240 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



would repay the trouble of elaboration. When leisure and luxury 

 produce them he does not always scant their measure, and people of 

 limited vision, — his Lady Julias, his Mrs. Newsomes, his Waymarshes 

 and his Sarah Pococks have a frequent serviceability in providing the 

 element of contrast. We must not conclude that James, though 

 obviously without the inventive exuberance of Balzac and Dickens, 

 was lacking in the ability to produce a variegated world. The subject 

 of "Princess Casamassima" necessitated a dipping down into a stratum 

 of society that he had never systematically explored, and he acquitted 

 himself of his task with some success. The matter resolves itself 

 after all into a question of tone, and one feels that if a butler or a 

 footman came suddenly alive in a book of James there would be an 

 irreparable breach in the suave continuity of the composition. Dick- 

 ens's looser method admitted the irruption of a host of incidental 

 characters into his books, Skimpoles, Jellabys, Jaggerses and the like, 

 whose elimination would leave the story almost bare of interest, and 

 his serving-people are allowed the fullest luxury of self-expression. 

 James's books are bare of incidental characters, and he keeps his 

 servants in rigid line at the hall entrance. A footman may not talk, 

 but he may present a letter or a glass of sherry on a silver tray. And 

 this is not because James is incapable of appreciating, but simply that 

 he designedly neglects, the possibly intelligent and certainly amusing 

 below-stairs version of the dramas enacted on the drawing-room 

 floor. 



Upon one rich tract of country, the region of unawareness, James 

 never set his adventurous feet. Yet primitiveness is a rich mine for 

 the artist who can bring its wealth to the surface. Dogberry, Verges, 

 Slender, Silence and Shadow are a part of the treasure-trove, and 

 Hardy's country-folk were created in the spirit of the same tradition. 

 The proved incapacity of James to represent the unsophisticated 

 strain in human nature is a defect which his admirers must admit. 

 It is one of the penalties he pays for his refinement. 



