There is no further for it to go, for it now covers the whole story. Henry James was the first writer of fiction, I judge, to use all the possibilities of the method with intention and thoroughness, and the full extent of the opportunity which is thus revealed is very great. The range of method is permanently enlarged; it is proved, once for all, that the craft of fiction has larger resources than might have been suspected before. A novelist in these days is handling an instrument, it may be said, the capacity of which has been very elaborately tested; and though in any particular case there may be good reason why its dramatic effects should not be exhausted—the subject may need none or few of them—yet it must be supposed that the novelist is aware of the faculties that he refuses. There are kinds of virtuosity in any art which affect the whole of its future; painting can never be the same again after some painter has used line and colour in a manner that his predecessors had not fully developed, music makes a new demand of all musicians when one of them has once increased its language. And the language of the novel, extended to the point which it has reached, gives a possible scope to a novelist which he is evidently bound to take into account.

It is a scope so wide and so little explored hitherto that the novel may now be starting upon a fresh life, after the tremendous career it has had already. The discovery of the degree to which it may be enhanced dramatically—this may be a point of departure from which it will set out with vigour renewed; perhaps it has done so by this time. Anyhow it is clear that an immense variety of possible modulations, mixtures, harmonies of method, yet untried, are open to it if it chooses to avail itself; and I should imagine that to a novelist of to-day, entering the field at this late hour, the thought might be a stimulating one. There is still so much to be done, after a couple of centuries of novel-writing without a pause; there are unheard-of experiments to be made. A novel such as The Ambassadors may give no more than a hint of the rich and profound effects waiting to be achieved by the laying of method upon method, and criticism may presently be called on to analyse the delicate process much more closely than I now attempt; it is to be hoped so indeed. Meanwhile it is useful to linger over a book that suggests these possibilities, and to mark the direction in which they seem to point.

The purpose of the novelist's ingenuity is always the same; it is to give to his subject the highest relief by which it is capable of profiting. And the less dramatic, strictly speaking, the subject may be—the less it is able, that is to say, to express itself in action and in action only—the more it is needful to heighten its flat, pictorial, descriptive surface by the arts of drama. It is not managed by peppering the surface with animated dialogue, by making the characters break into talk when they really have nothing to contribute to the subject; the end of this is only to cheapen and discredit their talk when at length it is absolutely required. The dramatic rule is applied more fundamentally; it animates the actual elements of the picture, the description, and makes a drama of these. I have noted how in The Ambassadors the picture of Strether's mind is transformed into an enacted play, even where his story, for chapters at a time, is bare of action in the literal sense. The result, no doubt, is that his mind emerges from the book with force and authority, its presence is felt. And now I would track the same method and measure the result in another book, The Wings of the Dove, where the value of this kind of dramatization is perhaps still more clearly to be seen. Again we are dealing with a subject that in the plain meaning of the word is entirely undramatic.

Milly, the Dove, during all that part of the book in which her mind lies open—in the chapters which give her vision of the man and the girl, Densher and Kate, not theirs of her—is hoarding in silence two facts of profoundest import to herself; one is her love for Densher, the other the mortal disease with which she is stricken. It is of these two facts that Kate proposes to take advantage, and there is nothing weak or vague about Kate's design. She and Densher are penniless, Milly is rich, but they can afford to bide their time and Milly cannot; let them do so, therefore, let Densher accept his opportunity, and let him presently return to Kate, well endowed by the generosity of an exquisite young wife, dead in her prime. That is how Milly's condition is to be turned to account by a remarkably clear-headed young woman; but Milly herself is still unaware of any confederation between her two friends, and she silently broods over the struggle in her mind—her desire for life, her knowledge of her precarious hold on life. The chapters I speak of are to give the sense of this conflict, to show unmistakably the pair of facts upon which Kate's project is founded. Milly has nothing to do in the story, but she has to be with great intensity, for it is on what she is that the story turns. Of that in a moment, however; in these chapters, which are the central chapters of the book, Milly's consciousness is to the fore, the deep agitation within her is the concern of the moment.

Once more it is the superficial play of thought that is put before us. The light stir and vibration of Milly's sensibility from hour to hour is all we actually see; for the most part it is very light, very easy and airy, as she moves with her odd poetry and grace and freedom. She comes from New York, it will be remembered, a "pale angular princess," loaded with millions, and all alone in the world save for her small companion, Mrs. Stringham. She is a rare and innocent creature, receptive and perceptive, thrown into the middle of a situation in which she sees everything, excepting only the scheme by which it is proposed to make use of her. Of that she knows nothing as yet; her troubles are purely her own, and gradually, it is hard to say where or how, we discover what they are. They are much too deeply buried in her mind to appear casually upon the surface at any time; but now and then, in the drama of her meditation, there is a strange look or a pause or a sudden hasty motion which is unexplained, which is portentous, which betrays everything. Presently her great hidden facts have passed into the possession of the reader whole, so to speak—not broken into detail, bit by bit, not pieced together descriptively, but so implied and suggested that at some moment or other they spring up complete and solid in the reader's attention. Exactly how and where did it happen? Turning back, looking over the pages again, I can mark the very point, perhaps, at which the thing was liberated and I became possessed of it; I can see the word that finally gave it to me. But at the time it may easily have passed unnoticed; the enlightening word did not seem peculiarly emphatic as it was uttered, it was not announced with any particular circumstance; and yet, presently—there was the piece of knowledge that I had not possessed before.

Not to walk straight up to the fact and put it into phrases, but to surround the fact, and so to detach it inviolate—such is Henry James's manner of dramatizing it. Soon after Milly's first appearance there are some pages that illustrate his procedure very clearly, or very clearly, I should say, when the clue has been picked up and retraced. There is an hour in which Milly gazes open-eyed upon her prospect, measuring its promises and threats, gathering herself for the effort they demand. She sits on a high Italian mountain-ledge, with a blue plain spread out beneath her like the kingdoms of the world; and there she looks at her future with rapt absorption, lost to all other thought. Her mind, if we saw it, would tell us everything then at least; she searches its deepest depth, it is evident. And that is the very reason why her mind should not be exposed in that hour; the troubling shapes that lurk in it are not to be described, they are to make their presence known of their own accord. Instead of intruding upon Milly's lonely rumination, therefore, the author elects to leave her, to join company with her friend in the background, and in that most crucial session to reveal nothing of Milly but the glimpse that her friend catches of her in passing.

The glimpse, so rendered, tells nothing. But in Milly's attitude, while she sits enthroned above the world, there is a certain expression, deep and strange, not to be missed, though who shall say exactly what it implies? Is it hope, is it despair? At any rate the clear picture of her remains, and a little later, when her mind is visible again, the memory of her up there on the mountain has quickened the eye of the onlooker. The images in her mind are not at all portentous now; she is among her friends, she is harvesting impressions; there is not a word of anything dark or distressing or ill-omened. But still, but still—we have seen Milly when she believed herself unseen, and it is certain that there is more in her mind than now appears, and though she seems so full of the new excitement of making friends with Kate Croy there must be some preoccupation beneath; and then, in a flash, these are the troubles that engage her in solitude, that have ached in her mind, and yet there has never been a single direct allusion to them. Skirting round and round them, giving one brief sight of her in eloquent circumstances, then displaying the all but untroubled surface of her thought on this side and that, the author has encompassed the struggle that is proceeding within her, and has lifted it bodily into the understanding of the reader.

The profit which the story gains from this treatment is easily recognized. Solidity, weight, a third dimension, is given to the impression of Milly's unhappy case. Mere emphasis, a simple underlining of plain words, could never produce the same effect. What is needed is some method which will enable an onlooker to see round the object, to left and right, as far as possible, just as with two eyes, stereoscopically, we shape and solidify the flat impression of a sphere. By such a method the image will be so raised out of its setting that the stream of vision will wash it on either side, leaving no doubt of its substantial form. And so, dealing with the case of Milly, Henry James proceeds to cut behind it, lavishing his care on any but its chief and most memorable aspect. That may wait; meanwhile the momentary flutter of her nerves and fancies is closely noted, wherever her life touches the lives about her, or the few of them that are part of her story. The play draws a steady curve around the subject in the midst; more and more of this outer rim of her consciousness moves into sight. She is seen in the company of the different people who affect her nearly, but in all their intercourse the real burden of her story is veiled under the trembling, wavering delicacy of her immediate thought. Her manner of living and thinking and feeling in the moment is thus revealed in a wide sweep, and at last the process is complete; her case is set free, stands out, and casts its shadow.

