digressions, by apparent want of purpose. And, on the other hand, carelessness in ordering the constituent details so that the due relation of parts is not well defined results in looseness and a general tone of carelessness. The reader's attention is led far afield, and the story makes for no distinct climax. The indefiniteness resulting from failure to observe the first essential is illustrated in George Eliot's Middlemarch, in which the simultaneous existence of at least three sets of characters leaves the reader in considerable doubt as to just what constitutes the main theme. For a similar reason some readers are offended with De Morgan's Alice-for-Short: they cannot distinguish the unified idea with which the author is dealing. A narrative like Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, however, or a successful biography like The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer has a motive so distinct that essential unity of composition is evident from the outset. The looseness of narrative structure that results from inattention to the detail of coherence is well exemplified in many of Dickens's works. More than one reader of Bleak House has speedily become so involved in attempting to follow the varying fortunes of the celebrated chancery case, the adventures of Jo, of Lady Dedlock, of Mr. Skimpole, of the Snagsbys, the Jellybys, and the Smallweeds, that he has given up in despair the hopeless task of ever freeing himself from the tangle. On the contrary, the directness with which the successive details of Treasure Island or of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes make for their goal illustrates the effectiveness that comes from orderly arrangement well sustained. History, when well written, offers good evidence of how much is gained by narrative coherence properly observed, for in this form of composition chronological order is supplemented by the exposition of cause and effect; the historian shows wherein the events of one period are but the logical consequences of those that have preceded. Saintsbury refers to this principle when he writes of Gibbon that he ordered his matter so effectively that the result is no mere congeries of unrelated fact but a "regular structure of history, informed and governed throughout by a philosophic idea." Similarly in histories of English literature the writer, in grouping his discussion under various "periods," is unconsciously marshaling the various details into the proper array to render effective his narrative treatment. In this case, as in the case of the historian, he not only shows the chronological sequence of the Elizabethan, Puritan, Restoration, and Eighteenth Century eras, but he makes his sequence more effective by showing that one stage of literary activity prepares the way for its successor and merges into it without jar or interruption. All this somewhat critical consideration is reducible to a proper regard for the second requirement that we have found inherent in the very definition of narration. NARRATION IN ITS RELATIONS TO THE OTHER FORMS OF DISCOURSE I. Narration and Exposition In the light of the definitions already presented, it will appear that narration differs essentially from exposition, or the setting forth of a term, the meaning or application of which may not be clear. In the one case we are concerned with the temporal relations of one part to another, with the sequence of event after event; in the other, with logical relations, cause and effect, signification or extent of terms, with the process of elucida tion. For instance, the following paragraph from Bryce's American Commonwealth presents an exposition of the term "the general education of the American people"; that is, it sets forth that term for the purpose of increased clearness of apprehension. The Americans are an educated people, compared with the whole mass of the population in any European country except Switzerland, parts of Germany, Iceland, and Scotland; that is to say, the average of knowledge is higher, the habit of reading and thinking more generally diffused, than in any other country. (I speak, of course, of the native Americans, excluding negroes and recent immigrants.) They know the Constitution of their own country, they follow public affairs, they join in local government and learn from it how government must be carried on, and in particular how discussion must be conducted in meetings, and its results tested in elections. The Town Meeting has been the most perfect school of self-government in any modern country. In villages, they still exercise their minds on theological questions, debating points of Christian doctrine with no small acuteness. Women, in particular, though their chief reading is fiction and theology, pick up at the public schools and from the popular magazines far more miscellaneous information than the women of any European country possess, and this naturally tells on the intelligence of the men.1 The systematic and orderly character of the expository method as illustrated in this paragraph will be apparent from a glance at the skeleton that underlies the selection: GENERAL EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE I. Comparison with education among Europeans. II. General information among Americans. 1 From The American Commonwealth. Copyright, 1894. Used by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company. A. On political matters. 1. Knowledge of the Constitution. B. On theological matters. Frequent discussions of doctrinal questions, III. Unusual intelligence of American women. 1. Fiction and theology. 2. Current magazine literature. B. Public school education. C. Influence on men. From this outline it is clear that the function of the passage in question is to set forth the coördination and subordination of the various constituent elements that enter into the scope of the term under consideration. After reading the paragraph one understands more clearly what constitutes the "general education of the American people," what the writer means by the term. The entire work from which the paragraph is selected, The American Commonwealth itself, presents a more complete and typical example of the expository method. It is, in fact, but an elucidation of the term indicated by the title; it considers the subject in all of its essential component parts-state and national government, political parties, social organization, etc., etc. Narration, on the other hand, were it directed at the same subject, would note the chronological order of successive events, and would produce a history of the United States. Bryce is an expositor; Fiske, a narrator. Matthew Arnold's famous essay, Sweetness and Light, is another example of the expository method. It ex pounds the term "culture," defines it, analyzes it, differentiates it from the antonym "Philistinism," or modern materialism, and all for greater clearness of comprehension on the part of the reader. Silas Marner has already been used as an illustration of the narrative method. Were a critic to discuss "the regeneration of the weaver of Raveloe" from the expository point of view, he would endeavor to explain the fitness of the word "regeneration" as applied to Silas's peculiar spiritual experiences. Upon completing the exposition, a reader, presumably already familiar with the narrative of Marner's life, - would be satisfied that the term had been fitly applied. But all writing that has for its aim to set forth a term needing explanation is not of necessity so unmistakably expository as might seem to be the case from the examples just cited. Exposition has many methods, and among them narration sometimes plays a part, as in the following paragraph from The Mountains of California by John Muir. The subject is the life history of a mountain lake. - When a mountain lake is born, when, like a young eye, it first opens to the light, it is an irregular, expressionless crescent, enclosed in banks of rock and ice, — bare, glaciated rock on the lower side, the rugged snout of a glacier on the upper. In this condition it remains for many a year, until at length, toward the end of some auspicious cluster of seasons, the glacier recedes beyond the upper margin of the basin, leaving it open from shore to shore for the first time, thousands of years after its conception beneath the glacier that excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun fills it with throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless shores, sun spangles during the day |