only so far as they realise the sense of danger and provoke
the sympathy of fear. To add more traits, to be too clever, to start the
hare of moral or intellectual interest while we are running the fox of
material interest, is not to enrich but to stultify your tale. The
stupid reader will only be offended, and the clever reader lose the
scent.

The novel of character has this difference from all others: that it
requires no coherency of plot, and for this reason, as in the case of
"Gil Blas," it is sometimes called the novel of adventure. It turns on
the humours of the persons represented; these are, to be sure, embodied
in incidents, but the incidents themselves, being tributary, need not
march in a progression; and the characters may be statically shown. As
they enter, so they may go out; they must be consistent, but they need
not grow. Here Mr. James will recognise the note of much of his own
work: he treats, for the most part, the statics of character, studying
it at rest or only gently moved; and, with his usual delicate and just
artistic instinct, he avoids those stronger passions which would deform
the attitudes he loves to study, and change his sitters from the
humorists of ordinary life to the brute forces and bare types of more
emotional moments. In his recent "Author of Beltraffio," so just in
conception, so nimble and neat in workmanship, strong passion is indeed
employed; but observe that it is not displayed. Even in the heroine the
working of the passion is suppressed; and the great struggle, the true
tragedy, the _scene a faire_, passes unseen behind the panels of a
locked door. The delectable invention of the young visitor is
introduced, consciously or not, to this end: that Mr. James, true to his
method, might avoid the scene of passion. I trust no reader will suppose
me guilty of undervaluing this little masterpiece. I mean merely that it
belongs to one marked class of novel, and that it would have been very
differently conceived and treated had it belonged to that other marked
class, of which I now proceed to speak.

I take pleasure in calling the dramatic novel by that name, because it
enables me to point out by the way a strange and peculiarly English
misconception. It is sometimes supposed that the drama consists of
incident. It consists of passion, which gives the actor his opportunity;
and that passion must progressively increase, or the actor, as the piece
proceeded, would be unable to carry the