the physical defects which happen to accompany it disappear from consciousness. In Pippa Passes, the shoulders of Ottima are at one time fascinatingly beautiful to Sebald; at another, terribly repulsive. In this sense, the Spenserian conception that "soul is form and doth the body make" may be a truth of real experience. The spatial point of view also greatly modifies the impression of physical appearance. The first close observation of a face long familiar at a greater distance, is a revelation. Complexion, in particular, has a marvelous increase or decrease of value as the point of view changes.

In the novel, these and similar "kinetic" aspects of physiognomy affect the author, the reader, and the dramatis personæ. They may suggest the great difficulty, and hint at some of the better methods in artistic description of physical personality. In general, it seems better to leave much to the imagination and habit of observation in the reader. A fully itemized description is, in fact, usually one of the least successful methods of reaching realistic result. Defoe (in Colonel Jacque) thus defends a brief conventional summary: "It is a subject too surfeiting to entertain people with the beauty of a person they will never see.”

The novel rarely portrays the unclothed human body. This may be a serious limitation, so far as pictorial interest is concerned, but the loss to higher characterization seems trifling. The conventional nude portraits of the Elizabethan sonneteers and Herrick add little to our sense of mental and moral individuality. (Cf. Laokoon, V.)

93. Costume and Physical Environment. When one sees a friend for the first time in academic or ecclesiastical garb or in military uniform, the effect on one's general conception of the character is often surprisingly strong. Costume has its special values in the novel of manners, the romance of chivalry, historical romance, and other types of fiction. Disdainful criticism of Scott's attention to costume has perhaps underrated the significance of dress in historical and social characterization. But Scott is by no means the

first to note its value. For familiar reasons, description of costume is very common in Elizabethan literature.

In Jack Wilton there are several passages of striking and concrete description, in various connotation, like the following: "I had my feather in my cap as big as a flag in the foretop; my French doublet . . my long stock my rapier pendant . my cape cloak of black cloth," etc. Defoe perhaps paid little attention to dress in general, but the island costume of Robinson Crusoe is given in significant detail.

Change of costume sometimes indicates important change of situation or character, though Thoreau's suggestion that new garments should always mean moral renovation is not strictly observed. A familiar detail is the donning of masculine garments by a woman—romantic in Lodge's Rosalind; realistic in Defoe's Moll Flanders and Mrs. Christian Davies.

The photographer and portrait painter recognize the value of physical background in characterization. Such background has an increased value when selected or fashioned by the character himself. This and other vital relations of the dramatis personæ and the material environment are noticed in Sections 72 and 74.

Certain traditional relations are found in some special types of fiction. Pastoral figures appear against a background of typical landscape; the heroine of the novel of manners is painted as the queen of the ballroom or the promenade; the conventional European appears in a new light surrounded by pygmies, giants, or other semi-human figures, in the voyage imaginaire; the knight of the romance of chivalry is the shining center of the tournament.

Of special importance in dramatic characterization is the relation of the single figure to the group. The imaging of Silas Marner among the village boors at the Rainbow, and among the village aristocrats at the Red House, adds greatly to the impression of his character. The fact that he never appears in any considerable group except in

physical as well as mental contrast to his fellows, until the end of the story, symbolizes his moral isolation and is due to the author's instinctive genius or conscious art.

94. Pantomime. Human beings express their individuality as well as typical qualities by weeping, laughter, swoon, blush, gesture, and pose. It is a matter of common note that these means of expression often have a more elemental and universal value than speech itself. In many situations absence of customary pantomime is also a revelation of character. In artificial society, gesture as well as speech may be used to conceal the real attitude of the spirit.

Criticism1 points out that Sterne was one of the first novelists to give extensive and specialized treatment of pantomime; but it had its definite if subordinate place before the great schools of the eighteenth century.

...

