kind of reverse, — giving in summary or rapid reference what the other has given in full, and enlarging on those points which the other has designated as landmarks. In this way

the reader is kept aware how the different lines of events touch one another.

The scene should not be transferred from one narrative to another except at the significant turning-points of the history, where one narrative is so finished that it can be trusted to wait, and so rounded as to be retained in mind as a story of defined character. The change should be not merely assumed, but distinctly announced.

EXAMPLE OF TRANSFER OF SCENE. In Carlyle's account of the battle of Prag, which may illustrate what may be called synchronism at close quarters, noticeable care is evinced in the changes from one side of the account to the other. It is from Friedrich's point of view that he tells the story, and his account of Friedrich's preparations, and of the ground on which the battle is to be fought, is given as seen from the Prussian position. Then, in order to describe the Austrian's preparation, he changes scene, in the following words: "Where the Austrian Camp or various Tent-groups were, at the time Friedrich first cast eye on them, is no great concern of his or ours; inasmuch as, in two or three hours hence, the Austrians were obliged, rather suddenly, to take Order of Battle; and that, and not their camping, is the thing we are curious upon. Let us step across, and take some survey of that Austrian ground, which Friedrich is now surveying from the distance, fully intending that it shall be a battleground in few hours; and try to explain how the Austrians drew-up on it, when they noticed the Prussian symptoms to become serious more and more." At the end of this description he returns to his original standingpoint, in the following words: "Friedrich surveys diligently what he can of all this, from the northern verge. We will now return to Friedrich; and will stay on his side through the terrible Action that is coming." 1

III. NARRATION IN LITERATURE.

Of all the most widespread and popular forms of literature narration is the basis, furnishing the groundwork and main

1 CARLYLE, Frederick the Great, Vol. vi, pp. 126, 129.

movement by which they are estimated. The narrative type, however, rarely appears unmixed, being reinforced, as occasion rises, by other types, especially description and exposition.

The following, with brief indication of their working principles, are the leading forms of literature thus founded on narration.

I.

History. This is to be regarded as first in importance, because, being the recounting of actual events, it represents the primal and ideal use of narration. Dealing with the authentic facts of the world, the larger facts with which are connected the destiny of nations and communities, its art is first to find by wise investigation what is authentic, and then so to interpret this that its truth and significance shall be clearly manifest. Whatever historical writing fails in these, one or both, fails in art; it remains either raw material or raw judgment.

The Finding of Historic Fact. In the investigation of historic fact two endowments of mind are at work, very different from each other, yet each requiring ideally to be at its best: minute accuracy and vigorous imagination.1

1. Most deeply of all, and long before he begins the actual composition, the historian must have the most unwearied patience in detail and investigation, shrinking not from the dryest and minutest researches, in his determination to ascertain and verify every smallest fact that may throw light on his story. To him there can be nothing forbidding, nothing unimportant. If a small and obscure incident may alter the

1 "Stern Accuracy in inquiring, bold Imagination in expounding and filling-up; these,' says friend Sauerteig, 'are the two pinions on which History soars,' -or flutters and wabbles." - CARLYLE, Essays, Vol. iii, p. 259. The imagination was what Carlyle especially valued in his own work, and whenever he had to give statistics or prosaic information he was fond of introducing them apologetically, as the work of a certain Dryasdust.

color of a whole epoch, or an unobtrusive date be the key to a whole series of facts, it will not do to call any detail superfluous.1

NOTE.

The extreme of accuracy and care in ascertaining facts is the prevailing characteristic of modern historical scholarship, a characteristic, indeed, which it has in common with the whole scientific method and spirit of our day. First eminently exemplified, perhaps, in Gibbon, it has become the indispensable endowment of the standard historian, and is well illustrated by such names as Hallam, Carlyle, Macaulay, Motley, Bancroft, and Parkman.

