whether less exactness and slightly freer play for the imagination might not contribute added effectiveness.

This question of selection and omission is, in a sense, but a corollary to the larger theme of romantic and realistic description. These are broad terms, and can be discussed at length only in an exhaustive consideration of description as a form of discourse. But, without going too deeply into the matter, we may note that the character of the narrative will in large degree determine the character of the details to be chosen by the artist. In general, the romantic writer is principally concerned with artistic fitness. He strives to present with the greatest possible effectiveness the characters and the action of his narrative. His own personality, the subjective element, will, to a greater or less extent, permeate his setting. His inventiveness, his imagination, will be called into play, and although his background may be no more actual than the Forest of Arden, and although he may depart widely from the verified observations set down in the geographies, yet it will serve an artistic purpose and will be essentially true. In realistic writing, on the other hand, as seen in the citation from Norris the artist seeks verisimilitude, truth to actuality. His attitude to his work becomes less subjective, and more objective. But whether, in romantic mood, the writer uses subjective description to secure fit setting for his narrative, or whether he writes with realistic adherence to actual observation, he is bound by the principles of due selection and omission as already set forth. For the time being, the scene must carry conviction. Whether the reader stands before the bleak walls of the melancholy House of Usher or looks down upon the shattering chaos of the Wheat Pit in Chicago, he must for the moment realize the essential truth of the picture before him.

The undue multiplication of descriptive details merges into the second fault of exaggerated setting (see p. 90) the use of description for its own sake. Artistic description sometimes tempts the artist too far afield, and the composition loses entirely its original character. The sketch and the picturesque narrative, indeed, have their place, but the chronicler, as narration is his purpose, should exercise care that he does not forget that purpose in the intoxication of descriptive elaboration. If description be the end in view, then as has already been explained (p. 14) — the device of narrative description is at one's disposal, but the end in that case is to present a picture, not to chronicle the details of an occurrence. It would sometimes seem that Dickens carries too far his fondness for descriptive writing, and his pictures, wonderful indeed in their vividness, retard the progress of the narrative. In many cases the extended descriptive passages serve a distinct purpose in creating an atmosphere for the events that are chronicled, as in the well-known "good-humoured Christmas chapter" of Pickwick Papers; but, on the other hand, the opening chapter of Bleak House may be open to some criticism as suggesting description merely for its own sake and indicating temporary forgetfulness of the main action. Again, one is disposed to challenge the picture of the boisterous wind and the flying leaves in chapter II of Martin Chuzzlewit. The realism of the scene cannot be disputed; many an admirer of Dickens has read it again and again with delight. But what is its narrative purpose? How does it advance the action or in any degree render it more effective? It seems to serve no greater purpose than to slam the street door in Mr. Pecksniff's face and to knock that gentleman down his own front steps. And if this be all, one may well ask if

the author is justified in the elaboration of a scene of three or four paragraphs for so trivial an end.

The following undergraduate sketch, entitled "The Priest," is an example of composition wherein one is justified in making description the principal form of discourse, for the purpose is frankly to present a picture and nothing more. The narrative mould is merely incidental. The writer has chosen narrative description as the most effective means of accomplishing his artistic purpose.

'T was one of those bright warm days in midsummer when the busy farmer folk had deserted the village for the hay-fields, and there was left about the grocery store only a crippled loafer, and upon the village green but a few sleepy summer boarders in their easy chairs.

Bill Russell and I lay in the cool shade of a maple, blowing rings of tobacco smoke in the still air, lazily gazing at the occasional passer-by, and wondering what business he had to move on such a day. A grocery wagon rattled by, and the dust behind it settled back into the wagon tracks without being wafted even to the ditches. Then, like a big, lumbering elephant, a load of hay crawled by, gently reminding us that beyond the sleepy village there were busy times. But some fishermen returning early from the lake told us that even for fishing the day was too bright and still.

So we lay there in the shade, and for some time no one passed. Then from down the road we heard the rapid “chug, chug" of a pacer beating the dust, and there dashed into sight a lathered horse and a buggy, too light, it seemed, for the corpulent man who spread himself all over the seat. In his mouth was a fat cigar, the smoke from which had to roll quite around the broad spongy face before mingling with the dust behind. As he came nearer he took the cigar between his short, fat fingers, and with the air of a connoisseur flicked off the ashes with his little finger, at the same time heaving a guttural cough

which caused the breast of his linen duster to rise and fall like a bellows, and loosened the damp handkerchief which was about his collar.

"He's the strangest looking horse-doctor I've seen in this township," I remarked to Bill.

"Then you're not very well acquainted hereabouts," suggested Bill laughing.

"He reminds me of that old boozer, the priest Rudiman in Scheffel's Ekkehard," I added.

Bill smiled, but kept a discreet silence.

Hardly five minutes had elapsed when the same rig came down the street again.

"What in ! Who are those people with him?” I ex-• claimed, for beside my horse-doctor was the Catholic priest of the town, a pleasant-faced gentleman, in a purely clerical dress, and, perched between the two men, seated on a knee of each, was a nun. She was smiling beneath her hood, and the men were exchanging pleasantries as they drove by us; and when they had passed I could see the horse-doctor, his linen duster pressed snugly against the bars of the lowered buggytop, he himself shaking with laughter.

With an astonished look I turned to Bill, whom I saw snickering to himself.

"Who is that fellow, anyway?" I inquired.

"Why, your horse-doctor is the visiting priest of the county," was the reply.

One fault often found in connection with over-elaboration of setting is artificial appeal to the emotions, — that is, appeal based on no sincere feeling on the writer's part. In the well-known chapter in Modern Painters, in which he expounds what he calls the "pathetic fallacy," Ruskin discusses this phase of literary insincerity. He enlarges upon the excited state of the feelings, under the influence of which a writer, for the time being blinded to realities, becomes more or less irrational and thinks

in metaphors. This illogical frame of mind is common among writers of highly emotional temperament; the works of the poets, for example, abound in conceits that emanate from highly wrought - although thoroughly sincere — imaginative faculties. But it is no uncommon thing to meet with passages characterized by insincere emotion; burning words abound, indeed, but there is no soul in them. One finds all the outward trappings of woe, of elation, of despair; yet the spirit remains chill, all seems studied and artificial. If artistic setting is to be effective it must be sincere; mere multiplication of words and of figures of speech does not constitute effective description. Ruskin, indeed, would seem to maintain that the manifestation of deep emotion through figurative speech betrays weakness, showing that a writer's imagination has mastered his powers of seeing truly, and thus has precluded him from taking rank with the really great ones in literature. But even worse, he says, are those in whose work fanciful, metaphorical "expressions are not ignorantly and fearlessly caught up, but, by some master, skilful in handling, yet insincere, deliberately wrought out with chill and studied fancy; as if we should try to make an old lava stream look red-hot again, by covering it with dead leaves, or white-hot, with hoar frost."

It is this deliberate and studied attempt to imitate true emotion that often gives to the conventional undergraduate story an atmosphere of mawkish sentimentality or of vain rant. The young writer, feeling no true sympathy with the scene that he strives to picture, yet realizing the effectiveness that belongs to emotion well rendered, presses remote metaphors and similes into his service and strains his fancy to the breaking-point. The result is superficiality, exaggeration, bathos. Passages like the following illustrate the effect: