On yonder meadow far away,
The turrets of a cloister gray;

How blithely might the bugle-horn

Chide on the lake the lingering morn!
How sweet at eve the lover's lute

Chime when the groves were still and mute!
And when the midnight moon should lave
Her forehead in the silver wave,

How solemn on the ear would come

The holy matin's distant hum,

While the deep peal's commanding tone
Should wake, in yonder islet lone,

A sainted hermit from his cell," etc.

SCOTT: The Lady of the Lake, i. xv.

Fitz-James, seeing Loch Katrine for the first time, supposes the neighborhood uninhabited; instantly his vivid imagination turns certain conspicuous parts of the landscape (italicized) to possible future use. We see through his eyes. Compare the description of Edinburgh in Marmion, iv. xxx.

43. Dynamic Description,* or turning the description into narration. This is somewhat akin to the use of the personal element, but is distinct from it and is far more vivid. The theory was first expounded by Lessing, who called attention to the leading example, the Shield of Achilles, Iliad, xviii. 478-608. Here we have, not a description of the shield when made, but a minute account, step by step, of the making of it by Vulcan. In Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea (iv. 1-59) the mother goes from place to place in search of her son; the passage is in reality an indirect description of the stables, garden, vineyard, fields—in short, the family estate.

De Foe, wishing to inform his readers that Robinson Crusoe is upon an island of a certain size and kind, narrates thus:

*This term is used in Genung's Practical Rhetoric, p. 335, but in a different sense.

G

My next work was to view the country, and seek a proper place for my habitation.... Where I was, I yet knew not-whether on the continent or on an island, whether inhabited or not inhabited, whether in danger of wild beasts or not. There was a hill not above a mile from me, which rose up very steep and high, and which seemed to overtop some other hills, which lay as in a ridge from it northward. I took out one of the fowling pieces, ...and thus armed I travelled for discovery up to the top of that hill, where, after I had with great labour and difficulty got to the top, I saw my fate to my great affliction, viz., that I was in an island environed every way with the sea, no land to be seen, except some rocks which lay a great way off, and two small islands less than this, which lay about three leagues to the west.-DE FOE: Robinson Crusoe, p. 60.

One of the most striking examples of genuine dynamic description is the following, where De Quincey calls upon an imaginary painter to come to his aid:

But here, to save myself the trouble of too much verbal description, I will introduce a painter, and give him directions for the rest of the picture. Painters do not like white cottages, unless a good deal weatherstained; but, as the reader now understands that it is a winter night, his services will not be required except for the inside of the house.

Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than seven and a half feet high. This, reader, is somewhat ambitiously styled, in my family, the drawing-room; but, being contrived "a double debt to pay," it is also, and more justly, termed the library; for it happens that books are the only article of property in which I am richer than my neighbours. Of these I have about five thousand, collected gradually since my eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as you can into this room. Make it populous with books; and, furthermore, paint me a good fire; and furniture plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar. And near the fire paint me a tea-table; and (as it is clear that no creature can come to see one on such a stormy night) place only two cups and saucers on the tea-tray; and, if you know how to paint such a thing, symbolically or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot-eternal a parte ante, and a parte post; for I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four in the morning. And, as it is very unpleasant to make tea, or to pour it out for one's self, paint me a lovely young woman sitting at the table. Paint her arms like Aurora's, and her smiles like Hebe's; but no, dear M— ! *

*His wife.

not even in jest let me insinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty, or that the witchcraft of angelic smiles lies within the empire of any earthly pencil, etc.—DE QUINCEY (Confessions): iii. 408.

Compare Alice Carey's poem, An Order for a Picture.

All highly imaginative and graphic writing contains dynamic passages; e. g.:

See how she rushes noiselessly, like a pale meteor, along the passages and up the gallery stairs! Those gleaming eyes, those bloodless lips, that silent tread, make her look like the incarnation of a fierce purpose, rather than a woman. The mid-day sun is shining on the armor in the gallery, making mimic suns on bossed sword-hilts and the angles of polished breastplates. Yes, there are sharp weapons in the gallery. There is a dagger in that cabinet; she knows it well. And as a dragon-fly wheels in its flight to alight for an instant on a leaf, she darts to the cabinet, takes out the dagger, and thrusts it into her pocket, etc.— GEORGE ELIOT: Mr. Gilfil, ch. xiii.

