"He whirled her away from the lingering crowd of men. They were the first to glide out upon the smooth yellow floor. Out into the lights they waltzed; out into the festooned room; under the sweeping wreaths of evergreen; through the sweet, pungent perfume of freshly cut pine. The spell of measured music floated over the room, as from generations of the past and of the future, the passion of rhythm played upon their hearts and swept like some mystic love note into their souls, setting them atune. Across the hall of dazzling light, gently waving as in the hot Trade Winds from the Orient, the umbrella palms were inviting seclusion. Behind them the bitter wind tore at the window," etc., etc.

"But no trace of his confusion was visible in his face as he again, on this wintry evening, confronted Dorothy. She was more than pretty to-night, in her simple and home-like way, she was beautiful. A single white rosebud vaunted itself in her wavy dark brown hair. Her guileless blue eyes were the soul of intoxicating humor; the deep red of her lips put to shame the faint pinkness of her dress,” etc., etc.

66

'He then mumbled about an old sweetheart of his, who had rejected him; of the 'boys,' - those 'friends' who had remained faithful to him only as long as his money had lasted. Suddenly, as quickly as the crack of the ring-master's whip, his countenance changed. The very muscles of his face seemed to stand out in his intense agony, that agony which only those can feel who have tasted of that bitterest cup of pain despair. I had never before understood how it was possible to weep without a movement of the muscles. I understood then. This man was weeping, - but down in the depths of his soul. As I gazed upon his face, I saw that it was scarred; the forehead was furrowed with deep wrinkles, and, although he looked as if he were under thirty years of age, his hair in spots was a pronounced gray. But despite his repulsive physiognomy, there was something in that face that showed that he had a warm, true heart wrapped in the rags that he called

clothes. I really pitied the fellow. What joy was left to him? Even the tiny violet, the first to bloom of all flowers, shyly peeping above the ground and heralding the summer and its wealth of beauty and sunshine, told him only that the hot rays of the midsummer-sun, beating upon him from above and refracted from the scorching highway beneath, would cause him to swelter and curse himself, his fellow-men, and perhaps even his Creator!"

Development of Setting in Narrative Writing

The elaboration of setting as an element in narrative writing is a matter of comparatively recent growth. In early literature narration was confined to the one purpose of chronicling events, and descriptive details were at best barely suggested. The value of effective background was not yet appreciated. In Materials and Methods of Fiction1 Mr. Clayton Hamilton has drawn a somewhat detailed comparison between the development of background in figure-painting and of setting in literature. In the evolution of figure-painting there have been, he tells us, three stages. In the first of these background plays no essential part. If it is present at all, it is insignificant, and the figures themselves are the sole concern of the artist. In the second stage, represented by the great Italian artists at the period of their full maturity, background begins to assume a place of some importance. But its function is purely decorative; whether of color or of line it has no basis in realism, but is purely a conventional device. Finally, in the third stage, background stands in definite relation to the figures that are projected upon it. Each is in keeping with the other, and each gives effect to the other. "The Angelus' is neither figure-painting nor landscape-paint

1 Chap. VI.

ing merely; it is both." In narrative writing there has been a similar evolution from the absence of all setting to full harmony between setting and action.

The advance from simple enumeration to elaborated narrative is apparent if we compare a passage from one of the old chroniclers with the work of a modern historian. Of the old chroniclers Taine writes:

They spun out awkwardly and heavily dry chronicles, a sort of historical almanac. You might think them peasants, who, returning from their toil, came and scribbled with chalk on a smoky table the date of a year of scarcity, the price of corn, the change in the weather, a death.

As examples of their method he cites the following:

A.D. 611. This year Cynegils succeeded to the government in Wessex, and held it one-and-thirty winters. Cynegils was the son of Ceol, Ceol of Cutha, Cutha of Cynric.

614. This year Cynegils and Cnichelm fought at Bampton, and slew two thousand and forty-six of the Welsh.

678. This year appeared the comet-star in August, and shone every morning during three months like a sunbeam. Bishop Wilfrid being driven from his bishopric by King Everth, two bishops were consecrated in his stead.

1077. This year were reconciled the King of the Franks, and William, King of England. But it continued only a little while. This year was London burned, one night before the Assumption of St. Mary, so terribly as it never was before it was built.

Compare with the foregoing the well-known passage of Macaulay regarding the trial of Warren Hastings in Westminster Hall. The difference between the two compositions is not simply the difference between eleventh- and nineteenth-century prose; it is a difference between methods; between satisfaction with the bare

elements of narrative, with the meagre indication of the occurrence or transaction, and appreciative grasp of all the attendant pomp and historic association that rendered Westminster Hall a most effective setting for the dramatic circumstances attending the trial of Hastings. One of the old chroniclers would have been satisfied with an entry after this order,

A.D. 1788. This year Charles the Fourth succeeded to the Throne of Spain. This year Warren Hastings was impeached.

and would have hurried on to an eclipse or a famine or a pestilence that made its appearance during the same year. And the contrast becomes the more striking when one remembers that the bare chronicle was composed amid all the leisure of monastery régime, when elaboration would have been easy had it been the literary fashion; whereas the more highly picturesque style belongs to a day of less leisure and of fuller appreciation of the value of historic fact.

In fiction, where there is stronger appeal to the imagination than in the history of actual occurrences, the stages that Mr. Hamilton has traced in the evolution of figure-painting can be followed in greater detail. From the very fact that fiction approaches less closely to exposition than does history and is, in consequence, more imaginative and less intellectual in its appeal, we are more likely to find in fiction fuller development of the various devices for securing dramatic effect. The following modernized rendering of a mediæval short-story is illustrative of the first stage, of the mere chronicle in which action is everything and setting plays no part:

A young man late married to a wife thought it was good policy to get the mastery of her in the beginning. The pot

boiling over, although the meat was not done, he suddenly commanded her to take the pot from the fire. But she replied that the meat was not ready to eat. And he said, “I will have it taken off because it is my pleasure." The woman, loath to offend him, set the pot beside the fire as he bade. And he commanded her to set the pot behind the door, and she replied, "You are not wise to do this." But he insisted that it should be as he ordered. And again she gently did as he bade. The man, not yet satisfied, ordered her to set the pot high up on the hen roost. "But," quoth his wife, "I believe you are mad." And he then fiercely ordered her to set it there or she should repent. She, somewhat fearful of arousing his temper, took a ladder and set it against the roost and went herself up the ladder and took the pot in her hands, praying her husband to hold the ladder fast lest it should slip, which he did.

And when her husband looked up and saw the pot standing there on high he spoke thus: "Lo, there stands the pot where I would have it." His wife hearing this, suddenly poured the hot pottage on his head and said thus: "And there is the pottage where I would have it." 1

In the second stage of its development we find background merely as an artistic decoration, serving no distinctly dramatic purpose in connection with the action. Such setting appears in the work of the pastoral poets and novelists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries like Spenser, Sidney, and Lodge, writers whose work abounds in descriptive passages that add nothing essential to the effectiveness of the plot action. Later, in the sentimental efforts of the eighteenth-century novelists, abundant illustrations of this stage appear. The following are typical:

I gained the eastern extremity of the ridge, that I might the more amply enjoy the beams of the setting sun as he sunk

1 Adapted from Early English Prose Romances. By permission of Messrs. E. P. Dutton and Company.