The lively writer has a style which displays the worst faults of the middle nineteenth century, but he is really not far wrong in his conclusions. The Cyclopædia sums up the matter in a sentence which tells the story and signifies that the man wrote too much:

“The sameness of the author’s style and characters is, however, too marked to be pleasing.”

I timidly venture to suggest that the same thing may be true of Kipling and hope that I may not be annihilated by the bolts of Jupiter for such a daring piece of sacrilege. Having gone so far—but I will refrain from mentioning some other makers of novels with regard to whom the same fable might be narrated.

We may easily understand that the accusation of “sameness” is one which is not very serious when preferred against the author of nearly two hundred volumes. As Allibone says, “he who composes a library is not to be judged by the same standard as he who writes but one book.” We must remember that not only Professor Wilson, but Leigh Hunt, about whose taste and discrimination there can be no question, says of him:

“I hail every fresh publication of James, though I half know what he is going to do with his lady, and his gentleman, and his landscape, and his mystery, and his orthodoxy, and his criminal trial. But I am charmed with the new amusement which he brings out of old materials. I look on him as I look on a musician famous for ‘variations.’ I am grateful for his vein of cheerfulness, for his singularly varied and vivid landscapes, for his power of painting women at once lady-like and loving, (a rare talent,) for making lovers to match, at once beautiful and well-bred, and for the solace which all this has afforded me, sometimes over and over again in illness and in convalescence, when I required interest without violence, and entertainment at once animated and mild.”

Allan Cunningham, in his Biographical and Critical History of the Literature of the Last Fifty Years (1833) refers to his excellent taste, extensive knowledge of history, right feeling of the chivalrous, and heroic and ready eye for the picturesque, adding that his proprieties are admirable and his sympathy with whatever is high-souled and noble, deep and impressive. Cunningham was on terms of intimacy with him, as a number of letters from James addressed to him abundantly prove. The Edinburgh Review estimated highly his abilities as a romance writer, declaring that his works were lively and interesting, and animated by a spirit of sound and healthy morality in feeling and of natural deliberation in character which should secure for them a calm popularity which would “last beyond the present day.”

He was not regarded so favorably by the London Athenæum, which said of him: “The first and most obvious contrivance for the attainment of quantity, is, of course, dilution; but this recourse has practically its limit, and Mr. James had reached it long ago. Commonplace in its best day, anything more feeble, vapid—sloppy in fact, (for we know not how to characterize this writer’s style but by some of its own elegancies)—than Mr. James’s manner has become, it were difficult to imagine. Every literary grace has been swamped in the spreading marasmus of his style.”[[48]]

The bewildered reader of reviews is often at a loss to reconcile the censure of one and the praise of another; and it was not very long before the appearance of this slashing article that the Dublin University Magazine had thus expressed its opinions: “His pen is prolific enough to keep the imagination constantly nourished; and of him, more than of any modern writer, it may be said, that he has improved his style by the mere dint of constant and abundant practice. For, although so agreeable a novelist, it must not be forgotten that he stands infinitely higher as an historian.*** The most fantastic and beautiful coruscations which the skies can exhibit to the eyes of mankind dart as if in play from the huge volumes that roll out from the crater of the volcano.*** The recreation of an enlarged intellect is ever more valuable than the highest efforts of a confined one. Hence we find in the works before us, lightly as they have been thrown off, the traces of study—the footsteps of a powerful and vigorous understanding.”[[49]] The works were Corse de Léon, The Ancient Régime, and The Jacquerie—none of them as deserving as Richelieu, Henry Masterton, or Mary of Burgundy. James was a member of the Dublin staff and his friend Lever may have inspired the compliments.

One more review may be noticed. Mr. E. P. Whipple, whose criticisms have not become immortal, evidently disapproved of James, and did not hesitate to say so. It is the old charge of sameness and overproduction. Whipple scored James in the North American Review of April, 1844.

“He is a most scientific expositor of the fact that a man may be a maker of books without being a maker of thoughts; that he may be the reputed author of a hundred volumes and flood the market with his literary wares, and yet have very few ideas and principles for his stock in trade. For the last ten years he has been repeating his own repetitions and echoing his own echoes. His first novel was a shot that went through the target, and he has ever since been assiduously firing through the hole.*** When a man has little or nothing to say, he should say it in the smallest space. He should not, at any rate, take up more room than suffices for a creative mind. He should not provoke hostility and petulance by the effrontery of his demands upon time and patience. He should let us off with a few volumes, and gain our gratitude for his benevolence, if not our praise for his talents.”[[50]]