“ Perhaps Irving and Scott, from their natural amiability, were rather dangerous advisers for a writer so inclined by nature to abundant production as James. But he took up historical romance writing at a lucky moment. Scott had firmly established the popularity of the style, and James in England, like Dumas in France, reaped the reward of their master’s labours as well as of their own. For thirty years the author of Richelieu continued to pour out novels of the same kind though of varying merit. ”

“ The “two cavaliers” who in one form or another open most of his books have passed into a proverb, and Thackeray’s good-natured but fatal parody of Barbazure is likely to outlast Richelieu and Darnley by many a year. Nevertheless, though James cannot be allowed any very high rank among novelists, he had a genuine narrative gift, and, though his very best books fall far below Les trois mousquetaires and La reine Margot, there is a certain even level of interest to be found in all of them. ”