9. The Chapter. While found in other forms of composition, this is the structural unit most characteristic of the novel. It is used with great freedom, its value depending on relation to the individual work rather than to abstract rhetorical principle. While the chapter bears a certain analogy to the dramatic scene, the number of chapters often greatly exceeds the number of scenes in a wellconstructed drama. In length, also, the chapter shows great variation; but for a given novel there is a certain norm below and above which a true æsthetic quality is lost. The realists, for example Trollope, Howells, Jane Austen, are comparatively regular. The romanticists and the pure humorists are much more capricious. Marked brevity is sometimes a source of humorous effect; occasionally a source of tragic effect.

The unity of a chapter is generally quite distinct. Externally it may appear in title, motto, or dramatic form. A chapter frequently has a definite introductory and concluding paragraph, or begins and ends with marked single effects. Trollope occasionally opens a chapter with the same words that conclude the preceding chapter. (Can You Forgive Her? XII and XIII; Framley Parsonage, IX and X.) The first and last chapters of a novel often have some distinctive form. The first chapter in Trollope rarely contains dialogue; the first chapters of Scott's Tales of My Landlord are first-person narratives by "Peter Pattieson." A chapter is naturally more distinctly unified in respect to the characters, settings, action, process of composition and effect than the larger divisions, and less so than the paragraph. In the novel of character the introduction of important new characters usually demands a new chapter; in the novel of action, important incident.

EXAMPLES

Number of chapters: Peregrine Pickle, 106; Amelia, 115; Tom Jones, 208; War and Peace, 362. Chapter length: Notre Dame de Paris, 1 to 40 pages (romanticism); Gil Blas, 1 to 60 (humor). Humorous brevity: Tristram Shandy; Bulwer's Paul Clifford, 27. Tragic brevity: Bulwer's Kenelm Chillingly, VIII, 6; Galdós' Doña Perfecta, last chapter.

Mottos are characteristic of the romantic movement, and of romance generally. Scott uses them habitually, perhaps following Mrs. Radcliffe in this respect as in others. See his comment on the practise; Rob Roy, advertisement, The Monastery, Chapter III, and elsewhere. Other famous fictions with chapter mottos are, Vigny's Cinq Mars, Last of the Mohicans, Hauff's Lichtenstein, Kingsley's Westward Ho !

Definite introduction: Ivanhoe, 1, 3, 4, 5, etc.; Last of the Mohicans, 3, 9, 11, etc. Definite conclusion: Ivanhoe, 3, 6, 9, etc.; Last of the Mohicans, 1, 9, 10, etc. Epistolary form (common): Trollope's Can You Forgive Her? II, 4; Bulwer's Kenelm Chillingly, four examples. Semi-soliloquy: Tolstoi's Resurrection, III, 40. Monologue: Adam Bede, 2. Duologue: Last of the Mohicans, 5, 12, 19, 20, 21; Ivanhoe, 6, 15, 16, 20, 21, 28, 29. Conversation: Last of the Mohicans, 4; Ivanhoe, 5, 7; Silas Marner, 6. Set dramatic form: Fielding's Jonathan Wild, III, 8. Intercalated reverting narrative: The Resurrection, I, 2, 37; Adam Bede, 45. Essay: Frequent in Fielding, especially in the first chapters of books; Notre Dame de Paris, III, 2; V, 2.

Chapter groups occur in nearly every novel, sometimes marked definitely in the external structure, as in Stevenson's Black Arrow, "The Good Hope," "The Good Hope Continued," "The Good Hope Concluded"; and in Trollope's Barchester Towers, 'Ullathorne Sports,. Act I, Act II, Act III.' Other examples of chapter groups are found in The Virginians, II, 2 to 4, intercalated narrative; Adam Bede, 6 to 8, 21 to 26, 27 and 28, episodes; Tolstoi's Resurrection, II, 12 to 18, reverting narrative reminiscence.

10. The Paragraph. -The paragraph in the novel is more flexible than in most forms of prose, and is one of the elements in the complexity of novelistic structure. It

may be differentiated for narrative, descriptive, dramatic, and lyrical service, and these functions change often in the typical novel. The paragraph has undergone great development in the course of its history.1 In the early romance it is frequently exceedingly long, and without artistic unity (Boyle's Parthenissa contains one of over fourteen thousand words), while in some of the recent short story writers there is an almost abnormal consciousness of paragraph value. In general, the shorter the composition, the more significant the paragraph division. There is great range of length in the typical novel. In Silas Marner the shortest paragraph is a dramatic speech of two words-"That's ended," Chapter XX; the longest, a third-person narrative episode of five hundred words in Chapter IV.

