I. THE ART OF NARRATION.

The procedure in narrative is essentially the same whether the transaction to be narrated is real or fictitious. If real, it is still to be related with skilful progression and proportion of parts; if fictitious, it is still to have verisimilitude, as if it were real. And in either case the story, as a story, is an invention, an art-product; it is to follow the lines of construction that obtain in fiction, with such selection and proportioning, even of fact, as will give the result all the freedom_and fulness of an absolute creation.1

As a built composition, the quality to which narration manifests special allegiance is continuity. Its events so obviously rise out of each other that no emphasis of a skeleton plan is needed; its particulars are so homogeneous that the theme which they support is revealed not as an affirmation but as an unfolded progress.2. Narration is thus ideally the type of finished order in thinking toward which every good thought

1 "The art of narrative, in fact, is the same, whether it is applied to the selection and illustration of a real series of events or of an imaginary series. Boswell's Life of Johnson (a work of cunning and inimitable art) owes its success to the same technical manœuvres as (let us say) Tom Jones: the clear conception of certain characters of man, the choice and presentation of certain incidents out of a great number that offered, and the invention (yes invention) and preservation of a certain key in dialogue."— STEVENSON, A Humble Remonstrance, Works, Vol. xiii, p. 346. Of Macaulay's narrative method it is said: "No historian before him ever regarded his task from the same point of view, or aimed with such calm patience and labor at the same result; no one, in short, had ever so resolved to treat real events on the lines of the novel or romance. Many writers before Macaulay had done their best to be graphic and picturesque, but none ever saw that the scattered fragments of truth could, by incessant toil directed by an artistic eye, be worked into a mosaic, which for color, freedom, and finish, might rival the creations of fancy." MORISON, Macaulay (English Men of Letters), p. 143.

2 See above, pp. 426, 436. "The art of narration is the art of writing in hooks and eyes. The principle consists in making the appropriate thought follow the appropriate thought, the proper fact the proper fact; in first preparing the mind for what is to come, and then letting it come. This can only be achieved by keeping continually and insensibly before the mind of the reader some one object, character, or image, whose variations are the events of the story, whose unity is the unity of it."-BAGEHOT, Literary Studies, Vol. ii, p. 253.

sequence tends; its art being so perfect as to conceal its processes, and to seem artless.1

I.

The End: to which all is Related as Forecast. The prime requisite in narration is that the end be kept in view from the beginning, and that every part be shaped and proportioned with more or less direct reference to it. A culmination of some kind always impends, exerting its attraction on every stage of progress. Thus, in its larger field of invention, narration suggests the analogy of the suspended sentence2; it is suspension, expectancy, on a large scale, and expressed in events.3

I. As Influence to subdue Details. - The most practical result of keeping an end in view is, that thereby a criterion of choice and rejection is always present, and the details fall into balance and proportion according as they obey the attraction of the end. From the plan as thus controlled some things naturally fall out as extraneous, some receive rapid or subdued treatment as unimportant, some are put in emphasis as cardinal elements of the composition. Of all these the foreseen end is

the silent controller.1

1 Thus best realizing the Manner of Progress laid down for universal observance, P. 439, above. 2 See above, pp. 279, 350.

8 "Our art is occupied, and bound to be occupied, not so much in making stories true as in making them typical; not so much in capturing the lineaments of each fact, as in marshalling all of them towards a common end. For the welter of impressions, all forcible but all discreet, which life presents, it substitutes a certain artificial series of impressions, all indeed most feebly represented, but all aiming at the same effect, all eloquent of the same idea, all chiming together like consonant notes in music or like the graduated tints in a good picture. From all its chapters, from all its pages, from all its sentences, the well-written novel echoes and re-echoes its one creative and controlling thought; to this must every incident and character contribute; the style must have been pitched in unison with this; and if there is anywhere a word that looks another way, the book would be stronger, clearer, and (I had almost said) fuller without it.". STEVENSON, A Humble Remonstrance, Works, Vol. xiii, p. 349.

4 "Keeping the beginning and the end in view, we set out from the right startingplace and go straight towards the right destination; we introduce no event that

This influence of the end may be illustrated both directly

and by contrast.

1. The contrast

-failure to keep an end in view — is seen in the narratives of the untutored; to whom it has never occurred that one fact is more important than another; who waste time in fixing some date or circumstance that is of no consequence; who take as much pains with utterly irrelevant details as with essential; who cannot skip anything that occurred without losing their reckoning. All this is mainly because they have not set before them some end, some goal, to which the course of their story is to be steered.1

"But

EXAMPLE. - In the following a person of this cast of mind sets out to tell how she had just received a note containing a bit of news: where could you hear it?' cried Miss Bates. Where could you possibly hear it, Mr. Knightley? For it is not five minutes since I received Mrs. Cole's note- no, it cannot be more than five- or at least ten - for I had got my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come out — I was only gone

does not spring from the first cause, and tend to the great effect; we make each detail a link joined to the one going before and the one coming after; we make, in fact, all the details into one entire chain, which we can take up as a whole, carry about with us, and retain as long as we please." — PRYDE, Studies in Composition, p. 26.

