I have described at length the form in which the themes of these books are developed, because it is the form that, here extensively, here quite unobtrusively, clothes all the novels and tales. We are caught and held by the skinny finger of the Ancient Mariner. When he has a true tale to tell us his veritable presence is an added zest to our pleasure. But, if his presence be not true ...

III

If we turn to the themes that engage Joseph Conrad's attention we shall see that in almost every case his subjects are concerned with unequal combats—unequal to his own far-seeing vision, but never to the human souls engaged in them, and it is this consciousness of the blindness that renders men's honesty and heroism of so little account that gives occasion for his irony.

He chooses, in almost every case, the most solid and unimaginative of human beings for his heroes, and it seems that it is these men alone whom he can admire. "If a human soul has vision he simply gives the thing up," we can hear him say. "He can see at once that the odds are too strong for him. But these simple souls, with their consciousness of the job before them and nothing else, with their placid sense of honour and of duty, upon them you may loosen all heaven's bolts and lightnings and they will not quail." They command his pity, his reverence, his tenderness, almost his love. But at the end, with an ironic shrug of his shoulders, he says: "You see. I told you so. He may even think he has won. We know better, you and I."

The theme of Almayer's Folly is a struggle of a weak man against nature, of The Nigger of the Narcissus the struggle of many simple men against the presence of death, of Lord Jim, again, the struggle of a simple man against nature (here the man wins, but only, we feel, at the cost of truth). Nostromo, the conquest of a child of nature by the silver mine which stands over him, conscious of its ultimate victory, from the very first. Chance, the struggle of an absolutely simple and upright soul against the dishonesties of a world that he does not understand. Typhoon, the very epitome of Conrad's themes, is the struggle of McWhirr against the storm (here again it is McWhirr who apparently wins, but we can hear, in the very last line of the book, the storm's confident chuckle of ultimate victory). In Heart of Darkness the victory is to the forest. In The End of the Tether Captain Whalley, one of Conrad's finest figures, is beaten by the very loftiness of his character. The three tales in 'Twixt Land and Sea are all themes of this kind—the struggle of simple, unimaginative men against forces too strong for them. In The Secret Agent Winnie Verloc, another simple character, finds life too much for her and commits suicide. In Under Western Eyes Razumov, the dreamer, is destroyed by a world that laughs at the pains and struggles of insignificant individuals.

Of Conrad's philosophy I must speak in another place: here it is enough to say that it is impossible to imagine him choosing as the character of a story jolly, independent souls who take life for what it gives them and leave defeat or victory to the stars.

Whatever Conrad's books are or are not, it may safely be said that they are never jolly, and his most devoted disciple would, in all probability, resent any suggestion of a lighter hand or a gentler affection. His art, nevertheless, is limited by this persistent brooding over the inequality of life's battle. His humour, often of a very fine kind, is always sinister, because his choice of theme forbids light-heartedness.

Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy would have found Marlowe, Jim and Captain Anthony quite impossibly solemn company—but I do not deny that they might not have been something the better for a little of it.

I have already said that his characters are, for the most part, simple and unimaginative men, but that does not mean that they are so simple that there is nothing in them. The first thing of which one is sure in meeting a number of Conrad's characters is that they have existences and histories entirely independent of their introducer's kind offices. Conrad has met them, has talked to them, has come to know them, but we are sure not only that there is very much more that he could tell us about them if he had time and space, but that even when he had told us all that he knew he would only have touched on the fringe of their real histories.