narration, however, with the increased complexity of the integral units, comes the danger that over-elaboration in some one part will disturb the general effect of the whole. Digressions are often attractive. Enticing side-paths draw one from the beaten track, and the reader finds himself in the predicament of the Red Cross Knight in Error's "wandering wood." Every reader of Tom Jones remembers the Man of the Hill, and how the entire narrative is halted while this apparently supererogatory episode drowses along its dreary course, and the main current of the story is resumed with difficulty. Sometimes a fondness for description beguiles the writer into the elaboration of setting until the narrative element is completely dwarfed. Again, expositions of character, important enough in their way, usurp the place of action, and the narrative becomes but a study in psychologic analysis, as is more than once the case in Daniel Deronda and Romola. And these violations of proportion carry with them loss of narrative vitality.

In historical and biographical narration there is less likelihood than in fiction of destroying emphasis by the violation of true episodic proportion. The chronicler of fact, if he be a historian in the best sense of the word, - will be restrained by a saving sanity as to relative values. No heat of passion will make him unscrupulous, and his regard for the truth will prevent his wandering from the way. As soon as the historian is discovered to be a rider of hobbies just so soon the discerning reader will discount his statements, however forceful the phrasing. Doing violence to true proportion, distorting the truth through personal bias and prejudice, he will be only superficially forceful and his vigor will neither persuade nor convince. The emphatic periods of Macaulay are viewed with distrust because to him Wil

liam was the sole measure of all that could be termed kingly and a Whig the perfect type of true patriotism. His force becomes therefore merely the force of expression, and lacks the greater emphasis that comes with a sane and catholic attitude to history.

(4) Coherence

Coherence as an element in episodic narration is so closely related to the complication of details known as "plot" that a thorough discussion may best be postponed until that phase of the subject is taken up. In general, however, it may be said that episodic coherence concerns itself mainly with the succession of the constituent events and not so much with the mere matter of connectives as does the item. Of course the question of clause articulation does not entirely disappear as an element to be reckoned with,-coherence is a constant rhetorical quality of style, but in weaving his narrative the writer gives increased attention to the problem of order. The simple conjunctives are now superseded by paragraphs or sentences of transition, so called, familiar to all students of rhetoric, and exemplified in the analysis of the story to follow (pp. 59–64).

Mere chronology, however, is not all that the narrative writer now has to deal with. The logical sequence of cause and effect as manifested in character and action plays a very important part, more important, if possible, than in securing unity. The historian and the biographer are not satisfied with the mere arrangement of their material in the order of time. They must show that the events of one epoch are the logical outcome of preceding periods; that, unlike as may be Puritan England to the England of two centuries earlier, yet the evolution of the one into the other may be traced. They

must convince their readers that the personality of the mature statesman or of the poet is in entire harmony with the character, the environment, the promise of earlier youth. The writer of fiction, whether it be of intricate plot narratives like those by Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, and Anna Katherine Green, or of character studies like the novels of George Eliot and Mrs. Humphry Ward, is under obligations to see the end from the beginning and to develop the action coherently in accord with the natural sequence of experience and human nature. Failure to observe the canons of coherence condemns the narrative as unnatural, illogical, impossible.

In view of all this, one can readily see that coherence is closely allied to unity and to emphasis. In order to secure that subtile one-ness that gives totality to any well written account of a transaction, the mutual connection of parts and their best order must be considered. And, again, in discovering the order that shall best mass these parts so as to produce the fullness of dramatic effect, the sequence of detail after detail becomes a matter of no little importance.

What has been said regarding the various rhetorical qualities of episodic narration may be epitomized by a concrete illustration drawn from Flute and Violin, to which reference has more than once been made.

To begin with, the successive principal episodes are indicated by the sections into which the author has devided his narrative. Arranged with suitable titles they stand as follows:

THE PARSON'S MAGIC FLUTE

I. The Reverend James Moore.
II. The Passing of the Flute.

A BOY'S VIOLIN

III. David.

IV. The Impressario.

V. Outside the Museum.

VI. Bliss.

VII. Misery.

VIII. Afterwards.

If we examine into the eight episodes that constitute this little story, we shall find the germ of the whole in one brief paragraph:

As time passed on it became evident that some grave occurrence indeed had befallen him. Thenceforth, and during the five remaining years of his life, he was never quite the same. For months his faculties, long used to being soothed at midnight by the music of the flute, were like children put to bed hungry and refused to be quieted, so that sleep came to him only after hours of waiting and tossing, and his health suffered in consequence. And then in all things he lived like one who was watching himself closely as a person not to be trusted.

Unity of atmosphere the story certainly possesses, and that atmosphere is pathos, - the pathos of tragedy arising from misunderstanding. Everything is shaped to the exposition of this one idea: the simplicity, the gentleness, the thorough lovableness of the one principal actor; the wistfulness, the helplessness, the appealing isolation of the other. The eccentricities of the parson, the selfishness of Tom, the humor of Widow Spurlock and of Arsena Furnace — in fact all the details of the action-blend into one consistent note of pathos. No jarring incongruity mars the general effect. A consistent point of view is maintained throughout.

Emphasis, or effective massing, in Flute and Violin re

solves itself into the question of so arranging the details of the story as to hold the attention of the reader. In this case surprise is not the source of emotional arousement. Effectiveness does not demand any sudden revelation of concealed mystery, any clever unraveling of complicated details. Rather, the reader's interest centres in the pathetic appeal arising from the accumulated evils that fall to the fate of the little cripple through the seeming thoughtlessness of the loving parson. In view of these conditions, the author has chosen a very simple and natural mode of massing his story. At the outset he presents a brief introduction in two chapters. This accomplishes two ends: it arouses interest in the kindly personality of the Reverend James Moore, and it implies that in the current of his simple life there has been an eddy. The device in a small way serves the purpose of presenting an initial mystery that must be solved. Then follows the story with its six episodes. These, despite their somewhat complicated ordering, to be noted later under the coherence of the story, carry the narrative step by step to its culmination in the tragedy of David's death, followed by the brief conclusion dealing with the saddened later days of James Moore.

And thus being ever the more loved and revered as he grew ever the more lovable and saint-like, he passed onward to the close. But not until the end came did he once stretch forth a hand to touch his flute; and it was only in imagination then that he grasped it, to sound the final roll-call of his wandering faculties, and to blow a last good-night to his tired spirit.

Thus the story reaches a mild climax, and the massing is, in general, that of a chronological succession with increasing emotional force.

The study of coherence in Flute and Violin brings us