difficult to compose than duologue, is a sign of true dramatic imagination, and a distinguishing mark of great novelistic technic. The complexity of its structure is due chiefly to the great possible variety in sequence and length of speeches, and of connectives and comment. In the simplest form of purely dramatic conversation - three speakers with two speeches each—there are twenty-four possible sequences.

In the chief conversational chapter of Silas Marner, Chapter VI, A speaks 10 times, B 10, C 11, D 12, E 4, F 4—a total of 51 speeches by the characters. The author, omitting purely mechanical connectives, speaks 38 times.

Viewing the entire dramatic speech of a composition as a conversational form, interesting comparison may be made between the epic, drama, and novel.

Number of single speeches

19. Concerted Speech. By concerted speech is meant the utterance of the same words by several speakers at once. In the novel, simultaneous utterance of different words must of course be represented in sequence. In set form, this detail is far more characteristic of the drama than the novel, and is possibly a relic of the classical chorus.

It occurs scores of times in Shakespeare, notably in Coriolanus, and its unnatural use is one of the minor blemishes of Browning's dramatic technic. It is, however, occasionally found in early fiction, probably in direct imitation of the drama. In less formal manner it is found in most novels; for example, in Ivanhoe, Chapters XI, XIII, XXXIII, XLIV, and in the Last of the Mohicans, Chapter XXIX.

20. Documentary Form in General. - Perhaps the most notable general effect of document is to increase verisimilitude. The novel itself being an actual document, possibly the imagination more readily accepts fictitious document than fictitious dialogue. Documentary form is found in the earliest novels, the Greek romances, - but has increased use, with special force and naturalness, since the invention of printing. As a fragment it may appear in very various forms-letter, newspaper extract, inscription, legal document, map, musical score, etc., etc. The most important examples of sustained documentary form are the epistolary novel, the diary novel, and the imaginary manuscript.

Each of these types has some conventional details of structure, as for example the illegible or missing portions of the imaginary manuscript; the forged or missent letter, etc. In all of them the introduction of formal dialogue is a convention which the reader accepts on faith; and in general, the documentary illusion is rarely continuous.

In English fiction, the imaginary manuscript has special place in the latter part of the eighteenth century. See Walpole's Castle of Otranto, Beckford's Vathek, Clara Reeve's Old English Baron, Mrs. Radcliffe's Sicilian Romance and The Italian, etc. Scott is rather fond of it.

21. Epistolary Form.-The significant origin of the "novel of letters" is usually traced to Samuel Richardson, though there was abundant literary use of epistolary form, in fiction and out of it, before Pamela.1 Richardson himself was quite conscious of the peculiarities of his method (see his comparison of epistolary and narrative method in the preface to Clarissa, his explanations of the letterwriting passion of Pamela, etc.), and considerable critical discussion of the epistolary form followed his novels

1 See Jusserand, Roman Anglais, p. 49; and Cross, p. 23.

at once. Analysis of epistolary structure may follow the general method given for dialogic structure. The principal structural points in outline are the number, length, and sequence of letters. The technical difficulties of the form are numerous. Neither Pamela nor Clarissa is absolutely epistolary in text, and Richardson gives lists of dramatis persona, with some characterization, arguments, etc., outside the text proper. An interesting example of the breakdown of epistolary form is found in Scott's Redgauntlet.

The chief theoretical forms, often combined in the actual novel, may be formulated as follows:

I. Letters from A to B.

(Compare the monologue.)

2. Correspondence between A and B. (Compare the duologue.) Examples are Dostoyevsky's Poor Folk, and Balzac's Letters of Two Brides.

3. Letters from A to B, C, etc.

(Epistolary monologue in a sense,

but clearly quite different from the oral monologue.)

4. Letters from B, C, etc., to A.

5. Correspondence between A and B, A and C, etc.

6. Real " group-correspondence," in which each member of the group exchanges letters with each of the others.

The general epistolary structure may be partially represented by

a graphic design. In Miss Burney's Evelina the scheme is as follows, A standing for Evelina, B for

common in the English fiction of the latter half of the eighteenth century, owing mainly to the influence of Richardson.

22. Syntax. There is a more or less specialized syntax for descriptive, expository, narrative, argumentative, and lyrical expression. The novel is chiefly characterized by a complex combination of these variations, and specially by contrast between the dramatic and non-dramatic passages, and differentiated syntax for individual characters and character groups. The non-dramatic syntax is partly determined by the type of fiction and the rhetorical nature of the passage, partly by the general influence of the period, the nationality and the individuality of the author. A few details are given here merely as examples of syntactical analysis.

Variations of mood and tense are often significant. Direct interrogative and imperative to the reader may serve to enlist his sympathy, otherwise determine his point of view, or to increase the illusion of reality. The historical present is common in spirited narration, especially in romance. A combination of perfect and present tenses is effective in this sentence from George Eliot's Janet's Repentance: "But Mr. Tryan has entered the room, and the strange light . . . makes," etc. The rare interrogative future easily becomes sensational. This sentence is found in Chapter XII of George Eliot's Mr. Gilfil's Love-story (emphasized by being made a paragraph): "Will she crush it under her feet . . . till every trace of those false, cruel features is gone?" There are several examples of imperative to a character in Dombey and Son.

Somewhat characteristic of the novel are epithetical phrases or typical names for characters, groups, and places: The Last of the Roman Tribunes, Doña Perfecta, The Weaver of Raveloe, Poor Silas, Pretty Nancy, The Mill on the Floss, Old Mortality, The Man of Feeling, The Female Quixote, The English Rogue. Here may be included the various names for the same character in disguise as in Amadis of Gaul, Sidney's Arcadia, Lodge's Rosalind.

The syntactical qualities of irony, as in Jane Austen; of satire, as in Rabelais; of serious imitation, as in Gogol's Taras Bulba; of burlesque imitation, as in the pseudo-epic

style of The Battle of the Books, may all be analyzed into characteristic details.

Figurative language depends to a considerable extent upon syntax. Expanded figures, especially the more imaginative figures of personification, apostrophe, and the continuous figurative language of allegory and symbolism, are more characteristic of both short story and romance than of the realistic novel. The romance of chivalry and the heroic romance are characterized by extended figures. When occurring in picaresque fiction and its allies, the figurative language is usually burlesque in spirit. In Silas Marner, as a representative realistic story, the figures, whether those in the dramatic or non-dramatic passages, rarely extend beyond a single sentence, and are most commonly compressed into a single clause or phrase. They are generally simple similes or metaphors.

Other details are the dialogic connectives, noticed in Section 14; catalogues and lists of articles like the romances in Don Quixote, the games in Gargantua (Rabelais); the argumentative or expository 1, 2, 3 order in Bunyan and Defoe. A repeated word or phrase is sometimes found to give somewhat the effect of a leit-motif, as in the repetitions of "black remnant," "bright living thing," "flame," and "vision" in Chapter XII of Silas Marner.

The dramatic syntax varies with the dialogic, epistolary and other documentary form. In the historical novel, the syntax of special periods is important; in the novel of manners, that of social groups; in the novel of character, the syntax of the individual and his changing mental states. The control of syntactical details in all these cases is more difficult, and in general more significant, than the mere selection of vocabulary.

Scott's theory of the shaping of language in historical fiction is given in the dedicatory epistle of Ivanhoe and