ABSTRACT
The book begins as a sustained and characteristic exploitation of the notoriously complicated 'late' syntax that first surfaces in parts of 'The Tragic Muse' and 'The Spoils of Poynton' and which reaches its apotheosis in the last three completed novels. James contrives, in both the title and the book that follows it, both to demonstrate that The Merely Personal and subjective has a value all its own and at the same time to show that The Merely Personal has to be transcended. In this sense, 'A Small Boy and Others' demonstrates what it is here discussing, that compassion can be synonymous with musing vision, and that comprehension and criticism are the same. For it is the coherence of 'A Small Boy and Others' which gives it an abiding claim on people's attention, and which justifies James's final realization that he had written an essay in the 'science of aspects' and a portrait of 'the history of an imagination'.
