Talks on Writing English

It is to be remembered, however, that before “The Lesson in Anatomy” could be painted Rembrandt had to learn how canvas is prepared and how colors are mixed; that the Ninth Symphony could not be composed until dry details of counterpoint and harmony had been mastered. It is apt to seem to the inexperienced writer as if to study the technique of art is to brush the bloom from the peach. He likes to feel that only what is spontaneous can be fresh and vital; and he forgets that in art spontaneity is impossible until the technical method has been so perfectly mastered that the creative impulse is unhampered by inability to express itself. It is not the untrained and the inexperienced who are able to be naïve and fresh in art, but only the master to whom technical excellence has become a second nature.

Having in a former talk declared Description to be the most difficult sort of composition, I am tempted now to make a bull, and to declare that Narration is more difficult still! Indeed, this would hardly be extravagant, were it not that the natural, instinctive interest of mankind in whatever is a story comes to the aid of him who writes a narrative. Narration as it exists in practice, however, is hardly to be considered alone. Of all varieties of composition, this is the one which most comprehensively embraces all other forms. It demands all the resources of the literary artist. Exposition, Argument, and Description are all enlisted in the services of the story-teller; and are so blended in the woof of his web that they can scarcely be disassociated from the narrative itself.

A succession of events can be fully told only in words. Even when we see a clever pantomime – as, for example, “L’Enfant Prodigue,” which was extensively played in this country by a French company a year or two ago, – we are forced to supply in our minds a sort of running interpretation of the acts as they go on before us. Music may interpret continuous emotions, but its inadequacy to tell a definite tale is abundantly shown by that odd hybrid known as “programme music.” Painting may give a succession of related themes, but between the moments chosen for representation there are gaps which break the continuity. To convey a complete and continuous account of events there is no resource in all the arts but words. It naturally follows that Narration is more intimately connected with actual life than any other sort of writing. It is the events of life which move us, and the history of these arouses the feelings as no expository or argumentative page can arouse them.

It is hardly necessary to enumerate all the many forms which Narration takes. Histories, biographies, plays, novels, romances, anecdotes, epics, stories long and stories short, the account of a journey and the folk-tale through which the fairies frisk fantastically, are all included under this division. The tedious twaddle and sea-water of “The Voyage of the Sunbeam,” and the quivering pages of “Les Misérables,” the account of a fire or a burglary in the morning paper, the anecdote over which a pair of drummers chuckle in a Western railway car, and the delicate romances of Hawthorne, – beautiful and pure as delicate frost-work seen by moonlight, – all these belong here, and all these are but a part. It is manifestly impossible to take up each variety separately, even were it at all worth while. We must be content to concern ourselves with general principles. Fortunately it is not difficult so to phrase these that they shall be applicable to narratives of all sorts. So many so-called stories written by inexperienced writers are merely memoranda for tales, undigested and unarranged, that there is sufficient excuse for being somewhat rudimentary in our treatment of the subject. While young authors continue to give us the material for narratives instead of properly formed and finished Narration there is at least the chance of doing good.

The first requisite in setting out to tell a story is to have a story to tell. It is true that not a few modern novels might be cited as seeming to prove the opposite of this proposition. There is a recent school of fiction in which the first principle seems to be that if one is to attempt to tell a story he must above all things else be careful not to have one in his remotest thought. The patron saint of such writers seems to be the needy knife-grinder of Canning, with his

“Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir.”

The world in general, however, still holds logically to the old theory, and believes that to have something to relate is essential in Narration.

It is not that the theme of a narrative need be elaborate. There are many successful novels and stories with plots extremely simple. Not one of Miss Wilkins’ New England idyls – those charming sublimations of the homely – has complexity or intricacy of subject. The only point is that the writer have in mind some definite and consecutive narrative, with a beginning and an end, and that he tell it as a narrative, and not as an Exposition or an Argument. The whole matter is well summed up in the phrase of Anthony Trollope: “The writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell.”

