And the same, I think, is true of _The Golden Bowl._ That again is a wonderful exercise in virtuosity; but a score of his slighter sketches seem to me infinitely nearer to the truth and vitality of great art. The book in which perhaps technique and life are most perfectly blended--at any rate, among the later novels--is _The Ambassador_. There, the skill with which a deeply interesting subject is focused from many points of view, but always with the fascinating unity given to it, both by the personality of the "Ambassador" and by the mystery to which every character in the book is related, is kept in its place, the servant, not the master, of the theme. And the climax--which is the river scene, when the "Ambassador" penetrates at last the long-kept secret of the lovers--is as right as it is surprising, and sinks away through admirable modulations to the necessary close. And what beautiful things in the course of the handling!--the old French Academician and his garden, on the _rive gauche_, for example; or the summer afternoon on the upper Seine, with its pleasure-boats, and the red parasol which finally tells all--a picture drawn with the sparkle and truth of a Daubigny, only the better to bring out the unwelcome fact which is its center. _The Ambassador_ is the masterpiece of Mr. James's later work and manner, just as _The Portrait of a Lady_ is the masterpiece of the earlier. And the whole?--his final place?--when the stars of his generation rise into their place above the spent field? I, at least, have no doubt whatever about his security of fame; though very possibly he may be no more generally read in the time to come than are most of the other great masters of literature. Personally, I regret that, from _What Maisie Knew_ onward, he adopted the method of dictation. A mind so teeming, and an art so flexible, were surely the better for the slight curb imposed by the physical toil of writing. I remember how and when we first discussed the _pros_ and _cons_ of dictation, on the fell above Cartmel Chapel, when he was with us at Levens in 1887. He was then enchanted by the endless vistas of work and achievement which the new method seemed to open out. And indeed it is plain that he produced more with it than he could have produced without it. Also, that in the use of dictation, as in everything else, he showed himself the extraordinary craftsman that he was, to whom all difficulty was a challenge, and the conquest of it a delight. Still, the diffuseness and over-elaboration which were the natural snares of his astonishing gifts were encouraged rather than checked by the new method; and one is jealous of anything whatever that may tend to stand between him and the unstinted pleasure of those to come after.