In selecting subjects for his prose romances, Scott made great leaps in both time and locality. Ivanhoe carries the reader back to the struggles in England during the reign of the dashing and attractive Crusader King, Richard Coeur de Lion. Other books of the series deal with Mary, Queen of Scots, the Earl of Leicester and the intrigues of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, or the strange fortunes of such English monarchs as James I and Charles II. Turning to France in Quentin Durward, Scott chose the series of events you have just read. Others of the total of twenty-five volumes touch Wales, Switzerland, Germany, Palestine, Constantinople. In time they stretch from 1098 until 1812.

From the foregoing you can deduce some of the inevitable characteristics of Scott's productions. Quite naturally, the stories deal more largely with adventures than with mental or moral states. The author sees men in action rather than in thought or deep mental struggle. Breezy, moving, even boisterous action stamps most of his chapters. The points emphasized are the more simple, elemental virtues and vices. Few of his characters are very complex; they stand out clearly as types of certain kinds of personality.

Composing with such rapidity that he could finish two-thirds of one book in three weeks, all of another in three months, dictate all of another, and most of Ivanhoe from a sick-bed, he could not revise, rework, and rearrange as he might have done had he worked more slowly. Rapidity of composition prevents care in another respect-style. If you are reading merely for the plot-the right reason for reading Scott first-you are not likely to think much of the manner in which ideas are expressed. When, however, you pass from first pleasure to critical appre

The style

ciation, you should exercise your faculties of comparison upon the art of the writer. It is not easy to define real literature satisfactorily. Let us put down a sentence which will serve as an introductory definition. Literature is material worth telling clothed in language worth reading. A person might develop a beautiful style, one quite worth reading, yet have nothing worth telling. On the other hand, a writer might conceive ideas of great worth, yet record them in so inferior a style as to weaken their value. in which anything is written is always the most difficult element for a reader or student of literature to grasp, in spite of the fact that every reader is conscious of it. How often has some friend tried to tell you of an interesting story he has read, and finally, seeing that you do not share his enthusiasm, lamely excused his halting recital of its merits by explaining, "Well, you see, it's not so much the story as the way it's written." That admission is his tribute to the power of the author's style. If now, he should go back to the story, read it more attentively than before, concentrating his thoughts upon "the way it's written," he will have started in his taste a keenness for style.

The selections from the next author will furnish you with material for such an exercise of your keenness. Scott and Hawthorne are in marked contrast. Scott was of the open air, the wide fields over which he dashed on his spirited horses surrounded by his bounding dogs. Hawthorne was of the college, the study, the office, of quiet walks in small towns. Scott enjoyed the companionship of men of affairs; Hawthorne preferred quiet. rambles alone, or long periods of thoughtful reading.

Hawthorne was of a New England family.

tracing its line directly from the early settlers, later sea captains, and one judge in witchcraft trials. From his Puritan ancestry he inherited a habit of selfanalysis and a consciousness of the influence of sin on human destiny. When he began to write he developed ideas he had thought about, rather than tales or sketches he had made up. Germs of these meditations he jotted down in notebooks (such useful records are not confined to school studies, you see), which served as reminders of possible themes later. Some of these entries will show the beginnings of his compositions. "A person conscious that he was soon to die, the humor in which he would pay his last visit to familiar persons and things.""All the dead that have ever been drowned in a certain lake to arise."-"A hint of a story-some incident which should bring on a general war, the chief actor in the incident to have something corresponding to the mischief he had caused."

From such simple beginnings he developed his finished stories, tales, or longer romances. The unreality of the theme he linked with reality of incident, blending the two so delicately that a reader can never declare with certainty just how much belief Hawthorne expected him to give to the supernatural in his incidents. For instance, in The House of the Seven Gables, a man is cursed by a reputed New England wizard, "God will give him blood to drink." Years later a descendant is found dead with a blood stain on his linen as though spilled from his lips. Such a death might be perfectly natural, although Hawthorne has so told his tale that you are sure the wizard's curse has been fulfilled once more. Of such materials and by such methods is the romance of Hawthorne compounded.

