Especially his critical familiarity with French literature
operated to broaden, if at the same time to render less trenchant, his
method and expression. His characters are drawn with fastidious care, and
closely follow the tones and fashions of real life. Each utterance is so
exactly like what it ought to be that the reader feels the same sort of
pleased surprise as is afforded by a phonograph which repeats, with all
the accidental pauses and inflections, the speech spoken into it. Yet the
words come through a medium; they are not quite spontaneous; these figures
have not the sad, human inevitableness of Turguenieff's people. The reason
seems to be (leaving the difference between the genius of the two writers
out of account) that the American, unlike the Russian, recognizes no
tragic importance in the situation. To the latter, the vision of life is
so ominous that his voice waxes sonorous and terrible; his eyes, made keen
by foreboding, see the leading elements of the conflict, and them only; he
is no idle singer of an empty day, but he speaks because speech springs
out of him. To his mind, the foundations of human welfare are in jeopardy,
and it is full time to decide what means may avert the danger.
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