He was primarily
a critic; the greatest American critic since Poe. Sometimes he
criticized literature with supreme success, as in his "Notes on
Novelists" of 1914; but ordinarily he criticized life. His later
novels are one-fifth story, one-fifth character creation, and the
rest pure criticism of life.
There is a curious passage in his "A Small Boy and Others"-the
biography of the youth of William James and himself-telling how as
a child in the hotels and resorts of Europe he spent his time in
looking on at what was happening about him. He never got into the
game very far, because he preferred to think about it. That is
what Henry James did all his life long. He looked on, thought
about life with that wonderfully keen, and subtle, and humorous
mind of his, turned it into criticism; then fitted the results
with enough plot to make them move,--and there was a so-called
novel. Every one knows how in his last edition he rewrote some of
his early stories to make them more subtle. It would have been
amusing if he had seen fit to rewrite them altogether as critical
essays upon international life! I wonder how much they would have
suffered by the change.
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