"Miss Bellard's Inspiration," by Howells, are excellent examples of how these writers maintain to the end the reader's tense interest in their psychological riddles.

"Daisy Miller," regarded as a portrait-this is admitted by all of James's critics, even those adversely inclined-is unsurpassed in American literature. The young American girl, who, without culture, almost without education, understands the art of dressing like a lady of the best society, and who accepts the homage of the male world like a born princess, as a fitting tribute; who allows herself all sorts of liberties without ever compromising herself, who defies and torments the man she loves because his spiritual superiority oppresses her-this study of a woman really comprehends all the psychological art that has made James famous; only the colors are fresher, the lines more vigorous, the whole a youthful inspiration.

Undiscerning critics, to whom the suggestive art of this novelist does not appeal, have found Daisy Miller's attitude toward her admirers enigmatical, her early death in Rome forced, the dénouement unsatisfactory. Henry James has no doubt smilingly thought to himself regarding such censors: "My dear sir, I did not

write this story for you; you are a reader after Martin Tupper's and Marie Corelli's own heart."

Of the longer stories the three-volume novel entitled "The Portrait of a Lady," in spite of the thread of the story being, on the whole, too long drawn-out, contains a number of characters that are simply unforgettable; above all, the "lady" herself, Isabel Archer, again an American, but this time (in contrast with Daisy Miller) an over-refined spirit that is almost wrecked by her over-refinement.

The literary ideal of this group is expressed by Howells in few words:

"I wonder," says a Bostonian who is fascinated by Quebec's picturesque charms, “Quebec isn't infested by artists the whole summer long. They go about hungrily picking up bits of the picturesque along our shores and country roads when they might exchange their famine for a feast by coming here."

"I suppose," replies the heroine of the story, "there's a pleasure in finding out the small graces and beauties of the poverty-stricken subjects, that they wouldn't have in better ones, isn't there? At any rate, if I were to write a story, I should want to take the slightest sort of plot, and lay the scene in the dullest kind of place,

and then bring out all their possibilities. I'll tell you a book after my own heart: 'Details'just the history of a week in the life of some young people who happen together in an old New England country house; nothing extraordinary, little, everyday things told so exquisitely, and all fading naturally away without any particular result, only the full meaning of everything brought out.

It often results from this self-conscious art that the artist, in his effort not to be dominated by matter, commits the mistake of renouncing matter altogether-of wishing to make bricks with neither loam nor straw.

*"A Chance Acquaintance," Boston, 1874, p. 164.

CHAPTER VII

THE HUMORISTS

1. GENERAL. No species of literature is represented in America with such richness, variety, completeness, and brilliancy as that shown in its humor. Humorists of genius and esprit, who turn to this subtlest form of art, like Oliver Wendell Holmes, and are satisfied if their whimsical words elicit a smile; popular humorists, who pre-suppose in their readers no more than a little knowledge of human nature, and provoke bursts of laughter, like Mark Twain; humorists who appeal to the boisterousness latent in us all, like Artemus Ward, and tickle us with the rudest devices of a clown, so that we roar-all these are found in greater abundance in American literature than in that of any other country.

2. REFINED HUMOR.-Refined humor finds its highest literary expression in "elegant" poetry, in the so-called vers de société, or, as the Americans prefer to call it, familiar

verse,* which occupies about the same place in poetry that still-life or genre pictures do in painting. The master of this species, as LockerLampson declares, is Oliver Wendell Holmes, and as examples of this kind we may designate his exquisite poems Contentment, To an Insect, The Last Leaf, On Lending a PunchBowl, Bill and Joe, Dorothy Q.t

John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) leans too much upon the English poet Praed‡, but surpasses his prototype through his American vivacity; The Mourner à la Mode, The Heart and the Liver, Little Jerry, My Familiar, Early Rising, The Pedagogue, are most deserving of mention.

To Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855-1896), who · conducted Puck for a number of years, we are indebted-besides his lively prose sketches which link him with the short-story writers-for a number of vers de société: The Way to Arcady, Candor, The Chaperon, Forfeits, Poetry and the Poet.

*The character of this peculiar species, little regarded in German literary criticism, is discussed at length by Frederick LockerLampson in the introduction to his anthology Lyra Elegantiarum (Kellner, Die Englische Literatur im Zeitalter der Königin Viktoria, p. 171), and by Brander Matthews, "American Familiar Verse," p. 1-28.

†on Oliver Wendell Holmes, see above 1, Chap. 5. Kellner, loc. cit. p. 163.