It would hardly do at this late day to insist, however, that the object of a story shall be simply or even primarily the narration of incident. It has been greatly the fashion during the last score of years to subordinate incident to any one of several things. Many of the greatest novelists of the present half-century have deliberately subordinated events to the study of character. There are not a few modern novels which can be adequately described only as emotional dissecting-rooms. They display the most wonderful cleverness in dismembering emotions, – too often without having a living figure or a convincing incident from one cover to the other. It is but fair to add that there are also fictions which seem to justify this method, whether we like it or not.

For our sins, moreover, the malevolent deities that deal in literary plagues have sent upon us that mongrel monstrosity, the novel with a theory. The more harmless are in the form of simpering eccentricities, or in the shape of childishly naïve whimsicalities; in the more hurtful sort authors often highly gifted lavish their powers in support of theories as generous in intention as they are mistaken and sentimental when tried by the facts upon which they are founded. We have, too, the theological novel, and the indecent novel, and more sorts than it is at all worth while to mention, in all of which the telling of a story is made the excuse for the exploiting of some view. Of these, however, we shall have occasion to speak later in connection with the moral purpose in fiction.

It has been remarked by Stevenson that in stories in which incident is made subordinate to character-drawing the interest is sure to be less vivid. He remarks: —

In character-studies the pleasure we take is critical; we watch, we approve, we smile at incongruities, we are moved to sudden heats of sympathy with courage, suffering, or virtue. But the characters are still themselves, they are not us; the more clearly they are depicted, the more widely do they stand away from us, the more imperiously do they thrust us back into our place as a spectator… It is not character but incident that woos us out of our reserve. Something happens as we desire it to happen to ourselves; some situation, that we have long dallied with in fancy, is realized in the story with enticing and appropriate details. Then we forget the characters; then we push the hero aside; then we plunge into the tale in our own person and bathe in fresh experience; and then, and then only, do we say that we have been reading a romance. —A Gossip on Romance.

All these considerations are of interest to the student, and they should all be taken into account when he is looking for a subject or when he is considering methods. As a matter of practical work, it is probably true that nobody goes to work to construct stories without having some theme, some dominating suggestion in mind. He will therefore form his plot or shape his subject according to this germinating thought, without for the moment taking theories much into account. Have a theme he must, and to my thinking the more objective this is the better. The more it deals with outward things and shows what is within through them; the more it has of incident and is concerned with the actualities of life; the more it has of broad realities as distinguished from the trivialities of existence, the more likely it is to succeed.

In the treatment of a theme, the first thing is to be sure that it is thoroughly known to the writer. I do not mean that it is necessary to know every detail. I do mean that what is known should be apprehended clearly; that there should be no doubt about the end and the beginning, whatever vagueness there may be about the minutiæ of the way from one to the other. It is especially important in story-writing that the author know his characters before he write about them. It is generally safe to compose half a dozen chapters before beginning a novel, chapters which are not to be used in the book at all, but which serve to make the author acquainted with the personages he is to deal with. If every young novelist would study the methods of Hawthorne in this respect it would be to his advantage. Any one who is at all accustomed to examining literature critically knows how almost universal it is that new authors show in the first third or quarter of their books that they are slowly becoming aware of the natures of the characters in their fiction. Often the middle of the work is reached before the writer has any clear or intimate knowledge of the men and women whom he is trying to picture.

I do not believe in hard and fast rules for the construction of stories. Methods of work must vary with individual temperaments. My own way of work naturally seems to me the most logical, but I realize that this is a question which each writer must decide for himself. Personally, I find it necessary to know the general course of a story, and above all to know the end, before I can begin it. Once these are clear and true in my mind, I deliberately consider the beginning. I say “deliberately consider” because the succeeding steps have so much the air of being involuntary. Once I have decided where to begin, I devote myself to the study of my characters. I walk the streets with them; they have a share in my waking and in my sleep. I know the general course of the history I am trying to tell, but the details I am content to learn slowly. The thing which I endeavor to do is to be sure of the character of those who are involved in this history. I am not without a feeling that an old fellow who sits in solitary state in the attic of my brain tells me the incidents of the narrative, but the acquaintance of the actors I must make for myself.

