book I

would have sent you but I could not get a copy worth sending. It has found favor in the South and is powerfully abused in the North, both which circumstances tend to increase the sale so that it has been wonderfully well read.***

I am sorry I did not think of taking notes of all the winning conversations at Berkeley. We might have made out together some few from the Noctes Berkelianae.

Yours ever, G. P. R. JAMES.

I was interested not long ago in a remark of the accomplished literary reviewer of the _Providence Journal_ about reading for boys. He said: “As a matter of fact, there is plenty of good, healthy reading for boys if parents and teachers would do more to bring it to their attention. To say nothing of Scott—whom some degenerate youngsters in these days profess to find stupid—there are Ainsworth, G. P. R. James, Mayne Reid and hosts of others who can tell stories of adventure that any healthy minded boy will enjoy.” I know well the sound and refined judgments of my Providence friend,—who castigated me once for my opinion that Cowper was not much read in these times—but I do not understand how he can imagine a boy of the twentieth century condescending to read Ainsworth or James. First and foremost, the novels are too long. The conventional three volumes demanded by the English public are revolting to the minds of the modern boys who want their fiction condensed and flavored with tabasco sauce. The Providence critic and I know—or think we know—what they ought to read, what would be good for their intellectual digestion; but we might as well offer them pre-digested tablets in lieu of chocolate creams. The young person will not now subsist on a diet of Ainsworth or of James. The long-spun dialogue would bore him. He calls for something more piquant; revels in slang; wants “sensation” and plenty of it, compressed in a small compass. As for the parents, they do not know much better themselves. The man of Providence well says: “The trouble is, as was pointed out in these columns recently in discussing the reading of girls, that the home atmosphere is all against any intelligent selection of books.” The prevalent antagonism to all that is called “old-fashioned” is not limited to the young people, and the novels of James are, in comparison with the novels of to-day as old-fashioned as are the plays of Massinger in comparison with those of Bernard Shaw.

James has been compared to Dumas, and there are many things in common between the two authors—their voluminous publications, their bent towards the historical, and their use of an amanuensis. A critic, not very well disposed towards James, says in regard to this comparison, “both had a certain gift of separating from the picturesque parts of history what could without difficulty be worked up into picturesque fiction, and both were possessed of a ready pen. Here, however, the likeness ends. Of purely literary talent, James had little. His plots are poor, his descriptions weak, his dialogue often below even a fair average, and he was deplorably prone to repeat himself.”[68] This harsh judgment appears to me to be far too severe. His descriptions are not weak, and he surely had an advantage over Dumas in the matter of decency and morality.

But the most ardent admirers of this hard-working and conscientious toiler in the fields of literature must own that in all his multitudinous pages he has not given to the world a single character which has endured in the popular mind, and the Podsnap virtue of having written no word which could bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, cannot remedy this flaw in his title. Writers who rival him in productiveness but who are in respects inferior to him, have nevertheless secured a more permanent place in the hall of fame, because they have been able to give to some of their personages a real and distinctive life. Leather-Stocking and Long Tom Coffin shine forth from the many wearisome chapters of Fenimore Cooper, Count Fosco and Captain Wragge from the ephemeral volumes of Wilkie Collins, and Mrs. Proudie from the placid chronicles of Anthony Trollope, but they have no kinsmen in the works of James. Even in the historical stories no individual stands forth like Louis XI. in _Quentin Durward_ or Rienzi in Bulwer’s stirring tale. Nor has he left to posterity any brilliant _tour de force_ like the “Dick Turpin’s Ride” of Harrison Ainsworth.

Whatever may be said of the diffuseness and sameness of the stories, of their want of definite plan, their lack of strength in the development of the characters who throng their pages, and the evidence they afford of hasty composition, it must be admitted that they are clean and dignified in tone and that they display a wonderful acquaintance with history as well as a faithful and conscientious use of materials gathered with infinite pains and laborious research. These qualities, however, are not those which ensure literary immortality; and while it is possible that the best of the books may find from time to time readers incited to peruse them by a certain curiosity, and while the lovers of good stories may enjoy them, it is not likely that they will ever rank with the novels of Scott, of Thackeray, of Dickens, or even of Marryat and Lever, although they may occupy a place on the shelves of our libraries by the side of the old romances of the period of _Amadis de Gaul_ or the forgotten tales of the younger Crébillon.

APPENDIX A LIST OF THE WORKS OF G. P. R. JAMES

It is difficult to give an accurate list of James’s books with the dates of their publication. The one given by Allibone is the most complete, but it is not always correct. The catalogue of the British Museum enumerates sixty-seven novels. The following does not include merely edited works or those prepared in collaboration with others, with a few exceptions. Those marked with an asterisk are reprinted in the collected edition of 1844–1849. I was much helped not only in correcting the Allibone list, but in the preparation of the sketch of James, by the late G. H. Sass of Charleston, S. C., who was probably better informed about the subject than any one else in this country.

