down the bank and plunged into the river, which winds here through salt meadows before emptying into the harbour. Their naked bodies flashed in the sun; and they yelled as they ran down.

All that this expresses descriptively is:

From the dark grove of pines naked bodies flashed down the steep red clay bank into the river, till the salt harbour meadow was alive with the cries and splashing of street boys.

This very obvious case shows that artistic conciseness, which is primarily achieved through selective omission (§ 147), depends also on movement without interruption, that is on artistic coherence. Delicacy in this art of transitions is seen at its finest in the Sentimental Journey:

I looked at Monsieur Dessein through and through; eyed him as he walked along in profile, then en face; thought him like a Jew, then a Turk; disliked his wig; cursed him by my gods; wished him at the devil.

And is all this to be lighted up in the heart for a beggarly account of three or four louis d'ors, which is the most I can be overreached in? "Base passion!" said I, turning myself about as a man naturally does upon a sudden reverse of sentiment; "Base, ungentle passion! thy hand is against every man, and every man's hand against thee." "Heaven forbid!" said she, raising her hand up to her forehead; for I had turned full in front upon the lady whom I had seen in conversation with the monk: she had followed us unperceived. "Heaven forbid, indeed!" said I, offering her my own. She had a black pair of silk gloves, open only at the thumb and two fore-fingers-so accepted it without reserve, and I led her up to the door of the remise.

III. EMPHASIS

151. In like manner the principle of emphasis in artistic composition implies a subordination not merely, nor necessarily, logical. With this modification, however, the rules read for the one almost as for the other. A part must have space proportional to its significance, to the directness of its bearing in this sense on the main point (§§ 8-10), which in narrative is the issue, the event. In detail, too, the rules of climax (§§ 40, 41), of suspense (§ 37), of the prominence given by a pause to what follows (§§ 44, 140), are as good for the one kind as for the other. The single aspect that needs extension is variety, which has heretofore been considered only in its application to single paragraphs (§ 27). More largely applied, as to the order and relation of incidents, the principle of variety is not so much an exception to the principle of unity as an instance of that kind of emphasis which is seen most simply in the rule of contrast, more widely in the pleasure of surprise in stories and the relief of comic scenes in tragedy. Besides the force arising from strict subordination to one end, there is also a force arising from a just estimate of flux and reflux in our impressions, of the reaction that follows action. Unity and emphasis say, Never lose the key; variety says, Provide the relief of incidental change without letting the change be more than incidental.

152. These counsels of art have a value even for those who, without assurance of talent, practise artistic composition to the end of bettering their appreciation. No one understands quite so fully the beauty of picture or story as he that has worked, faithfully if feebly, with

his own brush or pen. It is not simply the craft of details that thus emerges from the study to express oneself, but, what is far more important, a sense of artistic structure, of adjustment, relations, proportion. Besides, almost every man of open mind has occasions beyond mere academic practice for expressing himself. Life would be richer if people extended and applied their education by informing their letters and conversation with their own personalities. That letters and conversation are commonly trite and colourless arises not so much from lack of personality as from indolence. The expression of oneself is the result oftener of perseverance than of effortless spontaneity; and something, at least, of this, the degree varying all the way from a sincere letter to a great novel, every one may learn. Thus the study of artistic composition, though it contributes little to the business of life, has for the average man in college a twofold value: it widens and deepens his criticism, and it opens some expression of his personality. In this aspect it is good for artisans as well as for artists.

CHAPTER V

NARRATION

153. Of artistic composition in words the type is narration. Narration is rather inclusive of description than distinct from it. True, the latter may appear without the former, as exposition may appear without argument; but the former cannot dispense with the latter, and which a given piece shall be called is often not worth deciding. An account of a boat race or a battle is usually as much one as the other. Moreover, the fact that most description is found within narration is not accidental; for description, having usually no motive of its own, is almost essentially dependent. It is typically but the stage setting of the story. Of the two, then, description is the subordinate, narration the principal.

154. No art for the pleasure of man is older or more nearly universal than story-telling; no other has flourished so constantly; no other is so common to-day. It is the perennial art. From the beginning it shows two vital sources of interest: the interest in human nature, in character; and the interest in the succession of events, in plot. From the beginning, too, these have never been sharply separated; but the expression of character has in most literatures matured earlier. This is epic. The basis of epic, as Aristotle says, is character. What gives vitality to the Iliad, to the Song of Roland, to Beowulf, is not so much the chain of incidents, the

adventure, as the vivid humanity of the heroes. Contrast with these the later heroes, Launcelot, Tristram, Percival, the heroes of the great mediæval romances. These do not appeal to us in the same way. They are habitually and typically personages rather than persons. They do not often manifest such traits as make them seem flesh and blood, or even very different one from another. Rather the interest of the romances is not so much in persons as in adventures, far less the interest of character than the interest of incident. These two main springs of narrative interest have predominated alternately in literary fashion through many centuries; but, to speak generally, both are perennial. Even among people of wide culture and sympathies, one rather than the other will be the predilection of the individual reader; but few stories rely on either exclusively. Story-telling requires, with whatever emphasis on the one or the other, both persons and incidents, both character and plot. These are its elements.

I. CHARACTER

155. The literary expression of character can as little be inculcated as the expression of feeling in persuasion. At its height it is what we significantly call creation, with equal significance applying the word also to the conception of a great character expressed by a great actor. Shakespeare's Hamlet is a creation, how marvellous a creation we learned much more fully from the Hamlet of Edwin Booth. Only a rare gift of insight into human nature could create, in print or on the stage, Hamlet or Becky Sharp, or even the least of the people that we know from novels as well as we know our friends in the flesh. But we have met men of an in