Not only must a story be known to the writer but it must for the time being at least be true to him. He must believe it as he writes; he must be completely possessed by a sense of the verity of what he is telling, or he cannot persuade the reader to accept it as real. It may seem to you that this is equivalent to saying that a novelist must be a good deal like the White Queen in “Through a Looking Glass,” who practiced until she was able to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. The difference is that the novelist does not have to practice. The characters become so vital in his mind, they act so independently and with so evident a will of their own, that it is impossible not to feel that their story is actual. Of course I do not mean that if the novelist were put on oath he would affirm that the tale is true; yet it seems to me that if I were called upon to swear that a story which I had written were not true, I should go about forever after with a humiliated sense that I had committed perjury.

I think it is the experience of every novelist that characters in a tale will often act apparently at their own good pleasure and in open defiance of the intention of the writer. They are not infrequently almost as independent of the will of the author of their being as the modern child is said to be independent of the will of the author of his. I have myself struggled to force characters to do a certain thing and have written and rewritten certain chapters in my effort to make them follow my wishes. I could set down the words which declared that they had done the thing which I desired, but I knew that I was lying and I was conscious that my characters knew that I knew it, so that of course there was nothing to do but to tear up the falsehood and tell the truth. The explanation of all this is, I suppose, that the superficial conclusions of the mind are corrected by the unconscious logic of the imagination. The characters of the personages in the story being what they are, the personages must inevitably behave in a certain way, and an underlying perception of this fundamental truth prevents an imaginative author from being able to treat his fictitious people as puppets.

The importance of knowing the end from the beginning is the same whether one is telling an anecdote or is writing a history, a romance, or a biography. It is necessary to discriminate clearly in regard to the climax of an anecdote, as it is to be sure of the climax of a novel. Everybody knows how the story which in the mouth of one man is racy and pointed becomes stupid and ineffective the moment it is told by another. I have to thank an English gentleman for having unconsciously furnished me with an example of the disadvantage of relating an anecdote with the wrong end first. He told in the smoking-room of a London hotel an incident which I dimly remembered as being in James Dodds’ “Biographical Study of Chalmers,” and I made a note of his version in order to compare the two. This is Dodds’ story: —

[Chalmers] was present at an evening party where a very accomplished lady was discoursing most eloquent music from the fashionable opera of the day. When she was at the overture and the recitatives he looked perplexed, as if listening to a medley of madness; but when she struck upon some lively and expressive airs, he turned with a look of great relief to the gentleman who was next to him: “Do you know, sir, I love these lucid intervals!”

This is the way in which the English gentleman told it: —

“I say, don’t you know, Dr. Chalmers called tunes lucid intervals. Wasn’t that deuced good? Lucid intervals, by Jove! He heard a lady sing, don’t you know, and that’s what he said. He didn’t mean all tunes of course; but she’d been playing things, you know, and putting in instrumental fal-lals and crazy things on the keys, and finally came to a song. I call that devilish witty, don’t you know!”

It is hardly necessary to give examples of this fault, and this seems absurd and extravagant. It came so providentially, however, at the very time when I was writing these lectures, that it was not to be resisted.

It is excellent practice for the student to write out stories or incidents which come under his observation, and good things which he hears said or told. There are few exercises in which it is more easily possible to interest an ordinary class in composition than work of this sort, and it may be made of a good deal of value. To be really of use it is necessary that the story be told and retold until it is in the best possible form that the student can compass. It should be done as carefully as if it were a great and complete narrative.