As in real life, careful attention to paragraph structure is not characteristic of conversation, but of artificial written speech, the realistic novel is not inclined to elaborate it in dialogic passages. Its chief technical use, in this particular, is to set off the single speech, the connectives, and the author's comment. In the romance and romantic novel, however, it may be devoted to poetical purpose, even approaching the structure and value of the stanza. Other important functions of the paragraph are generalization; transition from one action or character to another; characterization; setting; motivation; foreshadowing and preparation; summary of situation, etc.

The very short paragraph is often effective for striking dramatic or sensational emphasis. Such usage is characteristic of Hugo. It also aids rapidity and isolation of incident in narrative passages. Various effects of symmetry, monotony, climax, may be gained by the careful construction of a series of paragraphs. Occasionally in compositions

1 See E. H. Lewis's History of the English Paragraph, 1894.

o. passages of a lyrical character a paragraph is repeated in substance or verbatim, as a sort of leit-motif or refrain. Examples are found in d'Annunzio's Triumph of Death and in Dombey and Son.

11. Minor Divisions. — The main text of a novel is frequently accompanied by one or more of the following accessories: critical or fictitious preface; dedication; lists of dramatis personæ; annotation; historical document; epilogue, etc.

The fictitious preface may relate to the author, to the novel itsen, or to almost independent incidents and characters. One of its special services is to introduce the illusion of the imaginary manuscript; another to explain the initial circumstances of a voyage imaginaire. A study of the fictitious prefaces of Scott will reveal most of the conventions, powers, and limitations of the form. Examples are found in Quentin Durward (9000 words), Rob Roy, Fortunes of Nigel, Peveril of the Peak, Tales of My Landlord, I Promessi Sposi, Henry Esmond, La Nouvelle Héloïse, Castle of Otranto, Holberg's Iter Subterraneum.

Final divisions, like epilogue, etc., are usually brief. They may recur to the fiction of the preface, as in the "peroration" of Old Mortality, or outline the future of the characters and action of the novel, or generalize on the picture of life that has been presented. A definitely stated moral, common in medieval fiction, is rare in modern fiction. One occurs at the close of the Heart of Midlothian, I Promessi Sposi, and the original form of Balzac's Peau de Chagrin.

Lists of dramatis persona, with some slight characterization, are found in the novels of Richardson and in a few other fictions. Anno tation of the main narrative by a fictitious character is not an uncommon device, and is often an effective means of increasing the illusion of reality. It is used in Old Mortality, Esmond, The Virginians, Stevenson's Master of Ballantrae. Historical document, occasionally found in earlier fiction, may be most conveniently studied in Scott and his school. The novel with a key was prominent in the seventeenth century (heroic romance; satire; political fiction, as in Barclay's Argenis); and in the eighteenth century, with its fondness for the "secret history" and intrigues of the aristocracy (for example, Mrs. Haywood's Memoirs of ... Utopia).

12. Prose and Verse. In realistic novels verse enters mainly as a subordinate element, either to aid in characterization, or to give color to a particular time or place setting, especially in historical fiction. Many lyrics are found in Scott's romances. Examples of more recent realistic use are found in Balzac's Letters of Two Brides, Sudermann's Frau Sorge, Valera's Comendador Mendoza. The logical connection of the verse with the action and the degree of fusion with the fictive illusion as a whole vary considerably. In the fictions of the romantic movement, at the beginning of the last century, the liberal use of verse is characteristic of the lyrical tendency of the period. The novelist himself was frequently a poet, and instinctively selected a character with poetic gifts for hero or heroine; or his desire to arouse poetic emotion in the reader led to the introduction of verse.

Mrs. Radcliffe's titles sometimes include the phrase "interspersed with some pieces of poetry." Gaston de Blondeville contains a poem of about five hundred lines; the Mysteries of Udolpho and Romance of the Forest each has some fifteen poems. Other fictions with the romantic use of verse are Werther, Ivanhoe, Madame de Staël's Corinne, Andersen's Improvisatore, Bulwer's Kenelm Chillingly.

In the romance of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance we find a more distinctly structural value of verse; though there is no literary form in which the structural relations of prose and verse are definite. The nearest approach to such relation is in works like Dante's Vita Nuova, drama of the Shakespearian type, and the pastoral romance. This last form originated in the classical metrical pastoral, and always retained more or less distinctly a prosimetrical structure; usually with definite predominance of verse, as in Belleau's Journée de la Bergerie, or of prose, as in Sannazaro's Arcadia and Lodge's Rosa