The Relation Between Narration and Description.

If we study the English novel historically we shall find that the early novelists massed their description, giving us sometimes two or three pages of it at once. These extended descriptions interrupt the story, which is our main interest, and become very tiresome. Later writers, realizing how prone we are to skip the descriptive passages when massed in this way, have broken up this element into shorter paragraphs, or even into sentences, and have scat¬tered it throughout the book, so that it no longer retards the action. The novel is becoming more like the play in this respect. We should be very impa¬tient of an actor who recited two or three pages of pure description while we were anxious to learn what was to happen to the hero, and we are not less intolerant of the writer when he delays the narra¬tive too long in order to give us complete pictures of the persons and places whose story he is telling.

Description, whether in the short story, the novel, or the play, should enrich but not impedethe action. A narrative should flow on like a river, but, like the river also, it should be embellished. The surface of the river is made beautiful and various by its waves, by the sunlight which plays Upon it, by the graceful steamers and smaller boats which glide so smoothly over its surface. Its banks, too, are inter¬esting to us because of the trees which overhang the water, and the flowers which grow upon its green borders but do not interrupt its flow. In like man¬ner the various descriptive-motives we shall study in this chapter are used to vivify and beautify a narrative.