the creation or accurate delineation of individual character, which,
instead of representing men and women, are didactic exhibitions of the
author himself, projected into various personages, and all bearing an
unmistakable family resemblance--this it is that is at the bottom of the
sudden decadence into which the writings of one or two of our more
prolific romancers have fallen, past all redemption; and this is the great
fault of Mr. JAMES. 'To be successful in the exact delineation of
character,' says the reviewer, 'requires a rare combination of powers--a
large heart and a comprehensive mind. It is the attribute of universality;
it can be obtained only by outward as well as inward observation; not by
that habit of intense brooding over individual consciousness, of making
the individual mind the centre and the circumference of every thing, a
habit which only makes of the writer an egotist, and limits the reach of
his mind.' Mr. JAMES has certain types of character which he generally
reproduces in each successive novel. His heroine is idealized into
something which is neither spirit, nor flesh and blood. 'His women, like
his men, are ideas and feelings embodied; they are constructed, not
created nor painted; built, not drawn. They do not stand boldly from the
canvass.' His rascal is an unmitigated rascal, intermingled with the
machinery of his plot, and appearing regularly in every novel. 'Mr. JAMES
is a great spendthrift of human life. The carelessness with which he
slays, evinces the feebleness with which he conceives. If his personages
were real to his own heart or imagination, he would not part with them so
easily, nor kill them with such _nonchalance_.' A very faithful
description is given of Mr. JAMES'S style; and it is one which will apply
with equal force, though certainly in a subordinate case, to certain of
our own novelists, whom the reader will readily recall, but whom it would
be invidious perhaps to mention. 'His style,' says the reviewer, 'has
little flow and perspicuity, and no variety. It is usually heavy,
lumbering, and monotonous. Half of the words seem in the way of the idea,
and the latter appears not to have strength enough to clear the passage.
Occasionally, a short, sharp sentence comes like a flash of lightning from
the cloud of his verbiage, and relieves the twilight of his diction. There
are but few felicitous phrases in his manifold volumes. He has hardly any
of those happy combinations of words