tion; and the various contributing elements have combined to produce a consistent and complete individuality. Much of the consistency and general unity of effect has come from the sustained point of view, — that of the omniscient observer to whom all motives are as clear as outward acts, but who himself remains unseen.

Coherence

Unity of characterization, then, is found in consistency of portrayal, in the subordination of the various constituent elements to the individuality as a whole. Coherence of characterization is secured by consistency of development. Unity has to do with the complete personality; coherence, with the successive steps that contribute to that personality. In one sense, unity is static; coherence, progressive. Coherence of characterization, then, would seem to be best exemplified in those narratives where personality grows with the successive incidents that constitute the action. It therefore finds its most perfect expression in the novel, which, as will be shown later, is becoming more and more recognized as a record of personality.

Personality is not born in a moment; it is developed. Owing to the exigencies of limited space, the item, and even episodic narrative as found in the short-story, offer scant field for character evolution. And at this point one should differentiate between character exposition and character evolution. In the one case the narrator elucidates personality as it is; in the other he traces it as it grows. In The Outcasts of Poker Flat, for example, the characters of the principal personages are already established when the personages themselves are introduced to the reader. Uncle Billy is already essentially selfish and villainous; the events following the banish

ment from the Flat do not change him. Oakhurst and the Duchess are already outcasts, but are differentiated from Uncle Billy in their possession of an underlying humanity that a common danger and unsuspecting innocence bring to the surface. It cannot be said that they are developed by the peril of the storm and by the simplicity of Piney and Tom. Indeed the story is a revelation of character rather than a narrative of development in character. Now if The Outcasts of Poker Flat be placed by the side of The Necklace, an essential difference between the two narratives will at once be evident. The Necklace is an instance, to be sure, of the short-story in very brief form, but observe the personalities of the principal actors. At the outset Madame Loisel is a pretty girl,— superficial, ambitious of admiration, loving above all else the delicacies and luxuries of social life. After a few brief pages, beauty and delicacy give way to frowsiness, coarseness, and depression. The young woman whose dream had been of flattery and gaiety now, with red hands and skirts askew, washes the floor and talks in strident tones with the neighbors over their work. Yet all this change comes naturally enough, though in brief space. To be sure, the traits that lead the heroine to sacrifice ambition in the determination to pay her just debts must have been latent from the outset, but, under the unhappy consequences that followed the borrowing of Madame Forestier's necklace, the personality of Madame Loisel distinctly changes, develops into something new,—all in a manner totally unlike the case of Uncle Billy and Oakhurst. In the sequence whereby this change is brought about without offence to the reader's judgment lies the coherence of the narrative as far as the element of characterization is concerned.

Almost any novel in which character rather than action is the motive offers more striking illustration of the same structural principle. In Silas Marner, for example, Silas himself, Godfrey Cass, and Eppie show character evolution under the stress respectively of changing environment, blighted hope, and maturing years. In Silas at least four distinct and successive stages of character growth are distinguishable: (1) religious enthusiasm; (2) miserly isolation; (3) parental anxiety; (4) peaceful age. Yet the passage from one stage to the other is accomplished without offence to the reader's sense of conviction.

But sequence is not impossible in those narratives where the various episodes are separated by distinct lapses of time, the transition from one to the other not being bridged. To illustrate from the drama: any one who ever witnessed Mansfield's Beau Brummel will realize how it is possible to pass from one period of a hero's life to another, over the chasm of many years, and yet not lose the sequence that makes them essentially parts of one whole. The scene in which the hero appears at the close, bowed down by years and privation, is far enough in time from that in which he has just appeared, vigorous and in the height of his powers; yet the two are entirely congruous and coherent.

This same example illustrates also the principle that unity and coherence of characterization go hand in hand. The successive stages of the evolution, although not following, it may be, in uninterrupted series, must be so essentially consistent one with another that the reader will feel the underlying one-ness. Whenever he hesitates and questions the premises underlying the characterization the thread of development is broken and coherence is lost. The characterization of Uriah Heep in David Cop

perfield would offer an illustration in point. From the time when we first see his cadaverous face at the small window of Mr. Wickfield's house until he is ushered into our presence as "Number Twenty-Seven" in Mr. Creakle's establishment of converted criminals, Uriah Heep is a consistent hypocrite. At each successive episode of the story, separated as many of them are by considerable intervals of time, he is true to his original characterization. But there is more than mere unity in the portrait. He grows. As junior member of the firm of Wickfield and Heep, he is a deeper scoundrel, a more finished villain, than when he was a mere clerk. His career is climactic and exemplifies uninterrupted moral degeneration. Coherence of characterization, as well as unity, is a distinct rhetorical quality of the narrative.

It is this unity-in-coherence that often baffles the amateur in narrative writing. He rapidly passes from one stage to another in the career of his hero, but we are not conscious of the thread of connection, and the result is a series of distinct personalities. This is true of the boyish attempt already quoted (pp. 128-31), where among many faults entire loss of character sequence is noteworthy in the gaps that mark the development of the hero. If he is indeed "crazy" at the outset, then the interest that in the second part should attend the pathetic (?) picture of a mind shattered by grief and disappointed love fails to be aroused, and we have merely the ravings of a maniac. If, on the other hand, the assertion of the hero's crazed condition is merely hyperbolical and if, in reality, the isolated life is the consequence of Marie's obduracy, then the changes of three years — the transition from a youth strong and vigorous to an old man with white hair, sunken cheeks, and all the external signs of senile decrepitude — are inartistically sudden. In the

hero of part II there is no logical, no natural connection with the hero of the opening paragraphs. With this crude narrative contrast Rip Van Winkle, wherein the bond of coherence is clear enough between the good-natured but lazy village-idler and the aged pilgrim that tells his tale to every stranger at Doolittle's Hotel. We are not conscious of jolt or jar, even though the story moves over a gap of twenty years.

Of course even the most extended and complete narrative in which character plays a part must be of the epitome order. The story of a personality whose evolution demands perhaps two generations must be condensed within the limits of a single volume. The gradual changes of even ten years, as in The Necklace, must be narrowed down to as many pages. Selection, therefore, is of the first importance, and in his ability to choose the data that determine a changing personality lies no small part of the writer's genius. The gradation must be natural, smooth, convincing.

The extent to which character portrayal in narrative writing may be carried varies from the simple account in which the actors are merely presented without elaboration as in the newspaper item-to those novels that are practically elaborate studies in psychologic exegesis. In all forms of historic composition this expository extreme is practically impossible on account of the very purpose of the narrator, the chronicling of actual events. The narrative may pause from time to time while character is elaborated for the better understanding of the facts under consideration, — as, for example, when Green pauses in his Short History of the English People to present his famous picture of Queen Elizabeth in feature and character, — but the reader always feels that the portraiture is but a pause in the more serious