His fame will
steadily grow, and his extraordinary genius will more and more create
that finer taste by which alone he can be appreciated.
No novelist who has ever lived has "taken art" so seriously. But it is
art, and not life, he takes seriously; and, therefore, along with his
methods of elaborate patience, one is conscious of a most delicate and
whimsical playfulness--sparing literally nothing. In spite of his
beautiful cosmopolitanism it must never be forgotten that at bottom
Henry James is richly and wonderfully American. That tender and
gracious "penchant" of his for pure-souled and modest-minded young
men, for their high resolves, their noble renunciations, their
touching faith, is an indication of how much he has exploited--in the
completest aesthetic sense--the naive puritanism of his great nation.
In regard to his style one may remark three main divergent epochs; the
first closing with the opening of the "nineties," and the third
beginning about the year 1903. Of these the second seems to the
present compiler the best; being, indeed, more intellectualized and
subtle than the first and less mannered and obscure than the final
one.
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