Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/120

94 HENRY JAMES solid Sundays. And doubly therefore does it stand as another symptom of the quality of democratic sympathy which is the heart of his whole work. Democratic enough in itself (goodness knows), it is also exactly the backlash and consequence of the tension he created in his equally democratic desire to register honourably the little things of daily life. Too perfect a humility makes Hamlets of us all. And it is the Hamlets of the world who see ghosts. . . . Time ! " Ghosts " is my three-thousand-and-oddth word. And there is so much yet left to say. We have seen indeed how his very eagerness and devotion led him into remote and dubious ways. But there ought further to be shown (an oddly charming sight) the way the self -same qualities of eagerness and sym- pathy worked to save what they had half destroyed. That beautiful outer urbanity, which concealed their excesses so perfectly, was one of their achievements. They enabled his prose to absorb so many qualities, so many kinds of epithets and images, that it could make the most extravagant gestures as it moved and yet maintain an air of bland composure. It is the most " universal " — the most republican — prose in our literature — composed of more elements than any other, deriving from sources more varied, maintaining its health and balance by an intricate system of counter- poise and cross-fertilization. If the style is the man, as people keep on saying, then Mr. James's humility could be triumphantly proved by simply analysing a series of his sentences. Incessantly, on the one hand, they are dowering the smallest acts, facts, or features with great spreading pinions of imagery. As often, on the other, they are expressing the subtlest appre- hensions in terms domestic, idiomatic, colloquial — using a sort of celestial slang. And the result of this inter-