In her lonesome cottage, by the sea-shore, thoughts visited her such as dared to enter no other dwelling in New England; shadowy guests, that would have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at her door.

The dangers attendant upon this direct, or abstract, method of characterization, whether in the chronicle of fact or in fiction, are apparent at a glance. Essentially expository in nature, it is not structurally of a piece with the writing of which it is a part, and is likely, therefore, to introduce an atmosphere of stiffness, of artificiality, that may prove fatal to unity of tone as well as to general coherence and to interest. This is especially true if the exposition be carried to excess, as may easily be done by a writer endowed, like George Eliot, with a taste for analytical and logical methods. Writers of this order, exponents of the scientific tendencies characteristic of the Victorian age, have given to recent fiction a distinctly analytical cast.

A modification of the direct method of characterization a modification in form rather than in substance· is seen when the writer, instead of appearing in person to expound the personality of his hero, puts the exposition into the mouth of some actor in the story, either the hero himself or some subordinate personage. Under these conditions the exposition seems to arise more naturally from the narrative. For example, in Adam Bede, Dinah Morris is made to expound her own character when, in conversation with Mr. Irwine, in reply to the question how she first came to think of preaching, she replies:

"Indeed, sir, I didn't think of it at all—I'd been used from the time I was sixteen to talk to the little children, and teach them, and sometimes I had had my heart enlarged to speak in

class, and was much drawn out in prayer with the sick. But I had felt no call to preach; for when I'm not greatly wrought upon, I'm too much given to sit silent all day long with the thought of God overflowing my soul as the pebbles lie bathed in the Willow Brook. For thoughts are so great are n't they, sir? They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood; and it's my besetment to forget where I am and everything about me, and lose myself in thoughts that I could give no account of, for I could neither make a beginning nor ending of them in words. That was my way as long as I can remember; but sometimes it seemed as if speech came to me without any will of my own, and words were given to me that came out as the tears come, because our hearts are full and we can't help it. And those were always times of great blessing, though I had never thought it could be so with me before a congregation of people. But, sir, we are led on, like the little children, by a way that we know not. I was called to preach quite suddenly, and since then I have never been left in doubt about the work that was laid upon me."

This is, however, but a shading of the frankly direct method, and is open to the rhetorical dangers already indicated, although in slightly less degree. It is, furthermore, subject to the danger of causing the personage through whom the exposition is presented to become dull and artificial.

INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION

Direct, or abstract, characterization is of the simplest order and easily accomplished, for nothing is less difficult than to bring the story to a halt for a time and to fill paragraph after paragraph with expository comment upon the characters that participate in the action. But this is not the method of actual experience. One does not form judgment of a friend, of an acquaintance,

of some great personage, from formal generalizations as to his distinctive traits, or altogether from what others may say of him, or from what he says of himself. Rather are men known by their acts, by the external expression of the soul within. We may read in abstract terms that Queen Elizabeth possessed the "triviality of Anne Boleyn" and "the wilfulness of Henry," together with "a nature as hard as steel and a temper purely intellectual"; but her statesmen formulated no such abstractions. The Queen known to them was the woman who "played with her rings that her courtiers might note the delicacy of her hands," who "danced a coranto that the French ambassador hidden dexterously behind a screen might report her sprightliness to his master," who "for fifty years hoodwinked and outwitted every statesman in Europe by her diplomacy and shrewd intrigue." Similarly in narrative writing, the natural method of characterization is that whereby individuality is indirectly set forth by words, by acts, or by personal characteristics of gesture and speech. There is hardly a narrative, from the simplest to the most complex, that does not illustrate this indirect, or concrete, method of delineation. A simple item to the effect that "a mob about to lynch a horse-thief gave him a good drink of whiskey before stringing him up" suggests to the author of The American Commonwealth a distinct trait in the American character. The simple outline of the story of the Prodigal Son has supplied homiletic ammunition to generations of sermon writers, until, were all the characterizations of the father, the prodigal, and the older brother collated, they would constitute a library of psychologic interpretation. In Bret Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flat the reader feels vividly the delicacy of John Oakhurst, a gambler and sharper; the fundamental wo

manliness of "The Duchess," an ostracized prostitute; the boyish simplicity and enthusiasm of "The Innocent"; but the story contains no paragraphs of extended analytical character dissection. The Dolly Dialogues of Anthony Hope, in keeping with their title, present nothing but dialogue, and yet from them one obtains a fairly clear conception of the personality of Miss Foster and of Lady Mickleham. The extended forms of narrative literature offer endless illustrations of the principle that personality is portrayed by all forms of external manifestation. It is interesting to note how in a passage like the following from Macaulay's History of England, along with the direct characterization, there is considerable of the indirect method. The final estimate of Clarendon is based, in no small degree, upon such premises as his arrogance, his ostentation, his attitude on the religious and political matters of his own time, — all of these data being viewed as external manifestations of the personality within:

The minister's virtues and vices alike contributed to his ruin. He was the ostensible head of the administration, and was therefore held responsible even for those acts which he had strongly but vainly opposed in Council. He was regarded by the Puritans, and by all who pitied him, as an implacable bigot, a second Laud, with much more than Laud's understanding. He had on all occasions maintained that the Act of Indemnity ought to be strictly observed; and this part of his conduct, though highly honorable to him, made him hateful to all those Royalists who wished to repair their ruined fortunes by suing the Roundheads for damages and mesne profits. The Presbyterians of Scotland attributed to him the downfall of their Church. The Papists of Ireland attributed to him the loss of their lands. As father of the Duchess of York, he had an obvious motive for wishing that there might be a barren queen; and he was therefore suspected of having purposely recommended one. The sale of Dunkirk was justly imputed to him.

sure.

For the war with Holland, he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his arrogant deportment, the indelicate eagerness with which he grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he squandered them, his picture-gallery, filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which had once been the property of ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately front right opposite to the humbler residence of our kings, drew on him much deserved, and some undeserved, cenOn the vices of the young and gay he looked with an aversion almost as bitter and contemptuous as that which he felt for the theological errors of the sectaries. He missed no opportunity of showing his scorn of the mimics, revellers, and courtesans who crowded the palace; and the admonitions which he addressed to the King himself were very sharp, and, what Charles disliked still more, very long. Scarcely any voice was raised in favor of a minister loaded with the double odium of faults which roused the fury of the people, and of virtues which annoyed and importuned the sovereign.

In considering these various methods of indirect characterization, we may, for convenience, class them under (a) action, that is, things done; (b) personal peculiarities attendant upon action, such as speech, gesture, etc.; and (c) environment.

a. Characterization by Action

No estimate of character is more common, and perhaps in the end more accurate, than that reached through the acts in which personality manifests itself. In literature this method of characterization is effective because it is natural, and, furthermore, because it offers to the reader an opportunity of exercising his own judgment, of becoming an interpreter. For this there is no opportunity by the direct, or expository, method; for here the conclusion has already been reached and is merely registered for reference. A writer of historical narrative