It is a very pretty achievement of art, perhaps the
most interesting effect that fiction is able to produce, and I think
it may be described more closely. But I return meanwhile to the device
of the first person, and to another example of the way in which it is
used for its dramatic energy. For my point is so oddly illustrated by
the old contrivance of the "epistolary" novel that I cannot omit to
glance at it briefly; the kind of enhancement which is sought by the
method of The Ambassadors is actually the very same as that which is
sought by the method of Clarissa and Grandison. Richardson and Henry
James, they are both faced by the same difficulty; one of them is
acutely aware of it, and takes very deep-laid precautions to
circumvent it; the other, I suppose, does not trouble about the theory
of his procedure, but he too adopts a certain artifice which carries
him past the particular problem, though at the same time it involves
him in several more. Little as Richardson may suspect it, he--and
whoever else has the idea of making a story out of a series of
letters, or a running diary written from day to day--is engaged in the
attempt to show a mind in action, to give a dramatic display of the
commotion within a breast. He desires to get into the closest touch
with Clarissa's life, and to set the reader in the midst of it; and
this is a possible expedient, though it certainly has its drawbacks.
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