Nash gives us such concrete touches as these, in Jack Wilton: "One pecked like a crane with his forefinger at every half syllable he brought forth, and nodded with his nose like an old singing man. Another would be sure to wipe his mouth with his handkercher at the end of every full point. And ever when he thought he had cast a figure so curiously, as he dived over head and ears into his auditors' admiration, he would take occasion to stroke up his hair, and twine up his mustachios twice or thrice over, while they might have leisure to applaud him."

The "sentimental school" of the late eighteenth century was fond of sighs, tears, swoonings, and the attitudes of languorous and mysterious melancholy. Professor Morley enumerates the weepings in the Man of Feeling. pages of the famous Clarissa and the representative

The

1 Jusserand, Roman Anglais, p. 64; Masson, p. 153; etc. See the extended study of "Physiognomik und Mimik" in Riemann.

2 Introduction to Cassell's National Library edition.

Juliet Grenville (by Brooke) offer quite as rich opportunity for such statistics. Pantomime has a particular human value in the novel of manners; in modern naturalism, it inclines to the opposite tendency of animalism.

95. Utterance.-Careful analysis of the speech of a character might note general habits of loquacity or silence, carelessness or accuracy; the quality and intonation of the voice; vocabulary and syntax, etc. In the novel, the modulation of the voice can be only slightly indicated by direct means, and the indirect often seem ineffective or unreal. (Compare Sections 22-24.) This is especially true of the singing voice. No refinement of literary description can rival the histrionic art in interpreting the tragic pathos of the songs of Ophelia and Desdemona.

It is interesting to speculate just what imagery of sound and just what interpretation of character underlie Jane Austen's frequent statement that Elizabeth Bennet "cried " her words. Detailed attention to enunciation, in the service of romantic sentimentalism, is found in some of the short stories of Hendrik Conscience. He repeatedly uses such descriptive terms as "unintelligible,” “almost inaudible,” murmured," "whispered," "scarcely articulate," etc. In several cases he follows the development of the voice from a very low utterance to loudness in a single speech.

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In vocabulary and syntax, the limitation of the character by the author himself is often very noticeable. Unreality or falseness is liable to appear in attempts at highly specialized technical, professional, or historical language. Extended and coherent speeches by characters suffering from great pain or great weakness are often improbable to the imagination, even if they are scientifically possible.

The speech of children is an interesting detail. William and Anne in Browning's Strafford are curiously mature in vocabulary and syntax. Contrast the extended and lifelike talk of Tom and Maggie Tulliver.

The children in Sense and Sensibility are "full of monkey tricks," and express themselves by screams, sobs, ¡pinches, and kicks instead of words. (See Chapter XXI.)

Propriety, in an untechnical sense, frequently forbids a complete record of the imagined utterance of a character. Profanity and vulgarity have been defended on the principle of dramatic "decorum" since the days of Chaucer, at least; but the novelist has often hesitated to carry out his theoretical right. The expression of very intense passion, secular or religious, is often perceptibly toned down. Sidney records the beautiful prayer of Pamela, and Richardson displays the most personal and profound religious emotion of Clarissa; but such frank exhibition of the sacred privacy of passion, though still common, is not in complete accord with the cultural taste of our own time.

96. Physiological Psychology. In few novels, even of recent date, is the human soul considered as merely the temporary result of chemical and physical forces. Modern materialism, in its complete formula, has not yet proved attractive or feasible for many literary artists. Average criticism of the day rebukes both the tendency of the naturalist to reduce all psychic experiences to physiological terms; and the tendency of the pure psychologist to study the soul as though it were independent of the body.

Physiological psychology, broadly interpreted, is not a new element in the novel. The physical and mental characteristics of sexual love are causally related in Daphnis and Chloe and other Greek romances, as they are in corresponding Elizabethan descriptions. In Jack Wilton there are some vigorous strokes to indicate the physical effects of a long-continued spirit of revenge: "My tongue with vain threats is swolen, and waxen too big for my mouth. My eyes have broken their strings with staring and looking ghastly, as I stood devising how to frame or set my countenance when I met thee," etc.