JOSEPH CONRAD. CHANCE. LORD JIM. VICTORY. YOUTH. ALMAYER'S
FOLLY. _Published by Doubleday Page & Co. with a critical monograph,
so admirably written (it is given gratis) by Wilson Follet that one
longs to see more criticism from such an accomplished hand_.
Conrad's work--and, considering his foreign origin and his late choice
of English as a medium of expression, it is no less than an astounding
achievement--is work of the very highest literary and psychological
value. It is, indeed, as Mr. Follet says, only such criticism as is
passionately anxious to prove for itself the true "romance of the
intellect" that can hope to deal adequately with such an output. The
background of Conrad's books is primarily the sea itself; and after
the sea, ships. No one has indicated the extraordinary romance of
ships in the way he has done--of ships in the open sea, in the
harbour, at the wharf, or driven far up some perilous tropical river.
But it is neither the sea nor the tropical recesses nor the
sun-scorched river-edges of his backgrounds that make up the essence
of romance in the Conrad books. This is found in nothing less than the
mysterious potencies for courage and for fear, for good and for evil,
of human beings themselves--of human beings isolated by some external
"diablerie" which throws every feature of them into terrible and
baffling relief.
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