of his parents was far too light and sympathetic to stand in his way." He had seen that he could not so easily relinquish his heritage, that he must make every effort to find himself in relation to the society that had formed his instincts and that stood behind him as an infinite prolongation of his own deepest self, that some profound principle, so to speak, of the novelist's life was involved in his ambiguous position. A principle? Why was it that Dostoevsky had crushed in himself a similar dream of going to live in Europe when he perceived that in Europe he became "less Russian," when he realized that he was "capable of being absorbed by Europe?" And why was it that Turgenev returned to Russia, for a "strengthening bath," every summer, to the end of his life? And what was the significance of Renan's remark that a world lived in Turgenev and spoke through his lips, that generations of ancestors, lost and speechless in the slumber of the ages, found in him life and utterance? "The silent spirit of collective masses," said Renan, in that wonderful valedictory to the body of his Russian friend, "is the source of all great things." The great writer is the voice of his own people: that was the principle, the principle of which every European novelist of the first order had been a living illustration, and James had been too intelligent not to perceive it. Il faut vivre, combattre et finir avec les siens! And he had lingered, he had waited, he had hesitated . . . and it had been quite useless. A fixed idea had prevented him from throwing himself into the life that he feared, and that life, which he had never challenged, had grown more formidable every day. Was it a choice between losing one's soul and losing one's senses, between surviving as a spiritual cripple and not surviving at all? In any case, principle or no principle, there was only one course open to him: he must escape. And as for principles, had any one ever yet explored all the possibilities of the literary life?
It is improbable that James clearly formulated in his own mind the possible consequences of his action. It is certain, on the other hand, that what he felt, on his return to Europe, was an immense relief, an immense delight. He had crossed the Alps in 1869, and
