Transactions of The Royal Society of Canada 



SECTION II 

 Series III DECEMBER, 1918, and MARCH, 1919 Vol. XII 



Henry James and his Method 

 By Pelham Edgar, Ph.D., F.R.S.C. 



(Read May Meeting, 1918) 



Foreign critics of the Latin race reconcile themselves with diffi- 

 culty to the seeming lawlessness of our literature, and native critics 

 like Matthew Arnold who are steeped in the Latin tradition concede 

 us energy, enthusiasm, humour and imagination, but deny us the 

 virtues that derive from organization and intellectual control. Our 

 successes are prodigious, but they seem frequently to be attained in 

 defiance of law and in despite of art. The pages of Voltaire and 

 Coleridge familiarize us sufficiently with the argument and its re- 

 buttal in so far as poetry and the drama are concerned, and we flatter 

 ourselves that a very good case has been made out in defence of our 

 alleged Gothic extravagance. But our very triumph is a concession, 

 for we are not content until we have demonstrated that our irregular- 

 ities are not wayward extravagance, but are subordinated in all strict- 

 ness to the laws of the creative imagination. 



What these laws of poetry and the drama may be I am not here 

 concerned to state, and such as they are they exist not in any formal 

 book of rules but in the mind and conscience of the artist. My 

 present consideration is with prose fiction, that latest and lustiest 

 birth of literature, which seems but yesterday to have outgrown the 

 creeping stage of groping experimentation. I wish to consider some 

 of the problems that the novel presents, and by an examination of the 

 work of a few of the acknowledged masters of the craft I would if 

 possible reach some conclusions as to the most effective methods 

 whereby the novelist obtains from his material the maximum of result. 

 I am well aware that many successful writers who might admit that 

 they had an intention would deny that they had a method. We have 

 the assurance of Scott and Dickens and George Sand that their novels 

 planned themselves fortuitously, and that the development of the 

 situations, sometimes even of the characters, was as great a surprise 

 to them as to their readers. In a negative sense we may claim this 



