Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/84

 there are certain melodramatic situations, of which they never tire; and a writer who prefers to tell of subtle emotions, of bloodless situations, whose reputation, moreover, does not chiefly rest upon one of those respectable monuments of British industry, novels in three volumes, will never see his works stacked high upon the bookstalls. If, like Mr. James, he is further hampered by a tender literary conscience, which makes him reverent and temperate in the use of words, which hinders him from writing even daintily of things foul, it will go even harder with him, since he cannot hope for a place on that index which has made so many reputations in the marring.

"La qualité Ia plus rare chez la femme," says Balzac, "c'est un certaine gaieté qui n’altère point la tendresse," and surely the rarity may be predicated of other than women, of whole communities indeed. To steer between the Scylla of flippancy on the one hand, and the Charybdis of sentimentality on the other, is given to but few. It is such a perfection of taste, as one would expect an ancient civilization to produce; and, lo! an example of it, a very apostle of form, comes to us over the Atlantic, beyond whose wave the forefathers of his race sought immunity from form, civil and religious.

It is as difficult to express the charm of an individual style in words other than the author’s own as to convey that of music without a snatch of illustrative melody; and this is especially true of a style which, like that of Mr. James, expresses an exquisite sense of fitness rather than a musical ear. It is not that his epigram is ever discordant, but rather that his system of short, closed sentences does not lend itself to flowing cadence.

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