...

1 "In the narrations of uneducated people . . . there is a want of prospectiveness and a superfluous amount of regressiveness. People of this sort are unable to look a long way in front of them, and they wander from the right path. They get on too fast with one half, and then the other hopelessly lags. They can tell a story exactly as it is told to them, but they can't calculate its bearings beforehand, or see how it is to be adapted to those to whom they are speaking, nor do they know how much they have thoroughly told and how much they have not. 'I went up the street, and then I went down the street; no, first went down and then but you do not follow I go before you, sir.' Thence arises the complex style usually adopted by persons not used to narration. They tumble into a story and get on as they can." BAGEHOT, Literary Studies, Vol. i, p. 145.

me;

"Those insufferably garrulous old women, those dry and fanciless beings who spare you no detail, however petty, of the facts they are recounting, and upon the thread of whose narrative all the irrelevant items cluster as pertinaciously as the essential ones, the slaves of literal fact, the stumblers over the smallest abrupt step in thought, are figures known to all of us. Comic literature has made her profit out of them. Juliet's nurse is a classical example. George Eliot's village characters and some of Dickens's minor personages supply excellent instances." - JAMES, Psychology, Vol. i, p. 570.

down to speak to Patty again about the pork — Jane was standing in the passage were not you, Jane? for my mother was so afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said, I would go down and see, and Jane said, “Shall I go down instead? for I think you have a little cold, and Patty has been washing the kitchen." "Oh, my dear,” said I — well, and just then came the note.'" 1

2. The most palpable illustration of masterly skill in making the end absolutely control the course and proportion of the story is seen in the anecdotes of the professional raconteur, who may be regarded as representing the art of story-telling in its prime essentials. His stories are frankly told, not for the story's sake, but for the sake of some point or sentiment in which their whole significance is focalized; and to this. point he subordinates everything, passing over preliminaries with a rapid touch, cutting out everything that is not indispensable to the main interest, using description with utmost parsimony; so that the end for which the story exists strikes the hearers with all possible clearness and directness.2

EXAMPLE. The following anecdote is told to illustrate the truth that "through the physical horrors of warfare, Poetry discerns the redeeming nobleness." Notice by the parsimony of introduction and description, by the steady forward movement, and by the way descriptive explanations are introduced piecemeal and just where needed, how subservient everything is to the foreseen end.

"A detachment of troops was marching along a valley, the cliffs overhanging which were crested by the enemy. A serjeant, with eleven men, chanced to become separated from the rest by taking the wrong side of a ravine, which they expected soon to terminate, but which suddenly deepened into an impassable chasm. The officer in command signalled to the party an order to return. They mistook the signal for a command to charge; the brave fellows answered with a cheer, and charged. At the summit of a steep mountain was a triangular platform, defended by a breastwork, behind which were seventy of the foe. On they went, charging up one of those fearful paths, eleven against seventy. The contest

1 JANE AUSTEN, Emma, Chap. xxi.

2 For anecdotes told compendiously as a means of amplification, see above, p. 470.

could not long be doubtful with such odds.

One after another they fell;

six upon the spot, the remainder hurled backward; but not until they had slain nearly twice their own number.

"There is a custom, we are told, among the hillsmen, that when a great chieftain of their own falls in battle, his wrist is bound with a thread either of red or green, the red denoting the highest rank. According to custom, they stripped the dead, and threw their bodies over the precipice. When their comrades came, they found their corpses stark and gashed; but round both wrists of every British hero was twined the red thread!" 1

When, however, we speak of the end of a story, we may have two different things in mind; or, as may be otherwise expressed, a twofold interest: the interest of workmanship or plot, and the interest of purpose or motive. In every seriously meant story these two distinct ends exist, both equally essential to its integrity.

2. The Constructive End, or Dénouement. The forecast of this end, with the steps necessary to bring it about, is the artistic interest of the story, the interest derived from a skilful piece of invention. Quite apart from the characters revealed, or the scenery and atmosphere described, or the moral sentiment enforced, the reader is aware first of all of a chain of incident and event which supports and conducts all the other elements of the story, and in which its artistry is concentred. This is called the plot. It is to the story what plan is to an essay. It requires steady movement to an end, or dénouement, yet through enough intricacy of incident and motive to maintain interest in the novelty of its situations and to give an unexpected turn to its final solution.

NOTE. As a piece of invention a plot must strike a just balance between novelty and verisimilitude: on the one hand, it must be new and strange enough to enliven interest, not offending by dulness or commonplace; on the other, it must assume itself to be real,2 and produce the effect

1 An incident of Sir Charles Napier's campaign against the robber tribes of Upper Scinde, cited in ROBERTSON, Lectures and Addresses, p. 804.

2 "It is impossible to imagine what a novelist takes himself to be unless he regard himself as an historian and his narrative as a history. It is only as an