2. The facts of history have not only to be accumulated by documentary evidence; they have also to be restored by an imagination powerful enough to fill the gaps of evidence and reproduce the past in a living portrayal. Through all the patient drudgery of research the writer must have the vision of a rounded and consistent narrative, as the sculptor sees the statue in the stone. It is only so that he can reproduce the very form and body of past events as they really are. Thus the penetrative imagination, in its creative vigor, becomes a means by which hidden facts are divined and brought to light.2

1 Of Macaulay's masterly faculty of packing information both into his statements and into the implications, allusions, and figures of his historical works Thackeray says that these indicate "not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble previous toil of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of description.” — THACKERAY, Roundabout Papers, p. 198. 2 One of Macaulay's friends thus reports his method of retaining and coördinating historic facts: "I said that I was surprised at the great accuracy of his information, considering how desultory his reading had been. My accuracy as to facts,' he said, 'I owe to a cause which many men would not confess. It is due to my love of castle-building. The past is in my mind soon constructed into a romance.' He then went on to describe the way in which from his childhood his imagination had been filled with the study of history. With a person of my turn,' he said, 'the minute touches are of as great interest, and perhaps greater, than the most important events. Spending so much time as I do in solitude, my mind would have rusted by gazing vacantly at the shop windows. As it is, I am no sooner in the streets than I am in Greece, in Rome, in the midst of the French Revolution. Precision in dates, the day or hour in which a man was born or died, becomes absolutely

NOTE. It is through the imagination that the real life and relation of facts are seen; and of course the personality of the writer must to greater or less extent color the view that his imagination takes. Some historians, as Froude and Carlyle, have been charged with letting their imagination distort or discard facts; this tendency is, of course, to be guarded against. And there is perhaps no better safeguard of the reconstructing imagination than what has already been mentioned as its complemental quality, — patient, industrious search for facts, and committal to them.

The Interpreting of Historic Fact. - The very manner of recounting facts once found is an interpretation of them, a putting of them into such order and relation that their large significance is seen. But besides this mere recounting of them, also, two other of the literary types may be employed as interpreting agencies; and from the broad lines of treatment thus adopted rise three main kinds of historic writing.'

1. The purely narrative form of history, which is based on annals and chronicles, aims to give merely the narrative action of the story, but with a regard to proportion, light and shade, and the interaction of events, which will impart to the work something of invented plot. It is this constructive skill that raises it from the mere raw material to real history; makes a readable story of what would otherwise be the disjecta membra of a story.

EXAMPLES. Of the crude journal of events the typical example is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Some of the older histories, like Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, and Burnet's History of my Own Time, are conceived in this type of unadorned narrative. More modern examples are necessary. A slight fact, a sentence, a word, are of importance in my romance.'” TREVELYAN, Life of Macaulay, Vol. i, p.172. — The extracts from Professor Wilson's essay, pp. 453 and 455, above, also enforce this same truth of the service of imagination to history.

1 This classification of historic writing is adopted from De Quincey. "History, as a composition," he says, "falls into three separate arrangements, obeying three distinct laws, and addressing itself to three distinct objects. Its first and humblest office is to deliver a naked, unadorned exposition of public events and their circumstances. This form of history may be styled the purely Narrative; the second form is that which may be styled the Scenical; and the third the Philosophic.” — DE QUINCEY, Charlemagne, Works, Vol. vi, p. 138.

The part

Hume's History of England and Help's Spanish Conquest. that invention or plot may play in history is described from Macaulay's historical skill, pp. 513, 539, above; though Macaulay's own work was rather more comprehensive than mere narrative history.

2. Scenic history is history written with a view to impressing the story on the imagination, making readers realize, if possible, the event as a kind of picture or pageant. To effect this purpose, the telling scenes of history are selected for treatment, and narration is combined liberally with description.1

EXAMPLES. De Quincey himself instances, as illustrative of this class, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a stately procession of picturesque events. Other examples are Carlyle's French Revolution, Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea, Macaulay's History of England, and the several histories of Prescott and Parkman. How vital the descriptive element was in Macaulay's conception of history may be seen from the paragraph quoted from him, p. 380, above.

It

3. Philosophic history, which combines with the fundamental narrative exposition and induction, is confessedly something beyond a story of events; it is a commentary on events. views the course of its narrative in the relations of principles, motives, cause and effect, laws of human and physical nature. This manner of treating history is distinctively the modern manner; and the prevalence of scientific method in all departments of study has greatly enhanced the esteem in which it is held. A favorite characterization of history is, "philosophy teaching by example." "

EXAMPLES. Of historic works predominantly philosophic may be mentioned Buckle's History of Civilization, Lecky's History of European 1"Histories of this class proceed upon principles of selection, presupposing in the reader a general knowledge of the great cardinal incidents, and bringing forward into especial notice those only which are susceptible of being treated with distinguished effect.". DE QUINCEY.

2" Under whatever name, it is evident that philosophy, or an investigation of the true moving forces in every great train and sequence of national events, and an exhibition of the motives and the moral consequences in their largest extent which have concurred with these events, cannot be omitted in any history above the level of a childish understanding.". DE QUINCEY.