neither hero nor heroine would stand forth flawless. Their failures
would be very human; and the author would withhold all comment, leaving
the veracity of the portrayal to speak for itself. There would be
unrolled before the reader the broad panorama of the cosmopolitan
metropolis, infinitely variegated, often harsh in color, but forever
fascinating in the intensity of its vitality. The modern tragedy with
its catastrophe internal rather than external, would be laid before us
in a narrative containing endless miracles of delicate observation and
countless felicities of delicate phrasing.

Like many another distinguished painter, Mr. Henry James has at least
three manners, following one another in the order of time; and there is
no certainty at which stage of his career he might be tempted to the
telling of this tale. Early in his evolution as a novelist, he might
have seized upon it as the promising foundation for an international
complication, altho even then he would have attenuated the more violent
crudities of the original story. Later, he might have been lured into
essaying the analysis of Juliet's sentiments, as she was swayed by her
growing attachment for Romeo, and as she was restrained by her
indurated fidelity to the family tradition. More recently still, Mr.
James might have perceived the possibility of puzzling us by letting us
only dimly surmise what had past behind the closed doors that shut in
the ill-fated lovers, and of leaving us in a maze of uncertainty and a
mist of doubt, peering pitifully, and groping blindly for a clew to
tangled and broken motives.

Perhaps it is idle thus to wonder how any one of a dozen novelists of
distinctive talent would have treated this alluring theme had he taken
it for his own. But of this we may be certain, that any novelist of
individuality who had chosen it would have made it his own, and would