failure to settle in a regular profession to its influence. (Quoted in Boswell, from Bishop Percy.) — Burns' fondness for The Man of Feeling throws some light upon that novel, upon Burns, and upon the social psychology of his time. -Wesley thought that The Fool of Quality was "one of the most beautiful pictures that ever was drawn in the world.". Examine the comment on fiction by St. Augustine, Coleridge, Goethe, Cardinal Newman, Ruskin, and Tolstoi.

167. Kind and Degree of Influence. These will depend, in part, upon the reader's intimacy with the individual work. There seems to be no valid reason why a truly great novel should not be studied as carefully as a great drama or epic; but such study is rare, and the full effect of the novel is not often realized. For complete criticism, a work of fiction should be accepted as a part of real personal experience, emotional and imaginative; and also examined intellectually, as a part of the world outside of one's personality.

To the ordinary mind, the evidences of labor and of technical mastery are more noticeable in painting or architecture than in literature. Again, some alertness of the senses is required before one can comprehend the real meaning of a spatial work of art. The physical sense of weariness may be related to the impression of architectural sublimity; the crescendos and diminuendos of the orchestra challenge the mental activity of the listener. In the novel, one may gain a certain comprehension of the work in a comparatively passive attitude of mind. There is nothing objective to stir and stimulate attention. Yet the full evaluation of a novel is to be reached only by a genuine and persistent effort. Like all other real values, this also must be purchased by an expenditure of life itself.

168. Perceptual Effect. No two readers ever receive exactly the same impressions from the sensuous imagery

of a novel. In this respect, as in others, Julian Hawthorne's statement that it takes two to make a novel, the author and the reader, can be readily understood. Just how far the reader should attempt to reexperience the sensuous values the author has observed or imagined, is a matter for general æsthetic theory, or for private opinion. It will task the average reader to follow the author closely into details; on the other hand, there is no law forbidding one to see and hear with more acute senses than those of the novelist. While there may at times be danger of the trees obscuring the forest, it is sometimes the single tree, even the single branch, twig, leaf, that one wishes

to see.

The senses to which most immediate and persistent appeal is made in the novel are those of sight and sound. The visual imagery includes the appearance of the characters, singly and in groups, and the masses and details of the spatial background. Riemann gives a definition of the "pantomimischer Roman"-i.e., one in which more is seen than heard. 1

Resolving the descriptions in the Conclusion of Silas Marner into "ultimate points" of visual imagery, one will find some thirty details. These vary in scope from the pink sprigs on Eppie's dress and the "dash of gold on a lily," to the vision of the wedding procession and the Rainbow group, as wholes.

A study rather common at the present time is that of the color imagery of poetry. The contrasts, in this respect, between pseudoclassicism, romanticism, and realism, could be traced in prose fiction also.

In the domain of sound, the essential appeal of the novel is in the utterance of the dramatis personæ; though there is often a great variety of sounds in nature, and in

1 p. 232.

the occupations of social life. The voice of a character can be more completely realized by reading his speeches aloud.

Frankenstein has a well-defined imagery of sound. Note the use of such terms as crack, roar, shriek, gurgling, groan, howling, thunder of the ground sea.

Compare the last sections of Chapter I, and Section 95.

The imagery, if it may so be called, of touch and smell, can be studied to advantage in modern naturalism and symbolism—in Zola, Tolstoi, d'Annunzio, and van Eeden, for example. Vathek, with its rich Orientalism, also makes a noteworthy appeal to these senses, considering its early date.

169. Sensational Effect. In the present connection, sensation may be defined as emotion associated with consciousness of related physical condition. The novel may arouse sensations by direct description, or by subtle suggestion to the imagination or memory of the reader. It cannot picture their visible effects, as can painting or the stage drama; but it can go into very minute analysis of their nature, and their relations to the individual and his environment - it can make them appear in the "warmth" of concrete experience.

Sensation would seem to be not only a legitimate but a necessary effect, if the canon of comprehensiveness is applied to the influence as well as the subject of a novel. The "sensational novel," in the usual meaning, is one in which this phase of experience is emphasized beyond its true proportion, inadequately motived, or given a morbid tendency. Sensational effect is common in both romantic and naturalistic schools. It is often of a languorous and melancholy type in the sentimental novel, and of a more active and intense type in Gothic romance. Many realists inherit the romantic craving for sensation,

and some are even inclined to find it the essence of personal experience.

In the preface of Frankenstein, Mrs. Shelley gives this frank testimony of the Gothic romancer: "Oh if I could only . . frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night! I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the specter which had haunted my midnight pillow."

170. Emotional Effect. Probably no other form of art can compete with the novel in the sum total of emotional appeal. The short story, the lyric, the drama, and music, may each excel in this or that particular; but for a combination of variety, intensity, concreteness, reality, of exhibition and interpretation, of sustained rhythms of excitement and repose, the novel is the best medium. It is perhaps this fact-of opportunity—that has suggested the theory that the study of emotion is the true function of the novel.

The reader may enter by mere imagination into the emotions of the dramatis personæ or the author; or he may be moved more directly by situations and sentiments which touch his own emotional experience, present or past. It is doubtful if the novel ever arouses strong emotions entirely unknown to the reader before.

One may follow the "line of emotion" for the reader, as for the dramatis personæ; and also study the general result at the conclusion. Strong dominant emotions may be aroused, or a sequence of minor ones; the effect may be one of stability or of rapid transition, of harmony or discord, of sympathy or antagonism-toward a character, the author, or life in general.

The Aristotelian doctrine of catharsis may be discussed with reference to the novel as well as the drama. The ethical question whether the emotional energy the reader

spends upon fictitious characters weakens his emotional power in real life is relevant in this connection. Some critics affirm that the novel performs a special service to the present age, in that it allows the reader a free, natural, healthful flow of feeling, which, according to current standards of social taste, must be repressed in real life.

Criticism attempts to distinguish between emotional effects which are truly æsthetic, and those which are not. To the first class belong delight in the technical mastery of the artist, the sense of 'difficulty overcome,' imaginative pleasure in the picture of life, whether it be joyful or sad, etc.; to the second class, all emotions associated with the personal experiences, antipathies and sympathies of the individual reader. The properly æsthetic emotions do not lead to any external activity; they never become real passions. This distinction may aid one in the analysis of effects, but in many cases it seems a rather arbitrary and sterile antithesis.

171. Conceptual Effect. The reader who is concerned only with the story element of a novel will not give much attention to the facts and ideas it contains, as independent values. Compare, however, the opinions quoted in Section 119. In a well-unified novel, even the most abstract ideas are part of the general artistic plan, and the story itself cannot be completely realized without an understanding of their relation to characters and events.

Most novels give a certain amount of information new to the reader, and a certain number of ideas, either new in themselves or their relations, or calling for a fresh effort at clear conception.

The analysis given in the chapter on Subject-matter may serve as a guide to an intensive study of conceptual effects.