RODERICK HUDSON
at once too easy and too hard—it depends on what they are—and has found means to be both loose and rigid, indifferent and passionate. He has developed faster even than you prophesied, and for good and evil alike he takes up a formidable space. There 's too much of him for me, at any rate. Yes, he is hard; there's no mistake about that. He's inflexible, he 's brittle; and though he has plenty of spirit, plenty of soul, he has n't what I call a heart. He has something that Miss Garland took for one, and I suppose her a judge. But she judged on scanty evidence. He has something that Christina Light, here, makes believe at times that she takes for one, but she 's no judge at all. I think it established that in the long run egotism (in too big a dose) makes a failure in conduct: is it also true that it makes a failure in the arts?... Roderick's standard is immensely high; I must do him that justice. He 'll do nothing beneath it, and while he 's waiting for the vision to descend his imagination, his nerves, his senses must have something: to amuse them. This is my elegant way of breaking it to you that he has taken to riotous living and has just been spending a month at Naples—a city where amusement is actively cultivated—in very bad company. Are they all like that, all the men of genius? There are a great many artists here who hammer away at their trade with exemplary diligence; in fact I 'm surprised at their success in reducing the matter to a virtuous habit; but I really don't think that one of them has his exquisite quality of talent. The talent's there, it 's the application that has broken down.
295
