of his character. But the reader will scarcely fail to recognize in Benvolio the restless type divided between love and literature, for which James was his own model. Henry James himself tells us that he drew on autobiographical material in writing his early tales.
It is interesting to observe the picture of the young James as he shows it to us in his early works. For it is safe to assume that the type of character he draws most frequently is the one that approximates most closely to himself. The young man we meet oftenest in the pages of James's early tales and works is a romantic, gentlemanly, persistent wooer, a young man travelling in Europe, interested in art or literature. He falls in love, often with no encouragement, and is invariably baffled in his love. In almost every case, however, the youth takes his medicine, for he is chivalrous to the point of annoyance, and he never forgets that he is a gentleman. There are several such types in "The Portrait of a Lady." Roderick Hudson is of that type. Sometimes the young man has his affection returned but is thwarted in the end, like Christopher Newman in "The American." And in many of James's shorter stories the plot centers round the ill success of a man desiring marriage.
Such then, in the large, must have been our young author himself. This view of him we find confirmed
