_Those whose palates are accustomed to the subtle flavours of the wines
of the Rhine and Moselle can smack their lips and name the vintage at
the first taste. Likewise any one fairly familiar with the work of Mr.
James during his forty years of literary activity can, after the reading
of a single page taken at random, judge with a remarkable accuracy the
date of its composition. Yet the transition has not been abrupt and the
styles of writing which the author has adopted, early, middle and late,
have blended in such a way that he has been bringing many of his earlier
readers, though some have fallen by the wayside, along with him to a
genuine appreciation of his present work._
_It is not unnatural but disappointing that those of the present
generation who chance to meet Mr. James in one of the later novels are
not as likely to seek a second volume as those who read_ Daisy Miller
_some thirty years ago when that study first appeared, so fresh in its
note of charm and pathos, in the now almost unfindable brown wrappers
of Harper's Half Hour Series, for they may forever miss a rare
enjoyment._
_In the critical papers which make up the contents of this book, the
characteristics of the author's later style are wholly absent. Without
the date of the original appearance of these essays in periodical form
being indicated, the chronological setting of this work is apparent. No
sentences with marvelously intricate complications of construction and
with expressions involved are in the author's method at this time, while
for clearness and charm these views and reviews are admirable specimens,
showing qualities which brought Mr. James his early readers and first
made his name an essential feature of the announcements of publishers of
the more discriminating periodicals forty years ago._
_The earliest authenticated magazine article by Mr. James--printed when
he was twenty-one--is a critical notice of Nassau W. Senior's_ Essays on
Fiction _in_ The North American Review _for October, 1864. From this
time until the appearance of his first volume_--A Passionate Pilgrim and
Other Tales, _Boston: 1875--as many as one hundred and twenty-five
serious literary notices contributed to periodicals can be traced to
him_.
_During this period it must also be remembered that Mr. James was
equally employed in writing short stories, art criticism and notes of
travel, both at home and abroad, and that these were also distinctive
features of the widely scattered journals in which they appeared._
_In_ The North American Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Galaxy,
Lippincott's Magazine, The New York Tribune, The Independent _and some
other periodicals, the authorship of such work was attributed to Mr.
James on the publication of the articles or in regularly issued
indexes._
_The articles in_ The Nation _are seldom signed, and there is no
published index showing the contributors to its files. In preparing a
recent[*] Bibliography of the writings of Henry James I had access to a
record which the late Wendell Phillips Garrison, who was Mr. Godkin's
associate from the founding of the paper and after 1881 editor in charge
until June 28, 1906, had carefully kept of every author's work which his
paper had published since its first issue. The amount of matter which
Mr. James had provided, and the variety of interests concerning which he
wrote, made an amazing array of notes. It is from the early issues of_
The Nation _that much of the contents of this volume is reprinted. Of
Mr. James's contributions to periodicals those to this paper were
perhaps the most notable as well as the most frequent. He was
represented in its first number--July 6, 1865--by some critical notes on
Henry W. Kingsley's novel_, "The Hillyars and the Bartons: A Story of
Two Families," _under the title_, "The Noble School of Fiction," _and
the name "Henry James" appears in the publisher's announced list of
contributors to the early volumes. Many of these papers which first
appeared in_ The Nation _have been reprinted, but few readers at this
distance can realize how much the esteem in which that journal was
immediately held under the editorial supervision of Mr. Godkin was due
to perhaps its youngest regular contributor._
[*] _A Bibliography of the Writings of Henry James. Boston and
New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1906_.
_Volumes of the collected critical papers have already
appeared_,--French Poets and Novelists, London: _1878, and_ Partial
Portraits, _London: 1888, are the more notable,--but by far the greater
part of these contemporary Essays on the literature of the late sixties
and the seventies are now almost lost in the files of old or extinct
periodicals._
_We are accustomed these later years to think of Mr. James as novelist
rather than literary essayist and he has been cited by a recent writer
as an author of fiction who becomes a critic on occasion and, he also
adds, that his analytical system of novel writing excellently fits him
for the office of critic; but, on the contrary, the papers in this
volume seem to show that his early self-training as a critic has been
the preparation for the creation of his characters in fiction._
_The true lover of Mr. James's work feels the same delightful sense of
intimate discovery in touching these early papers that an artist does in
finding a portfolio of early sketches by a beloved master whose
developed power and strength is known to him. There is the recognition
of the characteristic touch even here--the insight, the thought within a
thought, (more lately the despair of privileged psychologic athletes),
the mystery of seeing--not what is apparent to the outward eye but what
we fancied we concealed successfully within our inmost selves. There is
the extraordinary sense of his having put on paper what we really
thought--what we now think--that gives us more faith than ever in our
artist who is expression for us who feel, but who are yet dumb._
_LE ROY PHILLIPS._
_Boston, April 10, 1908._