The following stands midway between dynamic description and description by stages:

The house had that pleasant aspect of life which is like the cheery expression of comfortable activity in the human countenance. You could see, at once, that there was the stir of a large family within it. A huge load of oak-wood was passing through the gateway, towards the out-buildings in the rear; the fat cook-or probably it might be the housekeeper-stood at the side-door, bargaining for some turkeys and poultry which a countryman had brought for sale. Now and then a maid-servant, neatly dressed, and now the shining sable face of a slave, might be seen bustling across the windows in the lower part of the house. At an open window of a room in the second story, hanging over some pots of beautiful and delicate flowers-exotics, but which had never known a more genial sunshine than that of the New England autumn-was the figure of a young lady, an exotic, like the flowers, and beautiful and delicate as they. Her presence imparted an indescribable grace and faint witchery to the whole edifice.-HAWTHORNE: Seven Gables, ch. xiii.

The approach of the boats in The Lady of the Lake (ii. xvi.) is an interesting study. Is it dynamic description? Or is it genuine narrative with the effect of description? 44. Sketch; Suggestion.-Where ample details are not

positively required, it is always possible, and usually advisable, to abridge the description into a sketch. The best writings are full of such sketching, in which the writer gives only the salient points or features. In fact, the ability to sketch effectively is sure evidence of a writer's power; e. g.:

Noble Mansion! There stoodest thou, in deep Mountain Amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude; stately, massive, all of granite; glittering in the western sunbeams, like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal. Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guardian Hills: of the greenest was their sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary Tree and its shadow.-CARLYLE: Sartor Resartus, ii. ch. v.

From the classic writings we may select this:

A thousand fires burnt brightly; and round each
Sat fifty warriors in the ruddy glare;
Champing the provender before them laid,
Barley and rye, the tethered horses stood
Beside the cars, and waited for the morn.

Iliad, viii. 562 (Derby's translation).

Compare this with Carlyle, § 97.

Somewhat longer, but still a sketch, is the following:

A very ancient woman, in a white short gown and a green petticoat, with a string of gold beads about her neck, and what looked like a night-cap on her head, had brought a quantity of yarn to barter for the commodities of the shop. She was probably the very last person in town who still kept the time-honored spinning-wheel in constant revolution. It was worth while to hear the croaking and hollow tones of the old lady and the pleasant voice of Phoebe mingling in one twisted thread of talk, etc.-HAWTHORNE: Seven Gables, ch. v.

That it is a sketch will be evident if we contrast it with the following full-length portrait :

She had on a light dress which sat loosely about her figure, but did not disguise its liberal, graceful outline. A heavy mass of straight jetblack hair had escaped from its fastening and hung over her shoulders. Her grandly-cut features, pale, with the natural paleness of a brunette, had premature lines about them, telling that the years had been length

ened by sorrow, and the delicately-curved nostril, which seemed made to quiver with the proud consciousness of power and beauty, must have quivered to the heart-piercing griefs which had given that worn look to the corners of the mouth. Her wide-open black eyes had a strangely fixed, sightless gaze, as she paused at the turning, and stood silent before her husband.-GEORGE ELIOT: Janet's Repentance, ch. iv.

By Suggestion is here meant the introduction of such traits and terms as lead the reader easily and naturally to think out the rest. The writer puts the reader in a contemplative mood; e. g., the description of the philosopher at the North Cape on a June midnight:

Silence as of death, for midnight, even in the Arctic latitudes, has its character: nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself under my feet. In such moments, Solitude also is invaluable; for who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen; and before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun is but a porch-lamp.-CARLYLE: Sartor Resartus, ii. ch. viii.

Another highly suggestive passage is this:

We know not how to characterize, in any accordant and compatible terms, the Rome that lies before us; its sunless alleys, and streets of palaces; its churches, lined with the gorgeous marbles that were originally polished for the adornment of pagan temples; its thousands of evil smells, mixed up with fragrance of rich incense diffused from as many censers; its little life, deriving feeble nutriment from what has long been dead. Everywhere, some fragment of ruin suggesting the magnificence of a former epoch; everywhere, moreover, a Cross-and nastiness at the foot of it. As the sum of all, there are recollections that kindle the soul, and a gloom and languor that depress it beyond any depth of melancholic sentiment that can be elsewhere known.— HAWTHORNE: Marble Faun, i. ch. xii.

Coleridge's Ancient Mariner is all sketch and suggestion; hence its peculiar charm and power. G*