very potent means of suggesting the great elemental traits of things, such as need no analysis or minute detailing.' EXAMPLES. A celebrated Bible description, Eliphaz's vision, does not portray the object at all, but merely its effect on the beholder: Shakespeare employs this kind of suggestion in his supernatural scenes, as for instance in Macbeth, where the ghost of Banquo appears. It is Macbeth's strange words and acts which produce the effect, nothing that is seen. A touch of such suggestion comes at the end of the Dover cliff description, to indicate the terror-producing height : "I'll look no more; Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight But we may stop a step short of this, too, and in a man's face and bodily acts read his mind, especially in its more profoundly stirred moods. Thus, though nothing but what is visible may be mentioned, the reader is guided to what is deep within, and the most difficult descriptive object, man's mind, stands out revealed, like an object of sense. 1 "One of the strongest and most successful modes of describing any powerful object, of any kind, is to describe it in its effects. When the spectator's eye is dazzled, and he shades it, we form the idea of a splendid object; when his face turns pale, of a horrible one; from his quick wonder and admiration we form the idea of great beauty; from his silent awe, of great majesty."— MOZLEY, Essays Historical and Theological, Vol. ii, p. 190. 2 Job iv. 13-17. Translation by the author of this book. 3 Macbeth, Act iii, Scene 4. 4 King Lear, Act iv, Scene 6. See p. 491, above. EXAMPLES. The descriptive effect of the following is not in what the subject does; all serves rather to portray a mind unhinged by reverse and despair: "A sad reverse it was for him who long Had filled with plenty, and possessed in peace, He mingled, where he might, the various tasks Subjective Description. In this opposite extreme the object contemplated is so nearly everything that the observer's personality is blended with it. That is, his mood or emotion of joy or sadness, his general state of health or morbidness, operates to robe the world in the qualities of his own soul; so that the scene is dismal or genial, not necessarily as so in itself, but because he is. Of the same principle it is to make nature partake in some described action, as if things inanimate were endowed with sympathy. This kind of description, though in a literal sense it takes liberties with nature, is obviously full of power and intensity, and, read with proper emotional allowance, does not mislead." 1 WORDSWORTH, Excursion, Book i, Works (Globe edition), p. 423. 2 Ruskin inveighs against such attribution of sympathy to nature, which he thus illustrates and defines: "I want to examine the nature of the other error, that which the mind admits, when affected strongly by emotion. Thus, for instance, in Alton Locke: : They rowed her in across the rolling foam The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the 'Pathetic Fallacy.'". - RUSKIN, Modern Painters, Vol. iii, p. 159. EXAMPLES. -1. Of nature colored by the describer's mind. Tennyson's Maud, which is meant to be a portrayal of a morbid mind, may be read throughout as a masterly work of subjective description. way, in the first stanza, that a certain ravine is described: "I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath, This is the In Hamlet occurs an interesting example of resistance to the tendency to make description subjective. Hamlet is determined to see things as they are, not as colored by his disordered mind: "I have of late- but wherefore I know not - lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors."1 2. Of nature in sympathy with human action. Of the great sin which caused the loss of Paradise, Milton thus describes the accompaniments in nature: "Earth trembled from her entrails, as again In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan; Sky loured, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops III. Aid from Narrative Movement. Description is so closely allied to narration that the two are very spontaneously used as accessories of each other. Some forms of discourse there are, indeed, wherein narrative and descriptive elements are so blended and balanced that it is difficult to determine which has the predominance. It is a natural tendency, when an object is vividly conceived, to endow it with life and motion. We see this in personification and in allegory. We see it also in numerous 1 SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet, Act ii, Scene 2. 2 MILTON, Paradise Lost, Book ix, ll. 1000-1004. narrative touches, such as trope-words involving action, verbs of motion used to portray objects at rest, and the like; which things, of which every lively description is full, serve to invigorate the scene more than the reader is aware. ILLUSTRATION. - Observe how the words here italicized, which are at once personification (or at least animization) and verbs of action, enliven the description in the following: "So till the dusk that follow'd evensong Rode on the two, reviler and reviled; Then after one long slope was mounted, saw, To westward in the deeps whereof a mere, Apart from these minor narrative suggestions there are two classes of descriptive objects wherein narrative movement becomes necessary. 1. Time-Conditioned Portrayal. Something of narrative character in description is compelled by the element of time entering in. The description of a storm, for instance, or of a sunrise, must recognize the changes of aspect during the continuance of the scene; and thus the portrayal, released from the awkward limitation of an inert object, assumes at once the movement of story. A battle may be treated either descriptively or narratively; that is, the principle of treatment may lie predominantly in the picturing of scenes or in the development of action; but in either case there must necessarily be large recourse to the other literary type. EXAMPLE. - The following description is introduced into an oration to give point to some truths in astronomy: "I had occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston; and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Everything around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken 1 TENNYSON, Gareth and Lynette, 11. 773-780. 2 See the second problem of material and handling, p. 480, above, only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night, the sky was without a cloud, — the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral lustre but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her newly-discovered glories from the naked eye in the south; the steady pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the north to their sovereign. "Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his state." 1 As to battle-scenes, Stephen Crane, in The Red Badge of Courage, is prevailingly descriptive, lending interest more to the scene than to the result. Captain Charles King, whose description of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg 2 Lord Wolesley, Lord William Beresford, and General Fitzwygram agreed to call "the most perfect picture of a battle-scene in the English language," treats his subject more as a plotted narrative. 2. Panoramic Portrayal. The element of comprehensiveness in a scene may also compel the use of narrative movement; as in an extended landscape, or tract of country, whose features of interest cannot all be seen from one point of view. such a case the description, which becomes virtually the 1 EVERETT, Orations and Speeches, Vol. iii, p. 457. 2 KING, Between the Lines, pp. 268-282, In |