account of a journey, is regulated by what is called "the traveller's point of view"; that is, the describer is represented as going from one point to another and portraying successive aspects.

EXAMPLES. -1. In his description of the river Oxus, at the end of Sohrab and Rustum, Matthew Arnold, instead of postulating a traveller to follow its course, personifies the river itself.

2. The following shows how naturally the reader adjusts his point of view, and thus follows the fortunes of the portrayal like those of a story:

"Just on the brow of the hill, where I paused to look before me, the series of stone pillars came abruptly to an end; and only a little below, a sort of track appeared and began to go down a breakneck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led into a valley between falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a reaped field of corn, and floored further down with green meadows. I followed the track with precipitation; the steepness of the slope, the continual agile turning of the line of descent, and the old unwearied hope of finding something new in a new country, all conspired to lend me wings. Yet a little lower and a stream began, collecting itself together out of many fountains, and soon making a glad noise among the hills. Sometimes it would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, in which Modestine refreshed her feet.

"The whole descent is like a dream to me, so rapidly was it accomplished. I had scarcely left the summit ere the valley had closed round my path, and the sun beat upon me, walking in a stagnant lowland atmosphere. The track became a road, and went up and down in easy undulations. I passed cabin after cabin, but all seemed deserted; and I saw not a human creature, nor heard any sound except that of the stream.” 1 Etc.

III. DESCRIPTION IN LITERATURE.

In the body of literature description occupies a place of its own, which needs to be accounted for by a few words of explanation.

I.

General Status and Value.

-While to a greater or less extent description pervades all the great forms of literature, and

1 STEVENSON, Travels with a Donkey, Works, Vol. xii, p. 230.

does much in aid of the other literary types, comparatively little is made of it as a form by itself. In its more elaborate and picturesque work, it is to be found mostly in passages or sections of productions mainly narrative or oratorical. Yet this fact is no indication of slight esteem for it; rather the contrary. It is often regarded and estimated as if it were a jewel in a setting; pointed out and quoted by readers and critics, and by writers worked up with most painstaking care. On the whole, no more delicate indication of a writer's skill and taste is afforded than by his management of description; and so the general judgment regards the matter.1

One reason for this peculiar status of description in literature has already been repeatedly suggested 2: the wealth of detail in the object, the unhandiness of language in picturing it. Whatever is done with it, then, must be done quickly and strikingly, it cannot run into volumes, or even into chapters. Yet the very difficulty of the problem has such fascination for the born artist, and so calls out his powers, that his work, if it survives, is shrined among the treasures of literature.

1 The care and study of novelists in working up what is called "local color" for the scenes and atmosphere of their works have become almost a proverb. Of Scott's visit to the place where he was to lay the scene of Rokeby we have the following account: "The morning after he arrived he said, 'You have often given me materials for romance- now I want a good robber's cave and an old church of the right sort.' We rode out, and he found what he wanted in the ancient slate quarries of Brignal and the ruined Abbey of Eggleston. I observed him noting down even the peculiar little wild flowers and herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag near his intended cave of Guy Denzil; and could not help saying, that as he was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses would be as poetical as any of the humble plants he was examining. I laughed, in short, at his scrupulousness; but I understood him when he replied, 'that in nature herself no two scenes were exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes, would possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he recorded; whereas whoever trusted to imagination, would soon find his own mind circumscribed, and contracted to a few favorite images, and the repetition of these would sooner or later produce that very monotony and barrenness which had always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but patient worshippers of truth.'" — LOCKHART, Life of Scott, Vol. iv, p. 20.

2 See above, pp. 479, 493.

Another reason that may guide the describer is men's tendency to make practical demands. They are impatient of portrayals, however vivid or artistic, that stop with themselves; their unspoken demand is that a description shall contribute to explain or enforce or prove something. As long as it is an amplification, making some goal of thought more sightly, it is interesting; but let it exist for itself alone, and plain people will regard it as an unpractical trifling. This general demand, which is not unwholesome, is to be reckoned with by any one who seeks a status for his work in literature.

II.

Forms of which Description is the Basis.- The few forms that employ description as their prevailing type are, so to speak, frankly outspoken as to their limitations: they are for the most part either unrestrainedly æsthetic, appealing to the few who are their fit audience, or downright practical, appealing to the many who want plain unimaginative facts.

Descriptive Poetry. Poetry, as it rises so largely out of the imagination, is a more descriptive art than prose. Its imagery, its concreteness, its liberty to revel in beautiful forms undisturbed by utilitarian exactions, all contribute to make its picturing power a main feature. And it is largely for its world of imagery that readers go to poetry and value it.

In spite of this fact, however, works distinctly descriptive form a comparatively small class, even in poetry; though it should be noted that no class is choicer. The same prejudice against the non-utilizable seems to be encountered here as in prose; accordingly the imagery and description are valued mostly as they are concentrated into some sentiment, or lesson, or emotion, in which the poem's true significance resides. Hence the special field of description is in short lyric poems, where some image or suggestion of nature is

taken up and applied to some truth of life. A small and much-valued body of longer descriptive poems, also, are counted high among the stores of English literature.

EXAMPLES OF LONGER DESCRIPTIVE POEMS.- Thomson's Seasons and Castle of Indolence; Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; Keats's Endymion; Beattie's Minstrel; Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night; Goldsmith's Traveller and Deserted Village; Tennyson's Palace of Art, and Dream of Fair Women; Browning's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came, and How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.

Informative Treatises and Articles. Description is employed with the purpose of imparting plain information, and with no attempt to shun what is statistical and inventory-like, in books and periodical articles whose object is to give an account of some building, work of art or mechanism, natural phenomenon, or country's resources. In such descriptions the pictorial element is little regarded: interest centres in dimensions, accurate details, statistics, and the like. Thoroughness and clearness are the predominating aims; the subject is supposed to contain its own interest, and not to need the vivifying power of language to create or heighten it. Such work may indeed profit by vigor and lightness of style, so far as these qualities do not interfere with its practical aim; but the practical aim must first be satisfied.

EXAMPLES. Standard books of this kind are Wallace's Russia and Williams's The Middle Kingdom. In periodical literature may be mentioned the numerous articles continually appearing on some projected or completed public work, as the Congressional Library, the Sub-way in Boston, the Columbia University Buildings; as also papers on the resources of some state or district, art exhibitions, and the like. It is distinctively the class of useful literature.

Sketches of Travel and Observation. Intermediate in tone between the forms just named, and inclining sometimes to the purely literary, sometimes to the informative, is a valued body of books and sketches of travel and observation. In these

works description, while remaining the element for which the book or article exists, employs also narrative elements, in the shape of incidents and details of travel, popular traditions, and the like. The style aimed at is light, lively, conversaThe aim is to impart information in the guise of charm and amusement. It does not ordinarily seek minuteness of information; being occupied rather with the endeavor to sketch scenery, towns, customs, and national types, in an enjoyable and realistic manner.

EXAMPLES. Stevenson's Inland Voyage, Travels with a Donkey, and The Amateur Emigrant are good examples of the rather more literary treatment of this kind of material. Kinglake's Eothen is a brilliant book of Eastern travel. Borrow's The Bible in Spain is a noted book of this class; not purely descriptive. A rather thoughtful and philosophic example is Emerson's English Traits. Hawthorne's Our Old Home is lighter and more graceful. Of works less ambitiously literary may be mentioned Du Chaillu's The Land of the Midnight Sun, and the works of Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop on Oriental travel.