I said in another talk that I am not willing to concede that conversation is an art which comes by nature, and the justice of this must be especially felt by one who listens when story-telling is the order of the day. Those who succeed in telling a story well are those who have taken the trouble to learn how. It is a mistake to suppose that the carelessly spoken anecdote which is so felicitously put that it seems to be the thought of the moment has cost the narrator nothing. He has consciously labored to attain the art of telling things well; and while here as everywhere natural gifts count, the man who cultivates a small talent can generally outshine him who leaves a great talent to take care of itself.

I have perhaps spoken so as to give the impression that a story makes itself. I mean nothing of the sort. It is true that the first germ of a fiction is often caught in the mind as a plumy-winged seed of the wild clematis is caught in the cranny of a wall. Sometimes a chance word, the sight of a face in the crowd, a bit of information or talk, will become the suggestion from which a story will grow. It must be nurtured, however, if its growth is to be vigorous or symmetrical. It must be brooded over and watched; it must be nourished and tended. When a story is well formed in the mind and the characters are well defined, it will grow and develop spontaneously, but it must be given a good start first. In other words, the theme must be dwelt upon until it is so completely a part of the thought that the mind will carry it forward unconsciously, and the tale will seem to be going on of itself.

It is customary to say that all narrative has four elements: first, what happened, – the plot or story; second, what persons were concerned, – the characters; third, the situation, which is both in time and space, – in other words the when and the where; fourth, the central motive, – the thing of interest or significance for which the whole is told. These elements seem to me to be likely to come to the writer in the order in which I have named them. Sometimes he is aware of the central purpose first, especially in fiction written with a declared motive; but this does not appear to be the natural order in the case of fiction really imaginative. An author must of course have a comprehension of the central motive before he begins to write, but he deduces it from his plot rather than forms a plot to embody the idea. All this analysis is of more value in revision of work or in criticism than in actual composition. The writer who is really alive and interested in what he is doing thinks of his story as a story and as a transcript from life, not as a combination of four elements.

In this same line of criticism and revision it is well to note that Narration is necessarily specific, progressive, and cumulative. It is specific in that it deals with facts rather than with theories, with incidents rather than with deductions, with events rather than with reflections. It is progressive in that the interest must move forward, and the theme must advance with the incidents. A collection of incidents does not make a narrative any more than a pile of lumber makes a house. There must be a sequence of events related to each other by the tie of cause and effect. Narration is cumulative because this chain of cause and effect must lead to some conclusion, some climax, some end. Even in the relation of the most trifling anecdotes these three qualities are to be found, and in their perfection lies the secret of the greatest works of literature. The theorists who excuse inartistic and unsymmetrical fiction by the theory that a novel should be a piece cut out of life and having neither beginning or end, forget that that which is comely and fit, so long as it is part of the living tree-trunk, becomes an unsightly block when it is chopped out. It must be shaped and finished to be again beautiful. The story which has by relation been taken from its place in actual life must be worked and polished by art; it must become a whole in itself or it is forever an uncomely log, crudely disfiguring the landscape and fit only to be used as material for work or to feed the fire.

XVII

NARRATION CONTINUED

The point of view is of no less importance in Narration than in Description. It is perhaps not so strictly observed, because to the ordinary writer it is less obvious. As a rule it is not specifically announced. If a tale is in the form of an autobiography, as “Robinson Crusoe,” for instance, or “Henry Esmond,” the point of view is of course that of the perceptions of the character who relates. To this the author must confine himself, and every time that he introduces incidents, words, or thoughts which this character could not have known he violates it. He breaks the continuity and interrupts the impression of the reader. Less obviously, many novelists practically hold to the personality of one or two of their characters for their point of view. Without any specification of the fact, they refrain from telling anything which might not have been known or felt by these personages. An admirable illustration of this method is “The Scarlet Letter.” Throughout the entire book there are practically only three individualities through whose perceptions the reader is called upon to look. The author does not claim at any point to be confining himself to these or to any one of these; yet the comments and reflections which are outside the observation of Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth are so close to them as almost to seem part of their thought. What is not actually within their perception is little more than the author’s expression of their unformulated emotions or interpretations of their motives. More than two thirds of the book is given from the standpoint of the inner life of the wearer of the scarlet letter, and the greater portion of the remainder is from that of the minister.

