more or less close connexion of
the subject with some mark made on the intelligence, with some
sincere experience.

On one thing I was determined; that, though I should clearly have to
pile brick upon brick for the creation of an interest, I would leave
no pretext for saying that anything is out of line, scale or
perspective. I would build large--in fine embossed vaults and
painted arches, as who should say, and yet never let it appear that
the chequered pavement, the ground under the reader's feet, fails
to stretch at every point to the base of the walls....

The bricks, for the whole counting-over--putting for bricks little
touches and inventions and enhancements by the way--affect me in
truth as well-nigh innumerable and as ever so scrupulously fitted
together and packed-in. It is an effect of detail, of the minutest;
though, if one were in this connexion to say all, one would express
the hope that the general, the ampler part of the modest monument
still survives....

So early was to begin my tendency to _overtreat_, rather than
undertreat (when there was choice or danger) my subject. (Many
members of my craft, I gather, are far from agreeing with me, but I
have always held overtreating the minor disservice.) ... There was
the danger of the noted "thinness"--which was to be averted, tooth
and nail, by cultivation of the lively.... And then there was
another matter. I had, within the few preceding years, come to live
in London, and the "international" light lay, in those days, to my
sense, thick and rich upon the scene. It was the light in which so
much of the picture hung. But that _is_ another matter. There is
really too much to say.

3. Remember the following clues in reading James's, work: "His one
preoccupation was the criticism, for his own purpose, of the art of
life." The emphasis is on the word _art_. His _purpose_ is suggested by
his own claim to have "that tender appreciation of actuality which makes
even the application of a single coat of rose-color seem an act of
violence."

4. There is suggestion of Mr. James's limitations in the facts that he
was tone deaf and so could not appreciate music, and that he is said not
to have written a line of verse, and also in the fact that although his
method of presentation in the novels is dramatic throughout and he
strongly de