comrades came, they found their corpses stark and gashed; but round both wrists of every British hero was twined the red thread!"

Here evidently the end is foreseen from the beginning, and not a particular is introduced but that contributes some essential toward it.

The Twofold Interest.

From the above remarks and exam

ple it appears that in forecasting a story the writer is to provide for two kinds of interest, the interest of plot and incident, and the interest of purpose.

1. He is to seek the interest of plot and incident, that is, the interest that the reader derives from a skillfully managed mechanism. As already said, he is to construct the narrative and foster the reader's attention with reference to the end, or as it is technically called the dénouement; this is what plot requires. Accordingly, incidents and circumstances are introduced not merely for the interest that belongs to them individually, but for their value in contributing to the larger interest. To belong rightly to the story each incident must advance by one step the general aim.

NOTE. Just as a short story is a series of incidents, so a longer story must generally be largely a series of scenes. These may be widely separated, and contain wholly different characters; but each takes its place to contribute some real thing toward the foreseen end. Of course the incidents of a short story must be more closely connected with the end, and contribute more directly, in proportion, than the scenes of a long story; but the same principle must underlie both.

2. He is to seek the interest of purpose; that is, the end of his story should be important enough and worthy enough, both structurally and morally, to justify all the preparation made to reach it. Every story ought really to teach something. "Some central truth," says Leslie Stephen,1 "should be embodied in every work of fiction, which cannot indeed be compressed into a definite formula, but which acts as the animating and informing principle,

1 Stephen, "Hours in a Library," First Series, p. 204. Bulwer-Lytton says this tendency to make a story embody a moral purpose "has been a striking characteristic of the art of our century"; see "Caxtoniana," p. 316. This purpose is what he elsewhere calls the Conception; see "Pamphlets and Sketches," p. 333.

determining the main lines of the structure and affecting even its trivial details." Despite the popular clamor against stories with a moral purpose, this is the unspoken demand of every reader; we are impatient of a story that leads nowhere. It must be more than picturesque or exciting; it must also embody a motive and conception through which it shall add to the wisdom and moral vigor of its readers. The failure to conduct the action to a worthy culmination is what Horace satirizes in his well-known

verses:

"Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu?
Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus."

Not that this purpose is to be so obtrusive as to make the story a sermon in disguise; nor is it to be appended as a moral. It is rather to pervade the production, never absent, never asserting itself; something "to be divined by the reader, not explained by the author." "A high truth," says Hawthorne," "fairly, finely, and skillfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first."

NOTE.—“Thus,” says Bulwer-Lytton, “in Goethe's novel of 'Wilhelm Meister,' besides the mere interest of the incidents, there is an interest in the inward signification of an artist's apprenticeship in art, of a man's apprenticeship in life. In 'Transformation' ('The Marble Faun '), by Mr. Hawthorne, the mere story of outward incident can never be properly understood, unless the reader's mind goes along with the exquisite mysticism which is symbolized by the characters. In that work, often very faulty in the execution, exceedingly grand in the conception, are typified the classical sensuous life, through Donato; the Jewish dispensation, through Miriam; the Christian dispensation, through Hilda, who looks over the ruins of Rome from her virgin chamber amidst the doves."

Instances of stories with strongly emphasized purpose, though not so as to interfere with the artistic construction of the work, are found in Mrs. H. B. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson's "Ramona."

1 Horace, Epistola ad Pisones de Arte Poetica, 138.
2 Hawthorne, "House of Seven Gables," Preface.

In some of the stories of Dickens and Charles Reade the moral purpose is so prominent as to impair the artistic structure and incur the reproach of being lugged in; as instanced in "Bleak House," which attacks the defects of the English Chancery courts, and “Little Dorrit,” which in a similar way attacks the English red-tape systems in affairs of government and justice.

Kinds of Succession in Details. The narrative plan is especially exacting with regard to the succession of details: its parts must be a palpable and regularly advancing series, from beginning to end. In general, therefore, that order is to be sought in which each earlier particular will best prepare for and lead to what succeeds.

