und, nevertheless, and many of them are
perfectly new finds, like Mr. Tristram in "The American," the
bill-paying father in the "Pension Beaurepas," the anxiously
Europeanizing mother in the same story, the amusing little Madame de
Belgarde, Henrietta Stackpole, and even Newman himself. But though Mr.
James portrays the humorous in character, he is decidedly not on
humorous terms with his reader; he ignores rather than recognizes the
fact that they are both in the joke.

If we take him at all we must take him on his own ground, for clearly
he will not come to ours. We must make concessions to him, not in this
respect only, but in several others, chief among which is the motive
for reading fiction. By example, at least, he teaches that it is the
pursuit and not the end which should give us pleasure; for he often
prefers to leave us to our own conjectures in regard to the fate of the
people in whom he has interested us. There is no question, of course,
but he could tell the story of Isabel in "The Portrait of a Lady" to
the end, yet he does not tell it. We must agree, then, to take what
seems a fragment instead of a whole, and to find, when we can, a name
for this new kind in fiction. Evidently it is the character, not the
fate, of his people which occupies him; when he has fully developed
their character he leaves them to what destiny the reader pleases.

The analytic tendency seems to have increased with him as his work has
gone on. Some of the earlier tales were very dramatic: "A Passionate
Pilgrim," which I should rank above all his other short stories, and
for certain rich poetical qualities, above everything else that he has
done, is eminently dramatic. But I do not find much that I should call
dramatic in "The Portrait of a Lady," while I do find in it an amount
of analysis which I should call superabundance if it were not all such
good literature. The novelist's main business is to possess his reader
with a due conception of his characters and the situations in which
they find themselves. If he does more or less than this he equally
fails. I have sometimes thought that Mr. James's danger was to do
more, but when I have been ready to declare this excess an error of his
method I have hesitated. Could anything be superfluous that had given
me so much pleasure as I read? Certainly from only one point of view,
and this a rather narrow, technical one. It seems to me that an
enlightened criticism will reco