26 AUGUST 1916, Page 18

Henry James. By Rebecca West. (J. Nisbet and Co. Is.

net.)— This spirited little essay, in the "Writers of the Day" series, is worth reading for two reasons. It recalls to one's mind many of Henry James's earlier stories that one has forgotten or never seen, and, secondly, it gives a very modern Englishwoman's view of the novelist's heroines. Thins, the young widowed Countess in The American is credited by Miss West with "a weakness that would convict of imbecility any woman of twenty-eight "—a criticism which shows that for one reader at least Henry James failed to make Claire's obedience to her family seem inevitable. Like others who have written on Henry James, Miss West has, consciously or unconsciously, imitated too often his tricks of style.