1. The general basis of every narrative must be chronological, the order of time. Whatever transgression of this order there may be in minor points, this must be the general progress recalled by the reader, as he endeavors to recollect the whole.

ence.

2. It is sometimes wiser, however, in a complex narrative, to make the order of time yield in some parts to the order of dependEvents separated by a considerable period may still be cause and effect; and accordingly the true significance of the story may demand that intervening events be reserved to some point out of chronological order, while the details belonging to one series are grouped together.

NOTE. In Motley's "Dutch Republic" occurs the following remark: "To avoid interrupting the continuity of the narrative, the Spanish campaign has been briefly sketched until the autumn of 1557, at which period the treaty between the Pope and Philip was concluded. It is now necessary to go back to the close of the preceding year."

Longfellow thus justifies this occasional liberty of narration: —

3. Sometimes also, in order to secure a more effective inception, the narrator begins the story at some point along in the plot, and then brings up what preceded in the form of an explanation, or as related by some personage of the story.

NOTE. – In Carlyle's “French Revolution," which is strictly chronological, several books of the history precede that incident where the courtier answers Louis XVI., "No, Sire, it is a revolution "; while M. Taine takes this incident as a dramatic beginning to his history, and then brings up the causes of the revolution to that point.

In Homer's Odyssey, Books ix.-xii. are taken up with Ulysses' story of his earlier wanderings, related by him to the Phæacians. In Virgil's Æneid, also, Æneas relates, in Books ii. and iii., his previous adventures to Queen Dido. George Eliot, in the beginning of "Daniel Deronda,” introduces her heroine at the gaming-table, and afterwards, when the incidents immediately connected with that scene are disposed of, goes back and relates how the heroine came to such a position.

Episodes. The word episode, from the Greek πeíσodos, a coming in besides (èπí and clσrodos), is a term used more especially in connection with the action of an epic poem, to denote a subordinate action, separable from the main story yet connected with it, an action brought in to give greater variety to the incidents of the poem. The purpose of the episode demands that its character be so different from the rest as to offer a decided relief, that it be not so long or so elaborate as to usurp the interest of the main action, and yet that it be so carefully finished as to compensate by its beauty for the reader's impatience at being interrupted. The episodes of the great epics are often the parts on which the writers have laid out their greatest skill.

NOTE. Instances of episode are, the parting of Hector and Andromache, in the Iliad, Book vi., a beautiful home scene coming between and relieving scenes of warlike contest; and the Archangel Michael's prophecy to Adam of what shall befall his posterity, in Paradise Lost, Books xi. and xii., affording consolation for the bitter agony of man's fall.

Modern invented narrative is ordinarily very intolerant of episodes. It demands that every part - description, action, and dialogue —

contribute more or less directly to bring about the dénouement. "There should be," says Anthony Trollope, "no episodes in a novel. Every sentence, every word, through all those pages, should tend to the telling of the story. Such episodes distract the attention of the reader, and always do so disagreeably. Who has not felt this to be the case, even with 'The Curious Impertinent,' and with the 'History of the Man of the Hill'? And if it be so with Cervantes and Fielding, who can hope to succeed? Though the novel which you have to write must be long, let it be all one. And this exclusion of episodes should be carried down into the smallest details."

NOTE.—The above remarks are of course not applicable to literary works of loose construction like "The Pickwick Papers," which aim only subordinately at plot, and are intended as a repository of all kinds of description and incident. In these the detached stories introduced are no more episode, as related to the whole, than are many of the adventures.

The object for which episodes are employed, namely the relief afforded by alternating one scene with another of less severe or exciting character, is effected to better purpose by the changes due to interwoven plots; concerning which latter something will be said further on.2

III.

Movement in Narration. —The life of a narrative as a whole, and the relative significance of its parts, depend on the manner in which the events are made to move forward to their culmination. For in a skillful narrative there are many kinds of movement: in one place, perhaps, the events of a long period summarized in a few swift words, in another elaborate and slow labor devoted to the action of moments. Description may enter every narrative, but only in the right place; it must not retard a movement that should advance quickly and without interruption. Some important parts, 1 Trollope, "Autobiography," p. 214.

2 See below, p. 373.