view it as nothing more than a rather picturesque piece of descriptive writing.

It is evident, then, that setting is auxiliary to action, to the ordering of details that constitute the backbone of the narrative. The only exception would seem to be in those cases where the environment demands a certain harmonious and concurrent action. Yet even here the story is ultimately the thing.

Undue Elaboration of Setting

Description, apart and unsubordinated, is recognized as an entirely legitimate form of prose discourse, but it cannot be termed background unless upon it something is enacted. Descriptive writing cast into the body of a narrative may be defended in proportion as it is an inherent part of the whole composition. When it begins to take form as an independent entity, the composition as a narrative whole at once begins to suffer from lack of unity, coherence, and emphasis. Narrative unity is violated because there is no longer essential consonance between the action-without which there can be no narration-and the background of the action; the two do not coalesce. Narrative coherence suffers because the general current of events is disturbed by the interpolation of what seems foreign matter. And narrative emphasis is lost because, through want of true proportion, the subordinate is advanced into equal prominence with that which is not its rhetorical equal.

Undue elaboration of setting is likely to manifest itself in one of two ways: (a) the writer overcrowds his setting with unnecessary details; or (b) he indulges in descriptive dissipation without regard to the main function of the composition.

A tendency of young writers - and indeed of older writers not possessed of well-developed power of selection is to overcrowd the scene with details that are trivial or that leave too little to the reader's imagination. Arlo Bates in his Talks on Writing English illustrates the first of these tendencies in the following passage:

To force the accidental on the reader is to destroy the sense of reality, which is the prime object of the literary artist. As an illustration we may take this passage from Thack

eray:

66

If your Majesty will please to enter the next apartment,” says Esmond, preserving his grave tone, “I have some papers there which I would gladly submit to you, and by your permission, I will lead the way;” and taking the taper up, and backing before the Prince with very great ceremony, Mr. Esmond passed in to the little Chaplain's room, through which we had just entered into the house. "Please to set a chair for his Majesty, Frank," says the Colonel to his companion, who wondered much at this scene, and was as much puzzled by it as the other actor in it. Then going to the crypt over the mantelpiece, the Colonel opened it, and drew thence the papers which had so long lain there. The History of Henry Esmond.

This might have been written, with more literal exact

ness:

"If your Majesty will please to enter the next apartment,” says Esmond, preserving his grave tone, resting his hand on the back of a chair, and bowing as he spoke, "I have some papers there which I would gladly submit to you; and by your permission I will lead the way." He stepped forward a couple of paces. He took up the taper, bowing again, and backed before the Prince with great ceremony toward the door of the little Chaplain's room, through which we had just entered the house. He glanced under his arm as he bowed to see the threshold, lest he should stumble and destroy the dignity of his

march. The Prince followed slowly, regarding the other with a look at once of rage and stupefaction. His coat, which he had put on unassisted, was all awry, his wig tumbled, and his ribbons rumpled. He rested his hand upon the hilt of a dagger which he wore at his belt, and he carried his head with a manner almost openly defiant. Behind him came Frank, most astonished of all, but following the lead which the Colonel gave. His steps were longer than those of the Prince, and once he had to stop to let his Majesty get farther ahead of him, etc.

There is nothing here which might not have belonged to the real scene, but the stupid piling up of details has so blurred the outlines that the whole effect is spoiled.1

The foregoing example illustrates in large degree the over-elaboration of details of action, but that the principle holds equally well of the descriptive details in setting will be apparent if one will revert to the grindstone scene in A Tale of Two Cities alluded to on p. 16. The paragraph following the scene of mad riot in the tavern yard states that

All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or of any human creature at any very great pass, could see in a world if it were there.

This conception is sustained by the details presented. Only two out of the entire mob of forty or fifty frenzied savages appear with individual distinctness; the rest are described in general terms:

drink.

Some women held wine to their mouths that they might

. . Shouldering one another to get next at the sharpening stone were men stripped to the waist, etc.

1 Arlo Bates's Talks on Writing English (Second Series), pp. 196197. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

One sees them all as a howling, shrieking, maddened crew, not as individuals picked out with photographic distinctness. In this unconscious selection of the telling details and in the omission of a thousand other details that he might have included, Dickens shows his artistic sense and incidentally succeeds in presenting the scene with infinitely greater effect. The dramatic loss will at once become apparent if after the picture of the two ruffians at the stone one inserts additional details in this man

ner:

. . . And what with dropping blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks struck out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and fire. Standing in a doorway of rough stone just below the windowledge and some eight or ten feet to the right, Mr. Lorry observed a striking figure. It was that of a stout woman, perhaps thirty years of age, with a watchful eye, a large hand heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure of manner. A quantity of bright shawl was twined about her head, though not to the concealment of two large ear-rings. Her right elbow sustained by her left hand, she silently watched the scene by the grindstone. Save for this one figure, the eye could not detect one creature in the group free from the smear of blood. Etc., etc.

This does not improve the picture. Although these very details serve their purpose elsewhere in the story, their insertion at this point seriously affects the vividness of the scene. It becomes a mere snap-shot, omitting nothing within the range of vision. But snap-shots, however exact, are not generally recognized as the highest form of art. Artistic description seeks the most suggestive details, details that shall suggest what is intended and yet leave some freedom to the reader's individual imagination. One will designedly omit prominent details

if by so doing he can better produce the desired effect. Eden Phillpotts recognizes this principle in the following passage:

"A gentleman stopped in our best bedroom and parlour a year back," continued Simon, "and his custom was to paint pickshers. And once I comed this way and he was painting pretty near where we be standing now. And I made so bold as to look, and then I made so bold as to talk, because the gentleman axed me what I thought of it. 'You've left out the church tower,' I says to him. 'Yes,' he says, "t was n't like I was going to stick such a beastly, ugly thing as that in the midst of they hills.' So he left it out, though to my eye 't was the most interesting sight to be seen.'

"Did he make his pickshers for pleasure, or did he get anything by them?” asked Rhoda.

"He lived by 'em. He said to me once that there were one or two sane men in the world who bought everything he liked to paint. 'T was a very curious speech to my ear. And to be honest with you, I did n't like his pickshers and half done to my eye very different to the pickshers you see on grocers' almanacs, where everything, to the hairs on a horse's tail, be worked out to a miracle.1

The artist selects only those details that contribute to his purpose; the compiler of the almanac includes everything.

Among recent writers of fiction Frank Norris is noted for his realistic descriptive power; but the reader is sometimes impelled to feel that details are unduly multiplied. A typical passage is the well-known picture of the Wheat Pit of the Board of Trade as presented at the close of chapter III in The Pit. Vivid, photographic to the last degree, the scene certainly is, but one may ask

1 Phillpotts's The Virgin in Judgment. By permission of Moffat, Yard, and Company.