These difficulties, these hopes and fears that have been buried in silence, are all included in the sphere of experience which the author has rounded; and by leaving them where they lie he has given us a sense of their substance, of the space they occupy, which we could not have acquired from a straight, square account of them. Milly desired to live, she had every reason in the world for so desiring, and she knew, vaguely at first, then with certainty, that she had no life to hope for; it is a deep agitation which is never at rest. It is far out of sight; but its influence spreads in every direction, and here and there it must touch the surface, even one upon which appearances are maintained so valiantly. And if the surface (which is all we know) is thus high above the depths, and yet there are instants when it is just perceptibly disturbed by things unseen, is it not proved, as it could be proved in no other way, how active and forcible they must be? By no picture of them but by an enactment of their remotest manifestations—that is how their strength, their bulk, their range in a harassed existence is represented. Such is the object gained by the method of dramatization, applied in this way (as with Strether) to the story of a mind. Milly's case, which seemed to be as pictorial, as little dramatic, as could be—since it is all a condition and a situation to be portrayed, not an action—has been turned into drama, the advantages of drama have been annexed on its behalf. There is no action, properly speaking, and yet the story of her troubles has acted itself before our eyes, as we followed the transient expression of her mood.

And now look at a single scene, later on, when the issue of Milly's situation has at last been precipitated. Look, for example, at the scene in which good Susan Stringham, her faithful companion, visits Densher in his Venetian lodging, on an evening of wild autumn rain, to make a last and great appeal to him. An appeal for what? Milly, in her palace hard by, lies stricken, she has "turned her face to the wall." The vision of hope which had supported her is at an end, not by reason of her mere mortal illness, but because of some other blow which has fallen. Susan knows what it is, and Densher is to learn. Till lately Milly was living in ignorance of the plot woven about her, the masterly design to make use of her in order that Densher and Kate Croy may come together in the end. The design was Kate's from the first; Densher has been much less resolute, but Kate was prepared to see it through. Conceal from Milly that an old engagement holds between her two friends, persuade her that neither has any interest in the other, and all will go well. Milly, believing in Densher's candour, will fall into the plot and enjoy her brief happiness. It cannot be more than brief, for Milly is certainly doomed. But when she dies, and Densher is free for Kate again, who will be the worse for the fraud? Milly will have had what she wants, her two friends will have helped themselves in helping her. So Kate argues plausibly; but it all depends on keeping poor exquisite Milly safely in the dark. If she should discover that Kate and Densher are in league to profit by her, it would be a sharper stroke than the discovery of her malady. And by this autumn evening, when Susan Stringham appears before Densher, Milly has discovered—has learned that she has been tricked, has lost her desire of life, has turned her face to the wall.

Susan appears, big with the motive that has brought her. This visit of hers is an appeal to Densher, so much is clear in all her looks and tones. There is only one way to save Milly, to restore to Milly, not indeed her life, but her desire of it. Densher has it in his power to make her wish to live again, and that is all that he or any one else could achieve for her. The thought is between him and the good woman as they talk; the dialogue, with its allusions and broken phrases, slowly shapes itself to the form of the suppressed appeal. It hangs in the air, almost visibly, before it is uttered at all; and by that time a word is enough, one stroke, and the nature of the appeal and all its implications are in view. The scene has embodied it; the cheerless little room and the falling light and Densher's uneasy movements and Susan's flushed, rain-splashed earnestness have all contributed; the broken phrases, without touching it, have travelled about it and revealed its contour. Densher might tell Milly that she is wrong, might convince her that he and Kate have not beguiled and misled her as she supposes; Densher, in other words, might mislead her again, and Mrs. Stringham entreats him to do so. That is why she has come, and such is the image which has been gradually created, and which at last is actual and palpable in the scene. It has not appeared as a statement or an announcement; Susan's appeal and Densher's tormented response to it are felt, establishing their presence as matters which the reader has lived with for the time. They have emerged out of the surface of the scene into form and relief.

