"But death to the dove

Is the falcon's love!

Oh, sharp is the kiss of the falcon's beak!"

offers a balancing of details for added effect. Sometimes an author will revert to a particular scene, introducing the characters in the same setting again and again, seeking by the process of association to gain emotional power. Ellen Glasgow in The Romance of a Plain Man has utilized as a setting for successive episodes the old garden in which Sally and Ben Starr first met in early days, each recurring scene deriving much of its value from the memories associated with the same background. But even when used on so large a canvas as a complete novel, this device of iteration is still subject to the peril that threatens the simple balanced sentence: if the realization of artificiality prevails over the forcefulness arising from orderly arrangement, all emotional value is lost.

The second variation of the balanced structure, the succession of similarly massed episodes, is illustrated in Richard Yea-and-Nay. In this case the balance appears in that even the various episodes, as well as the work as a whole, are, in general, constructed successively on the dramatic plan. Many of them are ordered with rise, climax, and fall of their own. The general plot ordering follows the subjoined diagram:

The exposition, it will be seen, consists of five episodes, each one of which is in some degree dramatic in its own structure. The rise, in turn, is made up of six similarly constructed episodes; and so on. It is not to be inferred that the story is so perfectly and mechanically organized as the formal diagram might seem to indicate; at the same time, the approximation is sufficiently remarkable. In general, the narrative shows distinct similarity in the coördinated elements, or episodes,- and this is the fundamental principle of the balanced struct

ure.

Another phase of this systematic and balanced ordering of plot elements may be found in those narratives whose episodes successively terminate in moments of suspense, thus causing the story to progress by a series of climax-culminations, or dramatic situations, as in a play, thus:

Emotional level at conclusion.

Emotional level at beginning

FIG. 15

The main line of the plot action, indicated by the dotted line ab, steadily rises, each episode taking up the thread from a point of increased emotional tension, at which it was left by the culmination of the episode preceding. In narratives of this order, the principle of balance is evident by the climax of suspense that marks the closing words of each episode. Hardy's gruesome short-story

The Withered Arm is fairly representative of this terminal balance in successive episodes, as will be apparent if one examines the concluding paragraph of each plot division. There is about these concluding periods a peculiar air of suspense, of situation, -—especially marked in I, III, V, VI, VII, and VIII, — that almost leads the reader to expect the conventional stage-direction "Curtain."

The ordering of the narrative elements so as to produce contrast is a further means of attaining emotional vigor. As the contrasting lights and shadows of a Rembrandt are effective, so in narrative the juxtaposition of unlike scenes promotes forcefulness. A typical instance may be found in Macaulay's essay on Sir William Temple, where he ranges the character of Halifax against that of Shaftesbury:

His (Halifax's) mind was much less turned to particular observations, and much more to general speculations, than that of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury knew the King, the Council, the Parliament, the City, better than Halifax; but Halifax would have written a far better treatise on political science than Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury shone more in consultation and Halifax in controversy: Shaftesbury was more fertile in expedients, and Halifax in arguments. . He brought forward with wonderful readiness and copiousness, arguments, replies to those arguments, rejoinders to those replies, general maxims of policy, and analogous cases from history. But Shaftesbury was the man for a prompt decision. Of the parliamentary eloquence of these celebrated rivals, we can judge only by report; and so judging, we should be inclined to think that, though Shaftesbury was a distinguished speaker, the superiority belonged to Halifax. . . . The power of Shaftesbury over large masses was unrivalled. Halifax was disqualified by his whole character, moral and intellectual, for the part of a demagogue. It was in small circles, and,

above all, in the House of Lords, that his ascendancy was felt.

In narrative writing this method of ordering is effective in a variety of ways: in setting, in character, in action, contrast may serve the ends of forcefulness. In Tess the three stages of the heroine's life are rendered all the more effective from their projection against the wholly unlike backgrounds of Blackmore Vale, the valley of the Froom, and Flintcombe-Ash. In Prescott's Conquest of Peru the character of the pedantic martinet Blasco Nuñez is made more forceful by being brought into adversative correlation with that of the keen and practical Pedro de la Gasca. And similarly, details of action by the same method of antithesis receive added dramatic effectiveness. No reader of Vanity Fair can fail to realize the emotional effectiveness of the sudden contrast that distinguishes the transition from chapter XXII to chapter XXIII. On the one hand is the scene of carnage and confusion closing with the famous paragraph,

No more firing was heard at Brussels the pursuit rolled miles away. Darkness came down on the field and city: and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart;

and on the other, the quiet of Brighton, where Miss Crawley was passing her uneventful days, very little moved by the great events that attended the making and unmaking of empires.

(b) Proportion

One of the most effective means of holding interest, that is, of securing rhetorical emphasis, — is to give each essential element in the narrative its proportionate

amount of space; or, to state it negatively, to give it no more elaboration than it deserves. This means that the writer shall have a clear idea of his controlling thought before he can duly enforce it. As the definition of narration makes evident, the main purpose of narrative writing is the setting in order, the developing, of the event. It is clear, then, that setting and characterization must receive relatively less elaboration than action. But this is only a general statement of the principle of proportion. In the exposition of the action many questions arise as to relative values: episodes of one order and another; details of rise and fall, of climax and catastrophe. The principle of proportion plays its part in the relative ordering of each of these. The precise adjustment, for example, of the amount of description or characterization necessary for preliminary exposition in a dramatic plot is a very nice matter, for the moment that the non-narrative matter begins to encroach upon the main business of the plot structure, proportion is lost and interest suffers. Professor Baldwin in his Composition, Oral and Written has well illustrated this matter by Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. He shows that the core idea of the whole composition is the sentence: The best honor that we can pay these dead soldiers is to preserve the Union for which they died. In other words, the speech looks principally to the future: references to the present and past are merely accessory. A single sentence, the first, concerns the past; the next three sentences deal with the present, indeed, but with a distinctly prospective purpose; and all that remains, consisting of more than half the address, is an appeal for devotion to the Union in the years to come. In this way, by due proportioning of the space, the main idea is emphasized.

1 Pp. 20-22.