The extreme fastidiousness and delicacy of the leading American writers, as above referred to, may be to a large extent accounted for by an inevitable reaction against the general tendency to the careless and the slipshod, and is thus in its way as significant and natural a result of existing conditions as any other feature of American literature.  Perhaps a secondary cause of this type of writing may be looked for in the fact that so far the spirit of New England has dominated American literature.  Even those writers of the South and West who are freshest in their material and vehicle are still permeated by the tone, the temper, the method, the ideals, of the New England school.  And certainly Allibone’s dictionary of authors shows that an enormous proportion of American writers are to this day of New England origin or descent.

Among living American writers the two whose names occur most spontaneously to the mind as typical examples are, perhaps, Henry James and W.D.  Howells.  Of these the former has identified himself so much with European life and has devoted himself so largely to European subjects that we, perhaps, miss to some extent the American atmosphere in his works, though he undoubtedly possesses the American quality of workmanship in a very high degree.  Or, to put it in another way, his touch is indisputably American, while his accessories, his staffage, are cosmopolitan.  His American hand has become dyed to that it works in.  This, however, is more true of his later than of his earlier works.  That imperishable little classic “Daisy Miller” is a very exquisite and typical specimen of the American suggestiveness of style; indeed, as I have hinted (Chapter IV.), its suggestiveness almost overshot the mark and required the explanation of a dramatic key.  His dislike of the obvious and the commonplace sometimes leads Mr. James to become artificial and even obscure,[21] but at its best his style is as perspicuous as it is distinguished, dainty, and subtle; there is, perhaps, no other living artist in words who can give his admirers so rare a literary pleasure in mere exquisiteness of workmanship.

Mr. Howells, unlike Mr. James, is purely and exclusively American, in his style as in his subject, in his main themes as in his incidental illustrations, in his spirit, his temperament, his point of view.  No one has written more pleasantly of Venice; but just as surely there is a something in his Venetian sketches which no one but an American could have put there.  Mr. James may be as patriotic a citizen of the Great Republic, but there is not so much tangible evidence of the fact in his writings; Mr. Howells may be as cosmopolitan in his sympathies as Mr. James, but his writings alone would hardly justify the inference.  Mr. Howells also possesses a bonhomie, a geniality, a good-nature veiled by a slight mask of cynicism, that may be personal, but which strikes one as also a characteristic American trait.  Mr. James is not, I hasten to say, the reverse of this, but he shows a coolness in his treatment, a lordly indifference to the fate of his creations, an almost pitiless keenness of analysis, which savour a little more of an end-of-the-century European than of a young and genial democracy.