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beneath the waves of the Irish Sea. It was the finest evening my eyes ever beheld. The resplendent colours of the clouds, the rich purple and burnished gold in various streaks fantastically formed and repeated, were beyond any imagination to conceive. The woods were vocal. The scents that surrounded me, the steaming earth, the fresh and invigorating air, the hay and the flowers, constituted, so to express myself, an olfactory concert infinitely more ravishing than all the concords of harmonious sound art ever produced. This lonely moment combined in one impression the freshness of the finest morning, with all the rich and gorgeous effects peculiar to the close of a summer's day.1

...

It was now the second watch of the night. . . . Emily heard the passing steps of the sentinels on the rampart, as they changed guard; and, when all was again silent, she took her station at the casement, leaving her lamp in a remote part of the chamber, that she might escape notice from without. The moon gave a faint and uncertain light, for heavy vapours surrounded it, and, after rolling over the disk, left the scene below in total darkness. . . . Sometimes a cloud opened its light upon a distant mountain, and, while the sudden splendour illumined all its recesses of rock and wood, the rest of the scene remained in deep shadow: at others, partial features of the castle were revealed by the glimpse the ancient arch leading to the east rampart, the turret above, or the fortifications beyond; and then, perhaps, the whole edifice, with all its towers, its dark, massy walls, and pointed casements, would appear and vanish in an instant.2

If the elaborated but artificial pictures of this order serve any dramatic purpose in heightening the effect of the action, it is of the slightest. "Snowy mountain summits tinged with roseate hues," "deep volleys of

1 William Godwin: Fleetwood.

2 Mrs. Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho.

rolling thunder and the flashing of livid lightning," "glimpses of ruined watch-towers standing on points of rock and rising from among the tufted foliage," — all such details impart a certain air of romance, but they contribute none of the effectiveness and unity of background and action that we find, for example, in the works of George Eliot or of Stevenson. The novelists of Godwin's time had gone more or less mad after Nature and the “simple life.” Their frequent indulgence in romantic landscape painting was inspired largely by the same influences that led Coleridge and Southey to dream of a "pantisocracy" in the wilds of the American forest, and tempted certain apparently sane fathers and mothers to bring up their children after the manner of savages, in order that being thus “natural” they might be free from the artificialities of social intercourse.

But with the perfection of the English novel that appeared in the next literary generation there came a much fuller appreciation of the value of setting as auxiliary to plot. From Scott and his contemporaries down to the novelists of our own time we find abundant illustration of the various devices to which the present chapter has called attention and which have rendered more dramatic, forceful, and effective the main incidents of the narrative.

CHAPTER V

THE AGENT OF THE ACTION: CHARACTER

WHEN one reads a complete narrative, the first interest usually centres in the significance of the details that constitute the action. For example, in Bret Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flat the first concern will be with the fortunes of the little band snowbound amid the mountains between Poker Flat and Sandy Bar. But after curiosity as to their fate has been satisfied, the appeal that induces one to read the narrative a second time is something deeper than mere curiosity. This residuum of interest in many cases proceeds from beauty of setting, from effective portrayal of nature. But in The Outcasts of Poker Flat, although setting plays considerable part in the narrative, it can hardly be called the ultimate source of charm. That is to be found in the portraiture of human personalities, revolting perhaps at first acquaintance, but, amid peril and starvation, rising to the level of the heroic. The ultimate power of the narrative will probably centre in the delineation of the actors rather than in the action or in the background; that is, not so much in plot or setting as in character.

DEFINITION OF "CHARACTER "

In discussing this personal element in narrative writing, it is necessary at the outset to note two senses in which the word "character" is used. It may have reference to the actors externally, objectively, as mere personages; or it may convey the deeper internal significance of

personality. For instance, in The Outcasts of Poker Flat Uncle Billy is introduced as "a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard." This identifies him as one of the dramatis persona; it classifies him externally. But it cannot be said to individualize him, to distinguish him from others of his type, any more than Dickens's epithets individualize some of his creations, for example, "the stranger," "the scientific gentleman," "the man with the horrible face." Later in the story, however, on the morning after Tom's and Piney's arrival, when Oakhurst awakes benumbed with the cold and is appalled to find snow falling, we read:

He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But, turning to where Uncle Billy had been lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in the snow.

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These sentences characterize Uncle Billy more deeply, individualize him far more accurately, than do the terms suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard." As a robber and drunkard he is a mere personage, distinguished indeed from the other personages of the narrative; but, as an individual, essentially himself, he is a man who not only will desert his companions, but, in order to elude pursuit and preserve his own skin, will deprive them of every chance of securing their own escape from peril. Uncle Billy, in this sense, is a personality, character despicable and cowardly.

The following passages, selected from George Eliot's Adam Bede, present good illustration of the two methods of character presentation. In the first, the reader sees Adam Bede, a muscular, broad-chested young carpen

ter, working at his bench; he is simply one of five workingmen who occupy the stage at the beginning of the narrative. Of his personality, of the individual traits that differentiate him from his companions, we know nothing save what we may infer from the general intelligence and manliness evidenced in his appearance as he stands in the workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge one June morning.

(a) The afternoon sun was warm on the five workmen there, busy upon doors and window-frames and wainscoting. A scent of pine-wood from a tent-like pile of planks outside the open door mingled itself with the scent of the elder-bushes which were spreading their summer snow close to the open window opposite; the slanting sunbeams shone through the transparent shavings that flew before the steady plane, and lit up the fine grain of the oak panelling which stood propped against the wall. On a heap of those soft shavings a rough gray shepherd-dog had made himself a pleasant bed, and was lying with his nose between his fore-paws, occasionally wrinkling his brows to cast a glance at the tallest of the five workmen, who was carving a shield in the centre of a wooden mantel-piece. It was to this workman that the strong barytone voice belonged which was heard above the sound of plane and hammer singing –

"Awake my soul, and with the sun

Thy daily stage of duty run;

Shake off dull sloth.

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Here some measurement was to be taken which required more concentrated attention, and the sonorous voice subsided into a low whistle; but it presently broke out again with renewed vigor

"Let all thy converse be sincere,

Thy conscience as the noonday clear."

Such a voice could only come from a broad chest, and the broad chest belonged to a large-boned muscular man nearly six feet

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