And finally the subject of the whole book is rendered in the same way. The subject is not in Milly herself, but in her effect upon the relation existing between Densher and Kate. At the beginning of the book these two are closely allied, and by the end their understanding has been crossed by something that has changed it for ever. Milly has come and gone, nothing is afterwards the same. Their scheme has been successful, for Milly in dying has bequeathed a fortune to Densher. But also she has bequeathed the memory of her last signal to them, which was one that neither could foresee and which the man at any rate could never forget. For Densher had not practised that final disloyalty which was begged of him, and Milly had died in full knowledge of their design, and yet she had forgiven, dove-like to the end, and her forgiveness stands between them. Kate recognizes it in the word on which the book closes—"We shall never be again as we were." Whether they accept the situation, whether they try to patch up their old alliance—these questions are no affair of the story. With Kate's word the story is finished; the first fineness of their association is lost, nothing will restore it. Milly has made the change by being what she was, too rare an essence for vulgar uses. Those who wanted the intelligence to understand her must pay their penalty; at least they are intelligent enough to see it.

It is once more the picture of a moral, emotional revolution, the kind of subject that seems to demand a narrator. The story is so little a matter of action that when the revolution is complete there is nothing more to be said. Its result in action is indifferent; the man and the woman may marry or part, the subject is unaffected either way. The progress of the tale lies in the consciousness of the people in it, and somebody is needed, it might have been supposed, to tell us how it all came to pass. Not the author, perhaps, or any of the characters in person; but at least it must be told, at any given juncture, from somebody's point of view, composing and reflecting the story of an experience. But in The Wings of the Dove there is next to no narrative at all, strictly speaking. Who is there that narrates? The author a little, it is true, for the people have to be described, placed, brought on the scene to begin with. But afterwards? Densher, Kate, Milly, Susan Stringham, each in turn seems to take up the story and to provide the point of view, and where it is absolutely needful they really do so; they give the mirror for the visible scene about them, Alpine heights, London streets, Venetian palaces. But that is incidental; of the progress of the tale they offer no account. They act it, and not only in their spoken words, but also and much more in the silent drama that is perpetually going forward within them. They do not describe and review and recapitulate this drama, nor does the author. It is played before us, we see its actual movement.

The effect is found here and there in all well-made fiction, of course. The undercutting, as I call it, of a flat impression is seen wherever a turn of events is carefully prepared and deliberately approached. But I do not know that anywhere, except in the later novels of Henry James, a pictorial subject is thus handed over in its entirety to the method of drama, so that the intervention of a seeing eye and a recording hand, between the reader and the subject, is practically avoided altogether. I take it as evident that unless the presence of a seer and a recorder is made a value in itself, contributing definitely to the effect of the subject, he is better dispensed with and put out of the way; where other things are equal a direct view of the matter in hand is the best. But it has been made clear in the foregoing pages, I hope, that the uses of a narrator are many and various; other things are not equal where the subject asks for no more than to be reflected and pictured. In that case the narrator, standing in front of the story, is in a position to make the most of it, all that can be made; and so he represents the great principle of economy, and is a value in himself, and does contribute to the effect. Many a story, from the large panoramic chronicle to the small and single impression, postulates the story-teller, the picture-maker, and by that method gives its best. Speaking in person or reported obliquely, the narrator serves his turn. But where there is no positive reason for him there is a reason, equally positive, for a different method, one that assigns the point of view to the reader himself. An undramatic subject, we find, can be treated dramatically, so that the different method is at hand.

The story that is concerned, even entirely concerned, with the impact of experience upon a mind (Strether's, say) can be enhanced to the pitch of drama, because thought has its tell-tale gestures and its speaking looks, just as much as an actor on the stage. Make use of these looks and gestures, express the story through them, leave them to enact it—and you have a story which in its manner is effectually drama. Method upon method, the vision of a vision, the process of thinking and feeling and seeing exposed objectively to the view of the reader—it is an ingenious art; criticism seems to have paid it less attention than it deserves. But criticism has been hindered, perhaps, by the fact that these books of Henry James's, in which the art is written large, are so odd and so personal and so peculiar in all their aspects. When the whole volume is full of a strongly-marked idiosyncrasy, quite unlike that of anyone else, it is difficult to distinguish between this, which is solely the author's, and his method of treating a story, which is a general question, discussible apart. And thus it happens that the novelist who carried his research into the theory of the art further than any other—the only real scholar in the art—is the novelist whose methods are most likely to be overlooked or mistaken, regarded as simply a part of his own original quiddity. It should be possible to isolate them, to separate them in thought from the temperament by which they were coloured; they belong to the craft, which belongs to no man in particular. They still wait to be fully assimilated into the criticism of fiction; there is much more in them, no doubt, than the few points that I touch on here. But I pass on to one or two of the rest.