Will the reader be content to accept a novel
which is an analytic study rather than a story, which is apt to
leave him arbiter of the destiny of the author's creations? Will
he find his account in the unflagging interest of their
development? Mr. James's growing popularity seems to suggest
that this may be the case; but the work of Mr. James's imitators
will have much to do with the final result.
In the meantime it is not surprising that he has his imitators.
Whatever exceptions we take to his methods or his results, we
cannot deny him a very great literary genius. To me there is a
perpetual delight in his way of saying things, and I cannot
wonder that younger men try to catch the trick of it. The
disappointing thing for them is that it is not a trick, but an
inherent virtue. His style is, upon the whole, better than that
of any other novelist I know; it is always easy, without being
trivial, and it is often stately, without being stiff; it gives a
charm to everything he writes; and he has written so much and in
such various directions, that we should be judging him very
incompletely if we considered him only as a novelist. His book
of European sketches must rank him with the most enlightened and
agreeable travelers; and it might be fitly supplemented from his
uncollected papers with a volume of American sketches. In his
essays on modern French writers he indicates his critical range
and grasp; but he scarcely does more, as his criticisms in "The
Atlantic" and "The Nation" and elsewhere could abundantly
testify.
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