stirred by what Crusoe does. In contrast with this, however, were one to dissect out from Meredith's The Egoist all those passages that by subtile analysis expound the character of Sir Willoughby Patterne, the residue would be surprisingly small, for the element of actual adventure in this novel is scant indeed. The reader is interested not so much in what Sir Willoughby does as in what he is.

Briefer illustration of the same difference would be found by comparing a short-story like Poe's The Gold Bug with Hawthorne's The Great Stone Face. In the one case, Legrand, Jupiter, and the supposed narrator are of no consequence, save as necessary adjuncts to an action of absorbing interest. But in Hawthorne's narrative, Gathergold, Stony Phiz, and old Blood-and-Thunder serve the sole purpose of contributing to the elaboration of Ernest's personality, -the main concern of the narrative.

or

Between these two extremes lies the great part of narrative writing. While many novels, stories, and narrative sketches are written primarily to present in entertaining manner some occurrence or transaction, yet the human element will creep in, until often it is difficult to say which is more essential, the sequence of details wherein the human element is purely adventitious personality for its own sake. What gives The Outcasts of Poker Flat its value? Is it the originality of narrative detail in which Oakhurst, Mother Shipton, and "The Duchess" are mere personages? Or is it the delineation of these very personages as individuals, human in their appeal? The tendency of narrative fiction has been distinctly toward increased elaboration of the character element. The early romances dealt more exclusively with incidents; writing of them Professor Horne says:

Writers of romance made their heroes all alike and their old men all alike. . . . As to character development, the change caused in the person by the experiences undergone in the tale, it was still wholly unconsidered.1

The modern novel, on the other hand, concerns itself more and more with psychological problems, with the personality of the actors. Scott and Stevenson will of course always be popular, nevertheless George Eliot and George Meredith are more truly representative of the trend of modern imaginative narrative than are the authors of Kenilworth and Treasure Island.

Outside of fiction, narrative writing will verge toward the one or the other method, as the subject ranges from the chronicle of historic events to the interpretative biography. In the history of a nation or of a period the main concern of the narrator is to present the successive data that distinguish the era under consideration. Yet even in the setting forth of these data it is often inevitable that he present the individuality of the men who have shaped national destiny. The character of a Washington, of a Napoleon, of a Cromwell, is so essentially interwoven with the great events of his time that it is almost impossible to conceive of him as a mere doer of deeds. Of course in biographic writing the very character of the discourse demands the exposition of personality. The writer will not only give his own interpretation of his hero as an individual, but he will know that the events chronicled are subordinate in interest to that personality.

1 Horne's The Technique of the Novel. By permission of Harper and Brothers. Copyright, 1908, by Harper and Brothers.

DIRECT CHARACTERIZATION

Portrayal of character in the sense of personality, in that it deals with the abstract, differs entirely from the presentation of a personage and from setting, which have to do with the concrete. The presentation of that impalpable, abstract thing that we call individuality may be accomplished in either of two ways, the direct or the indirect. In the direct method of characterization the writer uses exposition, and presents the various phases of his subject with all the exactness that would attend the definition of a term. For the time being, he is no longer the narrator; he becomes the teacher. In The Scarlet Letter for example, one frequently finds paragraphs like the following, which sets forth the character of Hester Prynne:

Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned, in great measure, from passion and feeling to thought. Standing alone in the world alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little Pearl to be guided and protected alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable—she cast away the fragments of a broken chain. The world's law was no law to her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before. Men of the world had overthrown nobles and kings. Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged - not actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode the whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet letter.

In her lonesome cottage, by the sea-shore, thoughts visited her such as dared to enter no other dwelling in New England; shadowy guests, that would have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at her door.

The dangers attendant upon this direct, or abstract, method of characterization, whether in the chronicle of fact or in fiction, are apparent at a glance. Essentially expository in nature, it is not structurally of a piece with the writing of which it is a part, and is likely, therefore, to introduce an atmosphere of stiffness, of artificiality, that may prove fatal to unity of tone as well as to general coherence and to interest. This is especially true if the exposition be carried to excess, as may easily be done by a writer endowed, like George Eliot, with a taste for analytical and logical methods. Writers of this order, exponents of the scientific tendencies characteristic of the Victorian age, have given to recent fiction a distinctly analytical cast.

A modification of the direct method of characterization a modification in form rather than in substanceis seen when the writer, instead of appearing in person to expound the personality of his hero, puts the exposition into the mouth of some actor in the story, either the hero himself or some subordinate personage. Under these conditions the exposition seems to arise more naturally from the narrative. For example, in Adam Bede, Dinah Morris is made to expound her own character when, in conversation with Mr. Irwine, in reply to the question how she first came to think of preaching, she replies:

"Indeed, sir, I didn't think of it at all - I'd been used from the time I was sixteen to talk to the little children, and teach them, and sometimes I had had my heart enlarged to speak in

class, and was much drawn out in prayer with the sick. But I had felt no call to preach; for when I'm not greatly wrought upon, I'm too much given to sit silent all day long with the thought of God overflowing my soul as the pebbles lie bathed in the Willow Brook. For thoughts are so great are n't they, sir? They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood; and it's my besetment to forget where I am and everything about me, and lose myself in thoughts that I could give no account of, for I could neither make a beginning nor ending of them in words. That was my way as long as I can remember; but sometimes it seemed as if speech came to me without any will of my own, and words were given to me that came out as the tears come, because our hearts are full and we can't help it. And those were always times of great blessing, though I had never thought it could be so with me before a congregation of people. But, sir, we are led on, like the little children, by a way that we know not. I was called to preach quite suddenly, and since then I have never been left in doubt about the work that was laid upon me."

This is, however, but a shading of the frankly direct method, and is open to the rhetorical dangers already indicated, although in slightly less degree. It is, furthermore, subject to the danger of causing the personage through whom the exposition is presented to become dull and artificial.

INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION

Direct, or abstract, characterization is of the simplest order and easily accomplished, for nothing is less difficult than to bring the story to a halt for a time and to fill paragraph after paragraph with expository comment upon the characters that participate in the action. But this is not the method of actual experience. One does not form judgment of a friend, of an acquaintance,