For while he holds all the poor
little orthodoxies of the day - no poorer and no smaller than those
of yesterday or to-morrow, poor and small, indeed, only so far as
they are exclusive - the living quality of much that he has done is
of a contrary, I had almost said of a heretical, complexion. A
man, as I read him, of an originally strong romantic bent - a
certain glow of romance still resides in many of his books, and
lends them their distinction. As by accident he runs out and
revels in the exceptional; and it is then, as often as not, that
his reader rejoices - justly, as I contend. For in all this
excessive eagerness to be centrally human, is there not one central
human thing that Mr. Howells is too often tempted to neglect: I
mean himself? A poet, a finished artist, a man in love with the
appearances of life, a cunning reader of the mind, he has other
passions and aspirations than those he loves to draw. And why
should he suppress himself and do such reverence to the Lemuel
Barkers? The obvious is not of necessity the normal; fashion rules
and deforms; the majority fall tamely into the contemporary shape,
and thus attain, in the eyes of the true observer, only a higher
power of insignificance; and the danger is lest, in seeking to draw
the normal, a man should draw the null, and write the novel of
society instead of the romance of man.
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