It is as
essential for the novelist to get the right focus as it is for the
painter. In a page of Zola and in a page of Tolstoi you might find the
same gutter described with the same minuteness; and yet in reading the
one you might see only the filth, while in reading the other you might
feel only some fine human impulse. Tolstoi "sees life steadily" because
he sees it under a divine light; he has a saintly patience with evil,
and so becomes a casuist through sympathy, a psychologist out of that
pity which is understanding. And then, it is as a direct consequence of
this point of view, in the mere process of unravelling things, that his
greatest skill is shown as a novelist. He does not exactly write well;
he is satisfied if his words express their meaning, and no more; his
words have neither beauty nor subtlety in themselves. But, if you will
only give him time, for he needs time, he will creep closer and closer
up to some doubtful and remote truth, not knowing itself for what it is:
he will reveal the soul to itself, like "God's spy."
If you want to know how, daily life goes on among people who know as
little about themselves as you know about your neighbours in a street or
drawing-room, read Jane Austen, and, on that level, you will be
perfectly satisfied.
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