Mr.
James, as we see in his sketches of travel, is not averse to the
lounging ease of a shooting-jacket, but he respects the usages of
convention, and at the canonical hours is sure to be found in the
required toilet. He does not expect the company to pardon his own
indolence as one of the necessary appendages of originality. Always
considerate himself, his readers soon find reason to treat him with
consideration. For they soon come to see that literature may be light
and at the same time thoughtful; that lightness, indeed, results much
more surely from serious study than from the neglect of it.
We have said that Mr. James was emphatically a man of culture, and we
are old-fashioned enough to look upon him with the more interest as a
specimen of exclusively _modern_ culture. Of any classical training we
have failed to detect the traces in him. His allusions, his citations,
are in the strictest sense contemporary, and indicate, if we may trust
our divination, a preference for French models, Balzac, De Musset,
Feuillet, Taine, Gautier, Merimee, Sainte-Beuve, especially the three
latter. He emulates successfully their suavity, their urbanity, their
clever knack of conveying a fuller meaning by innuendo than by direct
bluntness of statement. If not the best school for substance, it is an
admirable one for method, and for so much of style as is attainable by
example.
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