Different types of historical fiction, with corresponding theories, depend on the distribution of historical, semi-historical, and non-historical characters as to foreground, middleground, and background. Compare, for example, the theories and practise of Scott, Vigny, Manzoni, Dumas, and Tolstoi.

In Ivanhoe, the chief foreground figures are at most only typically historical; King John and King Richard, with the semi-legendary Robin Hood, may perhaps be considered as middleground characters. In Kenilworth, Leicester and Queen Elizabeth; in The Talisman, King Richard, approach the advanced foreground position. In CinqMars, both the Cardinal and the young hero are among the most prominent persons. Among the historical characters of I Promessi Sposi are Cardinal Borromeo, Charles II, Richelieu, Philip II, and Wallenstein, but none of these are foreground figures, from a structural point of view. This romance, like many other historical fictions, presents a large number of indeterminate, semi-historical groups in the middleground or background. In Quo Vadis, though Nero, Petronius, Saint Peter, and other historical individuals are prominent, the hero and heroine are both imaginary.

85. Individuals and Types. Every character, in fiction as elsewhere, may be primarily considered as an individual, as representative of larger or smaller groups of human beings, or as an embodiment of an abstract idea. In some novels an initial grouping of dramatis personæ on this basis may be of advantage. A deeper study of the matter belongs more properly under characterization.

Any character dominated by a single quality, habit, or passion tends to become typical. Typification in the direction of caricature is found in many novels of a general realistic stamp. Even so sturdy a realist as Trollope introduces characters typically named — for example, Mr. Popular Sentiment and Dr. Persistent Anti-Cant — following the fashion especially prominent in the Jonsonian comedy of humors, and the eighteenth century English comedy of manners. Such characters, whether named in this manner or not, are notably frequent in Dickens, and in the great humorists and satirists generally.

Allegorical and symbolical characters are appropriate in certain species of romance. They sometimes appear even in the heart of a realistic novel, but tend to weaken or destroy the unity of realistic illusion. The presence of Mignon, the religious teachers, and other allegorical figures in Wilhelm Meister makes it difficult for the average reader to accept the reality of the plot as a whole. The same confusion may result from a combination of realistic characters with caricatures, as in Sidney's Arcadia. In The Midsummer Night's Dream there is such intricate interweaving of realism, caricature, and symbolism, that the whole effect can be unified only in the realm of the fantastic. 86. Social Groups. Important in most novels, social grouping of the dramatis personæ has a specialized value in many types of fiction- the picaresque romance, the pastoral romance, the novel of manners, and the novel of social psychology, for example. The analysis is closely connected with the study of "human life," under subjectmatter, but it also has its relations to æsthetic form. In many novels, the guiding principle in social grouping is artistic contrast; in others there is more delicate shading from group to group. Sharp contrast is characteristic of romanticism; an intricate interweaving, ceteris paribus, is more realistic. The canon of "epic totality" demands that every generic group of human society be represented. For an elaborate technical classification, one must go to the scientific sociologist; but a simple conception of the classes of society is a matter of general culture, and a necessity for any thorough study of plot-literature. Groups may be based upon sex, family relation, social rank, occupation, religion, etc. The novel which fully embodies the epic tradition includes characters of several races or nationalities, with some conscious study of the qualities of these

massive groups. Balzac as, in some sense, a scientific student of social psychology, arranges the Comédie Humaine in such manner as to indicate clearly a rational analysis of society. His modern, secular classification offers an interesting contrast to the groupings of Dante's dramatis personæ, made largely on the basis of medieval theology.

The groups according to sex, like several others, might be considered as either sociological or psychological. In certain types of fiction, the number of individualized men naturally far exceeds that of women. This is true of historical romance, and of novels of action, especially of a martial quality. In novels in which love is a primary matter, and in the novel of manners, the relation may be inverted, or a numerical equality approached. Certain theories of the novel, those which emphasize its function in portraying modern social complexity, and in studying the inner life of the emotions, for instance, have a specific bearing on the matter. Again, the historical relations of men and women as novelists and as novel-readers, might be discussed in this connection.

In Ivanhoe there are 47 speaking men; 5 speaking women. (The concerted speeches also are mainly masculine.) In Silas Marner, the corresponding numbers are 20 and 8. Pride and Prejudice, with its II speaking men and 15 speaking women, illustrates the feminine quality of Miss Austen's experience, her realistic fidelity to that experience, and the tendency of the typical novel of manners.

In many novels the family relations of the dramatis personæ are intricate enough to demand special examination. This may be true of the family saga, or of historical romances, as it is of Shakespeare's English historical plays. Even in Silas Marner, Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and other modern fictions of local societies, the reader is not likely to have a complete and clear conception of these relations without careful attention. In extensive studies of family traits, as in the Rougon-Macquart series, the matter is of deeper importance.

A good example of æsthetic social grouping is found in pastoral fiction. This generally contains well-marked groups of permanent, genuine pastoral characters, contrasted with groups of courtly aristocrats, pastoral to some degree, for the nonce. There may also be nonpastoral groups; or a number of pastoral figures in burlesque, as in Sidney's Arcadia and As You Like It.

87. Psychological Groups.-The critic may easily discover in any novel fairly definite groups of dramatis personæ based on salient common mental and moral qualities. A conscious elaboration of this analysis on the part of the author belongs mainly to modern fiction, and particularly to the "psychological novel" of the realistic and naturalistic schools. Such groups may be considered in their social aspects, or as psychological, in a more exact sense. In some naturalistic works, in which the psychology rests on physiology, the real interest is biological rather than social, in the ordinary meaning of the word.

Characters may be grouped according to age, temperament, normal or abnormal condition, types of mentality, etc. Senior gave some very interesting and illuminative discussion of this matter. His classification into 'simple, mixed, and inconsistent' characters,1 is worthy of careful study. Another method of analysis might distinguish sensational, emotional, intellectual, moral, and religious natures. Further technical classification may be adapted from sociological or psychological treatises.

Professor Giddings (Inductive Sociology) gives as "types of disposition," "aggressive, instigative, domineering, creative"; as "types of character," "forceful, convivial, austere, rationally conscientious"; "types of mind," "ideo-motor, ideo-emotional, dogmatic-emotional, critical-intellectual." While this nomenclature has been ridiculed by the layman, it is not without practical suggestive value in the close analysis of the psychological novel.

1 Essays on Fiction, p. 358 ff.

A most important distinction, in respect to novelistic form as well as subject-matter, is that between static and developing characters. One very significant theory makes the novel preeminently a study of the development of individual character. This idea might serve as a basis for a valuable grouping of all the dramatis personæ. In most novels there are many persons who undergo no essential change of nature in the course of the action.

Characters of very pronounced mental or moral abnormality are usually treated as individuals rather than in groups; but the latter method is not unknown in novels of social psychology. Superstition, fanaticism, the delirium of panic, mob-spirit, the fever of battle, the selfishness or death-like lassitude of populations stricken by pestilence or famine, these are among the most intense forms of social consciousness the novelist is called upon to portray. In the domain of individual psychology, Scott made an original study of "double-consciousness" (his own term) in Norna, of The Pirate; giving medical authority for his conception, long before Zola applied the doctrines of Claude Bernard to the novel.1

1 See The Experimental Novel.