In the spring of 1914 Henry James contributed to The Times Literary Supplement two long and characteristically sibylline articles on ‘The Younger Generation.’ At that Cate it was still possible to include in the category of ‘younger’ Mr. Joseph Conrad, Mr. Maurice Hewlett, Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. H. G. Wells and Mr. Arnold Bennett, though, as the veteran admitted, these had ‘not quite, perhaps, the early bloom of Mr. Hugh Walpole, Mr. Gilbert Cannan and Mr. D. H. Lawrence.’

Proceeding, by way of mixed metaphor, we learn that Mr. Wells and Mr. Bennett have ‘practically launched the boat in which we admire the fresh play of oar of the author of The Duchess of Wrexe and the documented aspect exhibited successively by Carnival and Sinister Street and even by Sons and Lovers however much we may find Mr. Lawrence, we confess, hang in the dusty rear.’

That last phrase sounds ungracious, but was perhaps not so ungraciously meant. It was hardly in character for Henry James to back anybody as a winner, even while he might set himself to describe the field in its order as viewed through the prism of his Jamesian binoculars. Still less was it in character for him to back the dark horse of the field. But we may give him this credit at least. He perceived that there was a dark horse. The figure he employs would further lead us to conclude that by his admission he found it difficult to report on the contours of that entrant.