"JIMJR10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howells William Dean)

this species in fiction, first contrasted in the "Passionate
Pilgrim" the New World and Old World moods, ideals, and
prejudices, and he did it there with a richness of poetic effect
which he has since never equalled. I own that I regret the loss
of the poetry, but you cannot ask a man to keep on being a poet
for you; it is hardly for him to choose; yet I compare rather
discontentedly in my own mind such impassioned creations as
Searle and the painter in "The Madonna of the Future" with "Daisy
Miller," of whose slight, thin personality I also feel the
indefinable charm, and of the tragedy of whose innocence I
recognize the delicate pathos. Looking back to those early
stories, where Mr. James stood at the dividing ways of the novel
and the romance, I am sometimes sorry that he declared even
superficially for the former. His best efforts seem to me those
of romance; his best types have an ideal development, like Isabel
and Claire Belgarde and Bessy Alden and poor Daisy and even
Newman. But, doubtless, he has chosen wisely; perhaps the
romance is an outworn form, and would not lend itself to the
reproduction of even the ideality of modern life. I myself waver
somewhat in my preference--if it is a preference--when I think of
such people as Lord Warburton and the Touchetts, whom I take to
be all decidedly of this world. The first of these especially
interested me as a probable type of the English nobleman, who
amiably accepts the existing situation with all its possibilities
of political and social change, and insists not at all upon the
surviving feudalities, but means to be a manly and simple
gentleman in any event. An American is not able to pronounce as
to the verity of the type; I only know that it seems probable and
that it is charming. It makes one wish that it were in Mr.
James's way to paint in some story the present phase of change in
England. A titled personage is still mainly an inconceivable
being to us; he is like a goblin or a fairy in a storybook. How
does he comport himself in the face of all the changes and
modifications that have taken place and that still impend? We
can hardly imagine a lord taking his nobility seriously; it is
some hint of the conditional frame of Lord Warburton's mind that
makes him imaginable and delightful to us.

It is not my purpose here to review any of Mr. James's books; I
like better to speak of his people than of the conduct of his
novels, and I wish to recognize the fineness with which he has
touched-in the pretty primness of Osmond's daughter and the mild
devotedness of Mr. Rosier. A masterly hand is as often manifest
in the treatment of such subordinate figures as in that of the
principal persons, and Mr. James does them unerringly. This is
felt in the more important character of Valentin Belgarde, a
fascinating character in spite of its defects,--perhaps on
account of them--and a sort of French Lord Warburton, but
wittier, and not so good. "These are my ideas," says his
sister-in-law, at the end of a number of inanities. "Ah, you