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of some great personage, from formal generalizations as to his distinctive traits, or altogether from what others may say of him, or from what he says of himself. Rather are men known by their acts, by the external expression of the soul within. We may read in abstract terms that Queen Elizabeth possessed the "triviality of Anne Boleyn" and "the wilfulness of Henry," together with a nature as hard as steel and a temper purely intellectual"; but her statesmen formulated no such abstractions. The Queen known to them was the woman who "played with her rings that her courtiers might note the delicacy of her hands," who "danced a coranto that the French ambassador hidden dexterously behind a screen might report her sprightliness to his master," who "for fifty years hoodwinked and outwitted every statesman in Europe by her diplomacy and shrewd intrigue.' Similarly in narrative writing, the natural method of characterization is that whereby individuality is indirectly set forth by words, by acts, or by personal characteristics of gesture and speech. There is hardly a narrative, from the simplest to the most complex, that does not illustrate this indirect, or concrete, method of delineation. A simple item to the effect that "a mob about to lynch a horse-thief gave him a good drink of whiskey before stringing him up" suggests to the author of The American Commonwealth a distinct trait in the American character. The simple outline of the story of the Prodigal Son has supplied homiletic ammunition to generations of sermon writers, until, were all the characterizations of the father, the prodigal, and the older brother collated, they would constitute a library of psychologic interpretation. In Bret Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flat the reader feels vividly the delicacy of John Oakhurst, a gambler and sharper; the fundamental wo

manliness of "The Duchess," an ostracized prostitute; the boyish simplicity and enthusiasm of "The Innocent"; but the story contains no paragraphs of extended analytical character dissection. The Dolly Dialogues of Anthony Hope, in keeping with their title, present nothing but dialogue, and yet from them one obtains a fairly clear conception of the personality of Miss Foster and of Lady Mickleham. The extended forms of narrative literature offer endless illustrations of the principle that personality is portrayed by all forms of external manifestation. It is interesting to note how in a passage like the following from Macaulay's History of England, along with the direct characterization, there is considerable of the indirect method. The final estimate of Clarendon is based, in no small degree, upon such premises as his arrogance, his ostentation, his attitude on the religious and political matters of his own time,-all of these data being viewed as external manifestations of the personality within:

The minister's virtues and vices alike contributed to his ruin. He was the ostensible head of the administration, and was therefore held responsible even for those acts which he had strongly but vainly opposed in Council. He was regarded by the Puritans, and by all who pitied him, as an implacable bigot, a second Laud, with much more than Laud's understanding. He had on all occasions maintained that the Act of Indemnity ought to be strictly observed; and this part of his conduct, though highly honorable to him, made him hateful to all those Royalists who wished to repair their ruined fortunes by suing the Roundheads for damages and mesne profits. The Presbyterians of Scotland attributed to him the downfall of their Church. The Papists of Ireland attributed to him the loss of their lands. As father of the Duchess of York, he had an obvious motive for wishing that there might be a barren queen; and he was therefore suspected of having purposely recommended one. The sale of Dunkirk was justly imputed to him.

For the war with Holland, he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his arrogant deportment, the indelicate eagerness with which he grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he squandered them, his picture-gallery, filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which had once been the property of ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately front right opposite to the humbler residence of our kings, drew on him much deserved, and some undeserved, censure. . . . On the vices of the young and gay he looked with an aversion almost as bitter and contemptuous as that which he felt for the theological errors of the sectaries. He missed no opportunity of showing his scorn of the mimics, revellers, and courtesans who crowded the palace; and the admonitions which he addressed to the King himself were very sharp, and, what Charles disliked still more, very long. Scarcely any voice was raised in favor of a minister loaded with the double odium of faults which roused the fury of the people, and of virtues which annoyed and importuned the sovereign.

In considering these various methods of indirect characterization, we may, for convenience, class them under (a) action, that is, things done; (b) personal peculiarities attendant upon action, such as speech, gesture, etc.; and (c) environment.

a. Characterization by Action

No estimate of character is more common, and perhaps in the end more accurate, than that reached through the acts in which personality manifests itself. In literature this method of characterization is effective because it is natural, and, furthermore, because it offers to the reader an opportunity of exercising his own judgment, of becoming an interpreter. For this there is no opportunity by the direct, or expository, method; for here the conclusion has already been reached and is merely registered for reference. A writer of historical narrative

may say abstractly of Elizabeth that "she loved gaiety and laughter and wit; a happy retort or a finished compliment never failed to win her favour," and comprehension of the meaning is the only mental act demanded of the reader; clearness of expression is the principal rhetorical requisite. When, however, in Kenilworth we read of Sir Walter Raleigh's success with the Queen and of the painful failures of Tressilian and Blount to please their royal mistress, we not only understand what we read, but, in addition, we interpret, we read character into the various episodes, and we come to the same conclusion that the historian or the biographer would have stated in abstract terms.

It is also to be noted that the exposition of character through acts is not only natural and clear, but is often more dramatic than when presented directly. An appeal to the eye, to the ear, comes with greater effect than does the most carefully elaborated and coherent discourse addressed to the logical faculties. In Adam Bede, for instance, George Eliot often generalizes in the most abstract terms, as in the following expository passage:

Possibly you think that Adam was not at all sagacious in his interpretations, and that it was altogether extremely unbecoming in a sensible man to behave as he did - falling in love with a girl who really had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing imaginary virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after she had fallen in love with another man, waiting for her kind looks as a patient trembling dog waits for his master's eye to be turned upon him. But in so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exceptions. Of course, I know that, as a rule, sensible men fall in love with the most sensible women of their acquaintance, see through all the pretty deceits of coquettish beauty, never imagine themselves loved when they are not loved, cease loving on all proper occasions, and marry

the woman most fitted for them in every respect

row,

indeed, so

as to compel the approbation of all the maiden ladies in their neighborhood. But even to this rule an exception will occur now and then in the lapse of centuries, and my friend Adam was one. For my own part, however, I respect him none the less: nay, I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the very strength of his nature, and was not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? - to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration: melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorand your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music: what can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them: it is more than a woman's love that moves us in a woman's eyes it seems to be a far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace. The noblest natures see the most of this impersonal expression in beauty (it is needless to say that there are gentlemen with whiskers dyed and undyed who see none of it whatever), and for this reason, the noblest nature is often the most blinded to the character of the one woman's soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I fear, the tragedy of human life