Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Short studies of American authors

“ [39] fair;” Mr. Howells was far less successful in the most powerful and least satisfactory of all his books, “A Foregone Conclusion.” The greatest step he has ever taken, both in popularity and in artistic success, has been won by trusting himself to a generous impulse, and painting in “The lady of the Aroostook” a character worth the pains of describing. The book is not, to my thinking, free from faults: the hero poses and proses, and the drunken man is so realistic as to be out of place and overdone; but the character of the heroine seems to me the high-water mark of Mr. Howells. It has been feared that he would always remain the charming delineator of people who were, after all, undersized,--heroes and heroines like the little figurines from Tanagra, or the admirable miniature groups of John Rogers. He has now allowed himself a bolder sweep of arm, a more generous handling of full-sized humanity; and with this work begins, we may fain believe, the maturity of his genius.