230 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



disadvantages also that brook no denial. It gives us novels that are 

 better composed than any our literature has known: in every detail 

 of incident, in all the delicate variations of mood that reveal the 

 characters we are conscious of the control of the artist over the crude 

 stuff of life. Everything radiates from a centre, and everything is 

 bounded by a circumference which encircles the theme as firmly as its 

 containing wall encompasses a mediaeval town. There is no escape, 

 for guards are set about the gates — superfluous warders since the life 

 within is very mellow and beautiful. Other novelists, Meredith might 

 be named, are frequently poets in lyrical passages that detach them- 

 selves from the context. James conceived all his novels as harmonies; 

 "a common grayness silvers everything;" and what Thackeray 

 achieved once in the poetical atmosphere of "Henry Esmond," James 

 achieved perpetually. But we are wilful enough to wish at times for 

 some irruption of the incongruous, for some disconcerting thrust of 

 humour which might strike an earthquake tremour through the gray 

 walled town and rock its towers with laughter. We are impatient 

 of so much perfection, and as readers we are not always sufficiently 

 artists to enjoy reality so thrice strained and sifted, so winnowed and 

 refined. In his earlier novels the compositional stress is not so 

 importunate, and the diction is comparatively simple. In the later 

 and as I think the finer books, while the structure is more wonderful 

 the diction becomes increasingly involved. The story is clothed in 

 tissue of cloth of gold, so that the muffled magnificence of the style 

 impedes the movement, and compels us to ask whether the author 

 would not more frequently have realised his vaunted economy of 

 action had he been more studious of economy of utterance. 



"The Ambassadors," published in 1903, is one of the late books 

 which illustrates James's compositional methods in their highest 

 rigour. The style by a singularly happy chance is rich yet not en- 

 cumbered, and therefore both for method and expression this book has 

 always seemed to me his greatest achievement in fiction. 



The story is launched with Mr. Strether's arrival in England 

 from WooUett, Massachusetts, on a vague mission which presently 

 reveals itself. He is a hero of fifty-five, and thirty years before he had 

 had a brief initiation into European civilization, but has passed the 

 later spring and summer of his life in Woollett where the Puritan 

 virtues flourish, and where the easy accessibility of Boston communi- 

 cates the only intellectual glow. He has been conducting a review in 

 the interests of its wealthy proprietor, a widow named Mrs. Newsome, 

 who has evidently determined to reward his services with the gift of 

 her fortune and her hand. Pending this event he is sent journeying 

 abroad to Paris, in order to redeem young Chad Newsome from some 