Of course the writer may, if he choose, take as the point of view the position of all knowledge. He may decide to speak as one who knows every thought. The inexperienced writer is especially likely to be fond of this method. He is apt to dance about in a confused and confusing will-o’-the-wisp ubiquity. The early days of story-writing are marked by a delightful sense of omnipotence and omniscience which seldom outlives the completion of the first novel. While this feeling lasts the author holds it a sort of duty to allow his readers to look in turn through the eyes of each of his characters. It is as if he were proprietor of a peep-show. He cannot bring himself to defraud the reader by putting him off with anything less than a glimpse through every peep-hole. Whatever is the point of view chosen, it must, as in all other sorts of composition, be held throughout. The point of view of a single character is that which gives most intensity to a tale. The character chosen becomes the embodiment of the thoughts and emotions of the reader for the time being, and dominates all others. This is perhaps even more emphatically true when this is done by implication. The assumption of a single personality in the story as that which shall dominate seems to come from the absorbing interest of the author in this character, and it almost surely not only makes this the most significant figure in the tale, but imparts to the story fervor and strenuousness.

It is perhaps well to add a word of warning. It is not wise to expect too much from the reader in the way of coming to a point of view remote from his ordinary attitude of mind. The short stories of Miss Wilkins tacitly ask the reader to assume the mood of an observer who sees the pathetic and yet humorous quality in homely life. They owe their success in no small degree to the simplicity of this point of view and the consistency with which it is kept throughout. In “Pembroke” the same author goes farther, and tacitly asks us to regard the quarrels of obstinate and ill-tempered rustics with the profound seriousness demanded by the crushing blows of inexorable fate. It is asking too much. We cannot look upon these rural contests of obstinacy with the solemnity demanded by a Greek tragedy. It is a far cry from the “Œdipus” or the “Antigone” to “Pembroke;” and Miss Wilkins makes too great a demand upon the reader when she seems to assume so profound a solemnity. It seems to me that herein lies one secret of the disappointment felt in reading “Pembroke” after the delights of the author’s short stories.

The selection of incidents is naturally a matter of the greatest importance in the construction of any narrative, whether historic or fictitious. It is evident that it is impossible to tell the whole truth about any person, whether it be a character real in flesh and blood or one of the personages so much more real in imagination. A novelist cannot set down all the particulars of the life of those about whom he writes, and in the case of any story it must be only the significant incidents that will attract the reader. The literary code which professes to find all facts of life of equal value is on the face of it absurd, and had the men who claim to hold it lived up to their creed their novels would never have got beyond manuscript. Choice is necessary, and the great principle of choice is significance.

When we speak of significance, we of course mean the relation of the incident to the central motive of the narrative. The rule is that details are to be introduced or omitted as they do or do not form an essential part of the whole. If the writer have not the art so to weave in his most interesting and novel incident that it shall be an integral portion of the web, he must omit it. The taste of our time has very little patience with that excrescence which used to be known as an episode. Whatever is told should help forward the general plan of the work. The space and the importance given to each portion must manifestly be determined by its value in the entire scheme. Proportion is in effect the same here as in any other form of composition, a matter which depends upon the intention of the whole.

The young writer who is moved to delight a waiting and to his fancy impatient world with a new work of fiction has generally read a good many stories, and is likely to have gained from them some unconscious sense of proportion. This may save him from utter failure, but he is likely to stumble over two serious obstacles. In the first place he is sure to have his favorite situations, and is apt to linger over these in a fond belief that his readers will be as charmed as he is with these portions of his tale. In the second place, he is likely to feel a certain security in using incidents which are taken from real life.

