The former is the negative, the latter the positive treatment.
Both have their merits; but the latter is, perhaps, the better adapted to
novels, the former to essays. A novelist should not only know what he has
got; he should also know what he wants. His mind should have an active, or
theorizing, as well as a passive, or contemplative, side. He should have
energy to discount the people he personally knows; the power to perceive
what phases of thought are to be represented, as well as to describe the
persons who happen to be their least inadequate representatives; the
sagacity to analyze the age or the moment, and to reveal its tendency and
meaning. Mr. Howells has produced a great deal of finely wrought tapestry;
but does not seem, as yet, to have found a hall fit to adorn it with.
And yet Mr. James and Mr. Howells have done more than all the rest of us
to make our literature respectable during the last ten years. If texture
be the object, they have brought texture to a fineness never surpassed
anywhere. They have discovered charm and grace in much that was only blank
before. They have detected and described points of human nature hitherto
unnoticed, which, if not intrinsically important, will one day be made
auxiliary to the production of pictures of broader as well as minuter
veracity than have heretofore been produced.
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