facts as to lead up to the apparently inevitable conclusion that the troops of Datis were gaining a glorious victory, and should then close with some such unexpected culmination as this:

But as the sun sank low in the west, the Asiatic invaders, disheartened and unnerved at the losses inflicted by the forces of Miltiades, launched their galleys in headlong flight, while the Greeks, though fatigued by the day's struggle, were already preparing for a night's march across the hills of Attica to forestall a possible attack upon the city.

From these various considerations it is clear that in the very constituents of narration, — setting, characterization, and plot, the purely scientific aspect of history is not sufficient. The personal side, apparent in originality of method, in intelligent ordering of material, and in selection of contributive detail is constantly in evidence. And this fact, in conjunction with the subjective quality that we call style, combines to lift history from the dead level of mere informatory exposition and give to it the dignity of literature.

Biography

Biographical narrative, including the autobiography and the memoir, is a variety of history modified by conditions peculiar to itself. The fundamental requisites of historical narrative still remain: the biographer must, like the historian, exercise industry in the effort to collate all possible material, so that his work shall not be untrue because of inadequate information; he must also possess the clearness of observation and the judicial acuteness that characterize the historian, otherwise his record will have little value to the seeker after truth; and, finally, if the biography is to take rank as literature,

it must be composed with due regard for "proper words in proper places," - that is, for style.

The biographer is the microscopist among historians; he presents the minute details that in the wider narrative would be in violation of due proportion. He works in a much narrower cifcle. Instead of picturing the lifehistory of a nation or even an epoch in a nation's career, he elaborates the miniature of a single personality that may have played an important part in the national life or in the epoch. Instead of a History of the English Reformation or of The Oxford Movement, he writes a Life of Oliver Cromwell or of John Henry Newman.

All that has been said, therefore, in relation to historical narrative may, mutatis mutandis, be applied to biographical literature. Regarding one phase of this type of writing, the autobiography, however, some additional comment should be made, for although like all biography, it is but a microscopic cross-section of history, yet it possesses certain well-marked characteristics of its own.

In one sense of the word biography may be considered as essentially objective in character. Of course, if it be literature at all, it must be subjective to the extent of reflecting in some degree the author's personality, as has already been noted in connection with style; but biography may be called objective to this extent, that its principal value lies in the light reflected upon the career and personality of him about whom it is written and not upon that of him who writes it. The ultimate purpose of Lockhart's Life of Scott, for example, is to throw light upon the life and character of the great novelist. It may reflect much of the biographer's individuality as well, but that is, to the average reader, only a by-product, and is of material value only to the student

who may be seeking details regarding Lockhart himself or his personal style of expression. With the autobiography, however, it is radically different. Attention is now focused upon the writer and upon the characteristics of his individuality, rather than upon the externals of his life-story. We are interested in the writer's portrait of himself; that is, in him not as seen through the eyes of the world but as reflected from within.

In her extensive work The Autobiography, Mrs. Anna Robeson Burr finds her definition of this phase of narrative writing in the preface of Marie Bashkirtsev's Journal d'une Jeune Artiste in the following passage:

If I should not live long enough to become famous, this journal will be interesting to psychologists. The record of a woman's life, written down day by day, without any attempt at concealment, as if no one in the world were to read it, yet with the purpose of being read, is always interesting. If this book is not the exact, the absolute, the strict truth, it has no raison d'être.

In this passage, Mrs. Burr tells us, two elements are at once evident, both of which we have already found to be essential to historical writing: (a) the attempt at impartial chronicling of fact, and (b) the endeavor so to phrase the thought that it shall be read, that is, shall secure something of the permanence that belongs to literature. Absolute ingenuousness, then, being a prerequisite to effective autobiography, it is evident that the impulse with which the composition takes rise will have no little weight in determining its value. And the autobiographical motives are numerous. Mrs. Burr, for example, has distinguished no less than thirteen, such as financial return, the uses of posterity, religious witness, the mere pleasure of recalling the past, interest in self

study, the interests of science. It is not difficult to see that, with these impulses, there will be a difference in the resulting truthfulness of the self-portrayal, and consequently in the biographical value of the work. The writer who, like the traveler, being desirous merely of acquainting his reader with strange conditions of men and manners, casts his narrative in autobiographical form, will, almost of necessity, sacrifice the first of the principles that Mrs. Burr has declared essential to the type, and will devote greater attention to the second. The value of the autobiographic narrative will thus depend largely on objective considerations rather than on subjective, as it should to secure the greatest value.

It is clear, too, in view of the ultimate purpose of the autobiography, why abridgments by other hands than those of the autobiographer possess little ultimate value. What the editor shall omit, what he shall retain, must depend upon his taste, upon his judgment of the personality incorporated in the self-revelation. And the editor's judgment is the very thing that, autobiographically, the reader cares nothing about. It introduces an element wholly alien to the very nature of the autobiographic type.

In common with history, all biographical writing is free to make use of all the adjuncts of narration. The environment amidst which a character grows to maturity, the complexities that combine to make up the unity that distinguish the individual, the various episodes that, in coherent train, culminate with the close of a career, all these are ready to the hand of the biographer, whether he chronicle the life-story of another or whether, seeing with "the inward eye," he record the thoughts that are known only to himself. One difference in proportion, however, we may note before dis

missing the subject: in history the elements of setting and character are but accessory, and therefore subordinate to the series of actual events. In other words, "the story is the thing." But with biographical narrative, and particularly with autobiography, the element of characterization moves up into first place. Background and action are but contributory. The Man himself becomes supreme.

II. THE NARRATIVE OF IMAGINATION

The Novel

The term novel is as familiar as the term literature or style or criticism, and is often used with about the same degree of exactness in denotation. Attempts at definition have frequently been made by writers on the art of fiction as well as by novelists themselves, and it is interesting to note how the various results throw stress upon widely differing elements. One writer will emphasize amusement and mental relaxation as fundamental; another will specify the passion of love as the essential motive; a third will insist upon the realistic reproduction of actual life; a fourth, that the narrative be morally instructive; and still a fifth, that there be a conscientious and accurate portrayal of character.1 An interesting phenomenon attendant upon these various attempts to define the term novel is that, as they become more and more modern, the element of character portrayal becomes increasingly important. This is quite in keeping with the trend from objective to subjective characterization already referred to in chapter v. In general, however, the definitions of one generation differ

1 For a full discussion of this matter see Horne's Technique of the Novel, chap. II.