Howells in his capacity of literary critic
alone that my disappointment is too great to allow of silence. For the
exquisiteness of a writer like Mr. Henry James he has the keenest
insight, the warmest appreciation. His thorough-going conviction in
the prime necessity of realism even leads him out of his way to
commend Gabriele d'Annunzio, in whom some of us can detect little but
a more than Zolaesque coarseness with a total lack of Zola's genius,
insight, purpose, or philosophy. But when he comes to speak of a
Thackeray or a Scott, his attitude is one that, to put it in the most
complimentary form that I can think of, reminds us strongly of Homeric
drowsiness. The virtue of James is one thing and the virtue of Scott
is another; but surely admiration for both does not make too
unreasonable a demand on catholicity of palate? Mr. Howells could
never write himself down an ass, but surely in his criticism of the
"Wizard of the North" he has written himself down as one whose
literary creed is narrower than his human heart. The school of which
Mr. Henry James is a most accomplished member has added more than one
exquisite new flavour to the banquet of letters; but it may well be
questioned whether a taste for these may not be acquired at too dear a
cost if it necessitates a loss of relish for the steady good sense,
the power of historic realisation, the rich humanity, and the
marvellously fertile imagination of Walter Scott. It is not, I hope, a
merely national prejudice that makes me oppose Mr. Howells in this
point, though, perhaps, there is a touch of remonstrance in the
reflection that that great novelist seems to have no use for the
Briton in his works except as a foil or a butt for his American
characters.

In considering Mr. Howells as an exponent of Americanism in
literature, we have left him in an attitude almost of _Americanus
contra mundum_--at any rate in the posture of one who is so entirely
absorbed by his delight in the contemporary and national existence
around him as to be partially blind to claims separated from him by
tracts of time and space. My next example of the American in
literature is, I think, to the full as national a type as Mr. Howells,
though her Americanism is shown rather in subjective character than in
objective theme. Miss Emily Dickinson is still a name so unfamiliar to
English readers that I may be pardoned a few lines of biographical
explanation. She was born in 1830, the daughter of the