G. P. R. James.

I was interested not long ago in a remark of the accomplished literary reviewer of the Providence Journal about reading for boys. He said: “As a matter of fact, there is plenty of good, healthy reading for boys if parents and teachers would do more to bring it to their attention. To say nothing of Scott—whom some degenerate youngsters in these days profess to find stupid—there are Ainsworth, G. P. R. James, Mayne Reid and hosts of others who can tell stories of adventure that any healthy minded boy will enjoy.” I know well the sound and refined judgments of my Providence friend,—who castigated me once for my opinion that Cowper was not much read in these times—but I do not understand how he can imagine a boy of the twentieth century condescending to read Ainsworth or James. First and foremost, the novels are too long. The conventional three volumes demanded by the English public are revolting to the minds of the modern boys who want their fiction condensed and flavored with tabasco sauce. The Providence critic and I know—or think we know—what they ought to read, what would be good for their intellectual digestion; but we might as well offer them pre-digested tablets in lieu of chocolate creams. The young person will not now subsist on a diet of Ainsworth or of James. The long-spun dialogue would bore him. He calls for something more piquant; revels in slang; wants “sensation” and plenty of it, compressed in a small compass. As for the parents, they do not know much better themselves. The man of Providence well says: “The trouble is, as was pointed out in these columns recently in discussing the reading of girls, that the home atmosphere is all against any intelligent selection of books.” The prevalent antagonism to all that is called “old-fashioned” is not limited to the young people, and the novels of James are, in comparison with the novels of to-day as old-fashioned as are the plays of Massinger in comparison with those of Bernard Shaw.

James has been compared to Dumas, and there are many things in common between the two authors—their voluminous publications, their bent towards the historical, and their use of an amanuensis. A critic, not very well disposed towards James, says in regard to this comparison, “both had a certain gift of separating from the picturesque parts of history what could without difficulty be worked up into picturesque fiction, and both were possessed of a ready pen. Here, however, the likeness ends. Of purely literary talent, James had little. His plots are poor, his descriptions weak, his dialogue often below even a fair average, and he was deplorably prone to repeat himself.”[[68]] This harsh judgment appears to me to be far too severe. His descriptions are not weak, and he surely had an advantage over Dumas in the matter of decency and morality.

But the most ardent admirers of this hard-working and conscientious toiler in the fields of literature must own that in all his multitudinous pages he has not given to the world a single character which has endured in the popular mind, and the Podsnap virtue of having written no word which could bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, cannot remedy this flaw in his title. Writers who rival him in productiveness but who are in respects inferior to him, have nevertheless secured a more permanent place in the hall of fame, because they have been able to give to some of their personages a real and distinctive life. Leather-Stocking and Long Tom Coffin shine forth from the many wearisome chapters of Fenimore Cooper, Count Fosco and Captain Wragge from the ephemeral volumes of Wilkie Collins, and Mrs. Proudie from the placid chronicles of Anthony Trollope, but they have no kinsmen in the works of James. Even in the historical stories no individual stands forth like Louis XI. in Quentin Durward or Rienzi in Bulwer’s stirring tale. Nor has he left to posterity any brilliant tour de force like the “Dick Turpin’s Ride” of Harrison Ainsworth.

Whatever may be said of the diffuseness and sameness of the stories, of their want of definite plan, their lack of strength in the development of the characters who throng their pages, and the evidence they afford of hasty composition, it must be admitted that they are clean and dignified in tone and that they display a wonderful acquaintance with history as well as a faithful and conscientious use of materials gathered with infinite pains and laborious research. These qualities, however, are not those which ensure literary immortality; and while it is possible that the best of the books may find from time to time readers incited to peruse them by a certain curiosity, and while the lovers of good stories may enjoy them, it is not likely that they will ever rank with the novels of Scott, of Thackeray, of Dickens, or even of Marryat and Lever, although they may occupy a place on the shelves of our libraries by the side of the old romances of the period of Amadis de Gaul or the forgotten tales of the younger Crébillon.

APPENDIX
A LIST OF THE WORKS OF G. P. R. JAMES

It is difficult to give an accurate list of James’s books with the dates of their publication. The one given by Allibone is the most complete, but it is not always correct. The catalogue of the British Museum enumerates sixty-seven novels. The following does not include merely edited works or those prepared in collaboration with others, with a few exceptions. Those marked with an asterisk are reprinted in the collected edition of 1844–1849. I was much helped not only in correcting the Allibone list, but in the preparation of the sketch of James, by the late G. H. Sass of Charleston, S. C., who was probably better informed about the subject than any one else in this country.

Life of Edward the Black Prince: 2 vols.: 1822. [Some accounts give 1836: See ante, page [136].]

The Ruined City: a poem.

Richelieu: 3 vols.: 1829.