So early was to begin my tendency to _overtreat_, rather than undertreat (when there was choice or danger) my subject. (Many members of my craft, I gather, are far from agreeing with me, but I have always held overtreating the minor disservice.) ... There was the danger of the noted "thinness"--which was to be averted, tooth and nail, by cultivation of the lively.... And then there was another matter. I had, within the few preceding years, come to live in London, and the "international" light lay, in those days, to my sense, thick and rich upon the scene. It was the light in which so much of the picture hung. But that _is_ another matter. There is really too much to say. 3. Remember the following clues in reading James's, work: "His one preoccupation was the criticism, for his own purpose, of the art of life." The emphasis is on the word _art_. His _purpose_ is suggested by his own claim to have "that tender appreciation of actuality which makes even the application of a single coat of rose-color seem an act of violence." 4. There is suggestion of Mr. James's limitations in the facts that he was tone deaf and so could not appreciate music, and that he is said not to have written a line of verse, and also in the fact that although his method of presentation in the novels is dramatic throughout and he strongly desired to write plays, the eight plays that he wrote (three of which were presented) were failures. 5. Mr. James's place in the sequence of great European novelists is as a follower of Balzac, Flaubert, De Maupassant, and Turgenev, and as a predecessor of Conrad (whose study of him listed below should be read). 6. Early in the nineties, a great change in method came about in James's work (cf. _Cambridge_, III, 98, 103). Judge separately typical books written before this change and others written after; then read several books of the period of change and decide what happened and whether or not it enhanced the value of his work. 7. One of the remarkable facts about James's style is its influence upon the critics who write about him. A close analysis of its qualities--sentence length, the order and placing of the parts of the sentence, punctuation, vocabulary, etc., might bring a more definite understanding of the reasons for this influence. 8. A comparison of the work and qualities of Henry and William James might be made a valuable contribution to criticism. 9. For a student familiar with Europe, a study of the reasons for James's affinity with Europe and dislike for American life would make an interesting study. 10. What different types of reasons can you bring to show that Henry James is likely to be a permanent force in American literature? BIBLIOGRAPHY