26
INTRODUCTION
the greatest that can befall a man of letters) to have had to consent to become, by a process not purely mystic and not. wholly untraceable—what shall we call it?—a Figure. Tracing is needless now, for the personality has acted and the incarnation is full. There he is—he has passed ineffaceably into happy legend. This case of the figure is of the rarest, and the honor surely of the greatest."—Henry James, The North American Review, January, 1900.
