perfield would offer an illustration in point. From the time when we first see his cadaverous face at the small window of Mr. Wickfield's house until he is ushered into our presence as "Number Twenty-Seven" in Mr. Creakle's establishment of converted criminals, Uriah Heep is a consistent hypocrite. At each successive episode of the story, separated as many of them are by considerable intervals of time, he is true to his original characterization. But there is more than mere unity in the portrait. He grows. As junior member of the firm of Wickfield and Heep, he is a deeper scoundrel, a more finished villain, than when he was a mere clerk. His career is climactic and exemplifies uninterrupted moral degeneration. Coherence of characterization, as well as unity, is a distinct rhetorical quality of the narrative.

It is this unity-in-coherence that often baffles the amateur in narrative writing. He rapidly passes from one stage to another in the career of his hero, but we are not conscious of the thread of connection, and the result is a series of distinct personalities. This is true of the boyish attempt already quoted (pp. 128–31), where among many faults entire loss of character sequence is noteworthy in the gaps that mark the development of the hero. If he is indeed "crazy" at the outset, then the interest that in the second part should attend the pathetic (?) picture of a mind shattered by grief and disappointed love fails to be aroused, and we have merely the ravings of a maniac. If, on the other hand, the assertion of the hero's crazed condition is merely hyperbolical and if, in reality, the isolated life is the consequence of Marie's obduracy, then the changes of three years the transition from a youth strong and vigorous to an old man with white hair, sunken cheeks, and all the external signs of senile decrepitude - are inartistically sudden. In the

hero of part II there is no logical, no natural connection with the hero of the opening paragraphs. With this crude narrative contrast Rip Van Winkle, wherein the bond of coherence is clear enough between the good-natured but lazy village-idler and the aged pilgrim that tells his tale to every stranger at Doolittle's Hotel. We are not conscious of jolt or jar, even though the story moves over a gap of twenty years.

Of course even the most extended and complete narrative in which character plays a part must be of the epitome order. The story of a personality whose evolution demands perhaps two generations must be condensed within the limits of a single volume. The gradual changes of even ten years, as in The Necklace, must be narrowed down to as many pages. Selection, therefore, is of the first importance, and in his ability to choose the data that determine a changing personality lies no small part of the writer's genius. The gradation must be natural, smooth, convincing.

The extent to which character portrayal in narrative writing may be carried varies from the simple account in which the actors are merely presented without elaboration as in the newspaper item-to those novels that are practically elaborate studies in psychologic exegesis. In all forms of historic composition this expository extreme is practically impossible on account of the very purpose of the narrator, the chronicling of actual events. The narrative may pause from time to time while character is elaborated for the better understanding of the facts under consideration, as, for example, when Green pauses in his Short History of the English People to present his famous picture of Queen Elizabeth in feature and character, but the reader always feels that the portraiture is but a pause in the more serious

business of the narrative. In fiction, however, characterization plays a relatively more important part than in the actual chronicle, and the extent to which characterization may be carried is well illustrated in such typical studies of personality as Daniel Deronda, or The Egoist, or Helbeck of Bannisdale. These come close to what Marion Crawford has included in the term "novels-with-apurpose," and of them he says:

Probably no one denies that the first object of the novel is to amuse and interest the reader. But it is often said that the novel should instruct as well as afford amusement, and the "novel-with-a-purpose" is the realization of this idea. We might invent a better expression than that clumsy translation of the neat German "Tendenz-Roman." Why not compound the words and call the odious thing a "purpose-novel"? The purpose-novel, then, proposes to serve two masters, besides procuring a reasonable amount of bread and butter for its writer and publisher. It proposes to escape from my definition of the novel in general and make itself an "intellectual moral lesson" instead of an "intellectual artistic luxury."1

Applying the principle underlying this judgment to the rhetorical aspects of narrative writing as exemplified in recent psychological fiction, we may well ask whether many of the so-called "modern novels" do not belong essentially to the domain of exposition rather than to that of narration.

1 Crawford's The Novel: What it is. Copyright, 1893. By permission of The Macmillan Company.

CHAPTER VI

THE ORDERING OF THE ACTION: PLOT

DEFINITIONS

THE word plot as used in connection with narrative writing has two distinct, but allied, meanings. Etymologically it is associated with the Anglo-Saxon plot, "a piece of ground," and in the allied sense, “a ground plan," it signifies no more than the clear conception of his work in its totality as it exists in the mind of the composer, or the sense of completeness and unified purpose of which the reader is conscious as he reviews the finished work. Thus the biographer "plots" his composition when he selects the specific aspects of his subject that his finished work is to develop, - deepened character, perhaps, or the ultimate attainment of an ideal; the historian "plots" his narrative when he deliberately shapes the story of chronicled events, unifying his data and making for a definite goal, to demonstrate, it may be, how a true democracy has gradually been evolved from original absolutism or how a national tradition has been an underlying influence in the growth of a state. In accord with this principle it was that Dr. Allen "plotted" his biography of Phillips Brooks, and Bancroft planned his well-known history of the United States.

The student of rhetorical principles will see that in this sense of the word plot is merely unity of purpose combined with preliminary outline or plan. It is to the narrator what the brief is to the forensic writer. The debater in advance sees his goal, grasps the exact proposi

tion the truth of which he wishes to impress upon his judges. The ordering of his proof, the proper place of refutation, the relative weights of various arguments, their logical relations, all these he must appreciate at the outset, and upon the "plot," or plan, thus formulated he bases his ultimate appeal with all its persuasive enrichment. Similarly the narrator sets in due order his various episodes, planning in advance the most effective sequence, the repression of the climax in the interests of suspense, the adjustment of cause and effect, the correlation of similar forces, the development of setting and character, and the ultimate revelation of the end toward which all parts in turn have contributed.

Some writers modify their method to the extent that, given a starting-point, they allow the plan to unroll itself as the action advances, and "plot" is not apparent until toward the end. Thus it often was, in considerable degree, with Dickens and Scott, natural story-tellers both; yet the reader is aware of a unity of conception that permeates the finished whole. When, for example, one looks back over the course of Martin Chuzzlewit or Nicholas Nickleby, one realizes how an apparently loose narrative is in reality a mosaic of thoughts, words, and acts, at times of seeming insignificance, yet combining to form a pattern fairly complete, unified, homogeneous. And even so rambling a story as the adventures of the Pickwick Club presents in retrospect something of method and coördination of parts. This completeness constitutes what etymologically may be called the "plot" of the narrative.

Still other writers seem to have no distinct formulation, no conception of work unified in its entirety. They take up successively the various ideas suggested by the immediate incident of the moment, but they seem to