Life of Edward the Black Prince: 2 vols.: 1822. [Some accounts give 1836: See _ante_, page 136.]

The Ruined City: a poem.

Richelieu: 3 vols.: 1829.

*Darnley: 3 vols.: 1830.

*Del’Orme: 3 vols.: 1830.

*Philip Augustus: 3 vols.: 1831.

Memoirs of Great Commanders: 3 vols.: 1832.

*Henry Masterton: 3 vols.: 1832.

History of Charlemagne. 1832.

*Mary of Burgundy: 3 vols.: 1833.

*Delaware: 3 vols.: 1833: (reprinted under title of “Thirty Years Since,” 1848).

*John Marston Hall: 3 vols.: 1834: (reprinted under title of “The Little Ball o’ Fire,” 1847).

*One in a Thousand: 3 vols.: 1835.

*The Gipsey: 3 vols.: 1835.

Educational Institutions of Germany: 1836.

Lives of the Most Eminent Foreign Statesman: 5 vols.: 4 by James, 1836, [1832?] 1838.

Attila: 3 vols.: 1837.

Memoirs of Celebrated Women: 3 vols. (?) 1837.

*The Robber: 3 vols.: 1838.

Book of the Passions: 1838.

History of Louis XIV. 4 vols.: 1838.

*The Huguenot: 3 vols.: 1838.

Blanche of Navarre: a play: 1839.

Charles Tyrrell: 2 vols.: 1839.

*The Gentleman of the Old School: 3 vols.: 1839.

*Henry of Guise: 3 vols.: 1839.

History of the United States Boundary Question: 1839.

*The King’s Highway: 3 vols.: 1840.

The Man at Arms: 3 vols.: 1840.

Rose d’Albret: 3 vols.: 1840.

The Jacquerie: 3 vols.: 1841.

The Vernon Letters: 3 vols.: (edited). 1841.

*Castleneau; or the Ancient Régime: 3 vols.: 1841.

*The Brigand; or Corse de Léon: 3 vols.: 1841.

Corn Laws.

History of Richard Cœur de Lion: 4 vols.: 1841–42.

Commissioner; or De Lunatico Inquirendo: 1842.

*Morley Ernstein: 3 vols.: 1842.

Eva St. Clair, and Other Tales: 2 vols.: 1843.

The False Heir: 3 vols.: 1843.

*Forest Days: 3 vols.: 1843.

History of Chivalry: 1843.

*Arabella Stuart: 3 vols.: 1843.

*Agincourt: 3 vols.: 1844.

Arrah Neil: 3 vols.: 1845.

The Smuggler: 3 vols.: 1845.

Heidelberg: 3 vols.: 1846.

The Stepmother: 3 vols.: 1846.

Whim and its Consequences: 3 vols.: 1847.

Margaret Graham: 2 vols.: 1847.

The Last of the Fairies: 1847.

The Castle of Ehrenstein: 3 vols.: 1847.

The Woodman: 3 vols.: 1847.

The Convict: 3 vols.: 1847.

Life of Henry IV. of France: 3 vols.: 1847.

Russell: 3 vols.: 1847.

Sir Theodore Broughton: 3 vols.: 1847.

Beauchamp: 3 vols.: 1848.

Carmazalaman; a Fairy Drama: 1848.

The Fight of the Fiddlers: 1848.

Forgery; or Best Intentions: 3 vols.: 1848.

*Gowrie; or the King’s Plot: 1848.

Dark Scenes of History: 3 vols.: 1849.

John Jones’ Tales from English History: 2 vols.: 1849.

A String of Pearls: 2 vols.: 1849. [His first written book; published 1833 (?); Allibone assigns its publication to 1849].

Ireland’s “David Rizzio”: 1849: (edited).

Heathfield’s “Means of Relief from Taxation”: 1849: (edited).

Henry Smeaton: 3 vols.: 1850.

The Fate: 3 vols.: 1851.

Revenge: (sometimes called A Story Without a Name): 3 vols.: 1851.

Pequinillo: 3 vols.: 1852.

Adrian; or the Clouds of the Mind: (jointly with M. B. Field): 2 vols.: 1852.

Agnes Sorel: 3 vols.: 1853.

Ticonderoga; or the Black Eagle: 3 vols.: 1854.

Prince Life: 1855.

The Old Dominion; or the Southampton Massacre: 3 vols.: 1856.

Lord Montagu’s Page: 1858.

The Cavalier: (Bernard March?): 1859.

Adra; or the Peruvians: a poem: (_circa_, 1829).

The City of the Silent: a poem.

The Desultory Man: 3 vols.

Life of Vicissitudes.

My Aunt Pontypool: 3 vols.

The Old Oak Chest: 3 vols.

-----

Footnote 1:

Trevelyan’s Life of Macaulay, I, 93.

Footnote 2:

Tennyson: E. L. Cary, 19.

Footnote 3:

A Great Punch Editor, London, 1907.

Footnote 4:

My Study Windows, 337.

Footnote 5:

See a review in _The Literary Collector_, September, 1905.

Footnote 6:

See Temple Bar Edition, iii, 51–52.

Footnote 7:

Blackwood, April, 1827.

Footnote 8:

Sala’s Life and Adventures (1896), 83.

Footnote 9:

Axon’s Memoir, xxiii: _The World_, March 28, 1878.

Footnote 10:

Forster’s Dickens, i. 141.

Footnote 11:

Life of Lady Blessington, iii. 226, 227.

Footnote 12:

_Idem._, iii. 224.

Footnote 13:

January 3, 1840: Letters, Am. Edition, 1870, ii. p. 218.

Footnote 14:

Forster’s _Life of Dickens_, I, 118.

Footnote 15:

Life of Cruikshank (1882), i, 48–49.

Footnote 16:

Dictionary of National Biography, _Cruikshank_.

Footnote 17:

Vol. I, 211.

Footnote 18:

See introduction to Biographical Edition of Thackeray, IV. 19.

Footnote 19:

British Artists from Hogarth to Turner, ii, 59.

Footnote 20:

Vol. ii, 321–322.

Footnote 21:

Dict. Nat. Biog., i, 198.

Footnote 22:

Autobiography, iv, 390–393.

Footnote 23:

As a matter of curiosity, I examined the twenty-one novels composing the “Revised Edition” of 1844–1849 to ascertain just how many introduced the horseman or horsemen in the first chapter. Seven disclose them; in eight they are absent; in four, the horsemen are “a party”; in two, they appear in the second chapter, the first being merely introductory.

Footnote 24:

Brander Matthews: Aspects of Fiction, 153.

Footnote 25:

They are said to have caused the death of Oliver Goldsmith, and pamphlets were published on the subject. Foster’s _Oliver Goldsmith_, II. 461–463.

Footnote 26:

Boswell (Geo. Birkbeck Hill’s Edition), I. 183.

Footnote 27:

_Id._, III. 442.

Footnote 28:

Memories: by M. B. Field p. 188—Harper’s, 1874.

Footnote 29:

Allibone gives the date of publication as 1849; but it must have been published in some form prior to May 17, 1833. See _post_, page 184.

Footnote 30:

Works Vol. I. “The Gipsey,” vii.

Footnote 31:

Dictionary of National Biography, xxix, 209–210.

Footnote 32:

Fitzpatrick’s Life of Lever, II. 21.

Footnote 33:

This is all according to Field, and may be taken for what it is worth.

Footnote 34:

Memoirs, 191–195.

Footnote 35:

It is said, but on rather dubious authority, that he was sometimes called “George Prince Regent James,” and that many believed it to be his real name.

Footnote 36:

See Appendix.

Footnote 37:

Works, Vol. I. xiv.

Footnote 38:

Letter to Cunningham, _post_, page—.

Footnote 39:

Letter of C. L. James.

Footnote 40:

English Lands, Letters and Kings, 284.

Footnote 41:

Life of Lever, II. 21.

Footnote 42:

Fitzpatrick’s Life of Lever II. 418.

Footnote 43:

Noctes Ambrosianæ, II. 370—Blackwood Edition, 1887.

Footnote 44:

Marginalia, Black’s Edition—III. 393.

Footnote 45:

Hall’s Book of Memories, 263.

Footnote 46:

Jerdan’s Autobiography, iv 210.

Footnote 47:

It was R. H. Horne. A New Spirit of the Age (1844) p. 136.

Footnote 48:

London Athenæum, April 11, 1846.

Footnote 49:

Dublin University Magazine, March, 1842.

Footnote 50:

Essays and Reviews, ii, 116, 137.

Footnote 51:

Derby’s Fifty Years Among Authors, etc. 405.

Footnote 52:

My Confidences, 161.

Footnote 53:

My Confidences, 533, 534.

Footnote 54:

Mr. Gladstone succeeded Lord Ripon as President of the Board of Trade and took his seat in the Cabinet on May 19, 1843.

Footnote 55:

American Lands and Letters, II. 252.

Footnote 56:

Life of Cooper, 268.

Footnote 57:

Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, I, 203.

Footnote 58:

Hawthorne and his Circle, 33, 34.

Footnote 59:

Vol. I, 422–423.

Footnote 60:

Hawthorne and his Wife, I. 415.

Footnote 61:

_Id._ 397, 398.

Footnote 62:

A little bit snobbish for a Hawthorne, is it not?

Footnote 63:

Observe how Mr. Julian Hawthorne wholly omits the point of the observation about the pleasure excursion.

Footnote 64:

Life of Hawthorne and his Wife, I. 422–424.

Footnote 65:

Life of H. W. Longfellow, by Stephen Longfellow, II. 177.

Footnote 66:

_Id._, 182.

Footnote 67:

Charles Ollier, 1788–1859.

Footnote 68:

Encyclopædia Britannica, XIII. 561 (Ninth Edition).

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