Of the first of these it is sufficient to say that such is the perversity of fate that it almost never happens that the reader agrees with the writer – especially with the untrained writer – in regard to the most interesting portions of a book. Indeed, it is not amiss for a writer to be a little suspicious of the parts of his work which he regards with most favor. It is of importance to cultivate a dispassionate habit of mind, and always to judge the value of portions with relation to the whole rather than with reference to the author’s likes or dislikes.

The second point is one which needs to be emphasized. The moment a man begins to write, his friends begin to offer true stories for use, – not one out of a hundred being usable; and they invariably commend these subjects by saying that they are things which really happened. It is impossible to make the general public understand that the fact that a thing happened is rather more likely to be against it as literary material than in its favor. Facts are admirable from their suggestiveness. No fiction is of value which is not founded upon them. They are to be used, however, as material which must be shaped and moulded before it can be used. They are the rocks from the quarry that must be dressed before they are fit building material. The danger lies in accepting actuality instead of literary propriety as the measure of value. There is perhaps no rule more useful or more necessary to young writers of fiction than to beware of the truth. If in a first novel are found scenes and incidents which are unreal and extravagant, the chances are that these are the things which have been confidently taken from real life, – and which have become hopelessly unreal in the transfer. In Narration as in Description the thing sought is not the truth but the impression of truth. The question is not whether what is told is true, but whether it seem true. We all know extraordinary incidents which are real yet which are too improbable to be used in fiction. The reason is obvious. It is necessary for fiction to be probable, while truth is free from all restrictions. The novelist is never allowed to take refuge behind the fact that a thing is veracious. He may tell whatever he has the art to make appear true, but the criterion of his success is the semblance of verity rather than verity itself. Aristotle formulated all this long ago, – “Prefer an impossibility which seems probable to a probability which seems impossible.” The philosophy of the matter is that fiction is tried by truth to the laws which lie behind fact, and that it is no less true in being false than reality is in being true.

It is to be remembered, however, that probability is largely a matter of consistency. There is always an implied hypothesis, a certain set of conditions tacitly agreed to, by which the truth, or rather the apparent truth, of any narrative is to be tried. If one is writing history, the hypothesis calls for actual facts and things which really occurred; if it is a novel which is in construction, actuality is no longer demanded, but probability according to the time and place is essential; an author may go farther by writing avowed romance, and may put events impossible and improbable into the very midst of the life of to-day, if he will but keep them consistent throughout. It is a question of what the writer attempts to do. If he choose frankly to cut loose from fact and write a fairy story, the hypothesis gives his fancy range, and here it is the strict truth which must be shunned as a violation of the implied conditions. In a number of folk tales we read passages like this: —

Then the fox stretched out his tail, the king’s son seated himself upon it, and away they went over stock and stone, so that the wind whistled through their hair.

It would be manifestly a violation of the rules of fairy lore to say instead: —

Then the fox stretched out his tail, and the king’s son tried to seat himself upon it; but of course it would not support him, so he rolled over in the mud.

To thrust facts upon the reader here is to depart from the standard. When we sit down to read fairy tales we have tacitly consented to believe the impossible, and upon this assumption fairy lore becomes, in the happy phrase of Douglas Jerrold, “as true as sunbeams.”

All this, however, is the exception, and as it is an exception which is sufficiently obvious, it is enough to mention it. The general rule for Narration is: In writing history select details with reference to their significance and their truth; in fiction with reference to their significance and their probability. In every case, significance is an essential quality. It is so easy to confound minuteness with subtlety; to suppose that to be finical is to be true; to assume that to be exact is to be effective; that more than one gifted author has come to grief and has wasted his powers through these errors. The measure of subtlety, of truth, and of effectiveness, is the relative value as measured by the central idea of the composition.

The order of events in a narrative depends chiefly upon the principle of cause and effect. Since every cause produces its effect, it follows that the sequence of incidents will generally be practically chronological. Where there are a number of threads involved and the plot is complicated, a good deal of ingenuity is often required to keep things clear, and to secure at the same time a continuous progression in the narrative. This is a problem with which the historian has almost always to deal, and upon his cleverness in solving it depends much of his success. The only rule to be given is that the writer shall have a careful and definite plan. In a simple tale it is often possible to depend upon the knowledge of the end to be reached, and to trust to one’s instinct for the rest. With an intricate theme this will not do. If one is driving a mild-mannered horse in a light wagon, it is usually enough to know the general direction, since it is possible from time to time to stop to inquire the way; in running a complicated system of railway trains the same method would be madness.

One matter involved in this question of the order of incidents is that of where and how a story shall begin. Often it is wise to commence with a striking incident or situation, and it is rare that a story can be effectively begun without there being more or less which must be told of what has gone before the actual tale. Much care is needed in managing this. It is one of the simplest devices, and it remains one of the most effective which have been devised, to have all explanations of this sort made to some personage in the tale instead of to the reader directly. If a story start with the striking appearance of the hero in some extraordinary situation, it is much more effective and pleasing to have the spectators, those who in the narrative are represented as seeing him, ask and obtain information in regard to his past and to the events which brought him to this place or situation, than it is for the author in a deliberate manner to set out to inform the reader.

Never presume on the reader’s patience and indulgence. The “gentle reader” of old-fashioned literature does not exist now, if indeed he ever existed. The modern reader is far more ready to be bored than to be interested, and all devices for persuading and holding his attention must be carefully attended to.

Of essential importance in story-telling is movement. This is an advantage in other forms of composition, but indispensable in Narration. There can be no sense of unity, no continuity of interest, unless there is a constant sense of progression. A story can no more stand still than can life. When the incidents cease to carry the reader forward, it is as if the heart stopped beating. Each incident in a narrative, as in existence, must stand in relation to what comes before it of effect to cause, and to what follows it of cause to effect. It is necessary to make the reader feel that he is ever going forward, now slowly and now swiftly, according to the exigencies of the tale. Contrast, variety, relative importance, have all to be considered. When the reader is eager to reach some culmination, when he is excited in regard to some crisis in the narrative, it is often wise to condense days into a sentence, hours into a phrase. Again, there are times when it is important to prepare the mind for a situation, to go slowly in order that an effect be produced by the cumulative force of trifles. No hard-and-fast rule can be given to govern this progression. The technical means by which swiftness or deliberation are secured are simple and easily learned. The whole matter is pretty well covered by the statement that many words and minute details retard movement, while few words and a suppression of particulars give rapidity. When to employ these means the writer must learn from the study of the work of the masters, from the careful consideration of what result he wishes to insure, and above all by a close examination of the manner in which effects are produced in real life. Naturally, the movement is swifter as the tale nears its conclusion, and in passages which deal with exciting and intense emotions. Illustrations are hardly possible in limited space, but the climax of any masterpiece may serve as an example.

Description and dialogue must be subordinate to the movement of a story, as they must be subordinate to the general purpose. Speaking broadly, dialogue aids swiftness of progression, and description delays it; yet an over-abundance of talk may retard as effectually as profuse word-painting. With dialogue we shall have to do later, and here it is enough to say that talk which really belongs to the tale, which helps the story forward, adds sprightliness to the movement. We all know how the elder Dumas makes dialogue increase the vivacity and the rapidity of movement of his dashing romances. What can be told in the speech of the characters in a narrative seems generally to go forward with more briskness than what is related in the words of the author.

The mention of Description brings us to the scene of a narrative. The setting of a tale is not unlike the mounting of a play. When the use of nature in fiction was fresher than now the affair was very simple. It was only necessary to bring in gloomy skies and wailing winds as accompaniments for a doleful situation, or to have the flowers, the sunshine, and the birds properly specified when things were going happily. The birds sang most obligingly for the old novelists, utterly ignoring the habits which ornithologists had with painful care observed, – they warbled when they were wanted, although they were called upon at times of day when they had never before dreamed of piping up: —

Singing gladly all the moontide,
Never waiting for the noontide.