Dwelling for so long a time upon his themes, developing them slowly, and with rather few characters, Hawthorne produced a style, the most finished, the most consistent of any American author. For a long time before he published anything he wrote a great deal, serving the apprenticeship which made his later productions so unerringly good. He is a master of mood, of atmosphere, of phrases, of

words. His own recognition of this use of elements to produce a beautiful effect is in itself an example of the quality he is describing. At one time he wrote to his publisher, "I shan't have the new story ready by November, for I am never good for anything in the literary way till after the first autumnal frost, which has somewhat such an effect on my imagination that it does on the foliage here about me— multiplying and brightening its hues."

The first important difference, then, between Scott and Hawthorne is the difference in style. The exuberance and vitality of many generations of men of action is everywhere present in the writing done by Scott; the quiet and brooding melancholy of the Puritan is in the writing done by Hawthorne. This fact leads quite naturally to another characteristic that you will be able to illustrate from the selections given in this book. It is that the scene of action in the stories of Scott is in the external world; the action in Hawthorne's stories takes place in the soul. Scott is interested in deeds for themselves and for the results they bring in this present world; Hawthorne sees in the deed merely an external manifestation of the spiritual state which produced it, and he is interested in the results it brings in the world of the spirit.

What this means you will see very clearly if you read in the manner suggested in the general Introduction to this book the two stories by Hawthorne here presented. In "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" the chief interest is not in a story about the marvelous transformation from age to youth, but in something quite different. You have probably read the legend about the Fountain of Youth. You know that Ponce de Leon thought that such a fountain actually existed in Florida. A writer like Scott might make this legend the basis of a lively and exciting story about the Spanish explorer and his men. But Hawthorne falls to musing about the legend. Suppose, he says, such a magic elixir might be found. Would it be a good and happy thing if a group of old people could be suddenly restored to youth? Above all, what would be the effect of such a restoration? And the

key to the whole story, as Hawthorne treats it, is in the fact that the learned doctor himself does not want to drink the potion he has discovered. Why is this? In the answer you find the meaning of the story.

In "Drowne's Wooden Image" the same method is applied, though in a different way. There is little action in the ordinary sense of the term, yet the story sums up, in its central idea, all human experience. Again applying the method given in the Introduction to this book, your task is not just to be able to name the characters, tell what happened, and spell and define the words, but to find out what Hawthorne means by bringing before us a man who achieved supreme artistic triumph in one thing that he did, while for the rest of his life he was merely a carver of wooden heads.

When you have completed this intensive

reading of these two stories, you should review other stories by Hawthorne and Scott which you read in earlier parts of your course. Do these same principles hold, so that you find further illustrations? How does Ivanhoe or The Lady of the Lake resemble Quentin Durward? How do stories like "The Great Stone Face" or "The Ambitious Guest" illustrate the characteristics of art and thought that you find in the stories of Dr. Heidegger or Drowne?

This done, you will not only have gained a clear impression of the difference between these two writers of prose romance but also will have applied, to practical use, the suggestions about learning to read. In addition, you will have secured a knowledge and a method of analysis that will enable you to read with interest and profit other works, some of them more difficult, written by these two men.

One sunshiny morning, in the good old times of the town of Boston, a young carver in wood, well known by the name of Drowne, stood contemplating a large oaken log, which it was his purpose to convert into the figurehead of a vessel. And while he discussed within his own mind what sort of shape or similitude it 10 were well to bestow upon this excel

lent piece of timber, there came into Drowne's workshop a certain Captain Hunnewell, owner and commander of the good brig called the Cynosure, which had just returned from her first voyage to Fayal.

"Ah! that will do, Drowne, that will do!" cried the jolly captain, tapping the log with his rattan. "I 20 bespeak this very piece of oak for

the figurehead of the Cynosure. She has shown herself the sweetest craft that ever floated, and I mean to decorate her prow with the handsomest image that the skill of man can cut out of timber. And, Drowne, you are the fellow to execute it.”

"You give me more credit than I deserve, Captain Hunnewell," said 30 the carver, modestly, yet as one conscious of eminence in his art. "But, for the sake of the good brig, I stand ready to do my best. And which of these designs do you prefer? Here"pointing to a staring, half-length figure, in a white wig and scarlet coat-"here is an excellent model, the likeness of our gracious king. Here is the valiant Admiral Vernon. 40 Or, if you prefer a female figure,

16. Fayal, an island of the Azores. 39. Admiral Vernon, Edward Vernon (1684-1757), an English admiral.

what say you to Britannia with the trident?"

"All very fine, Drowne; all very fine," answered the mariner. "But as nothing like the brig ever swam the ocean, so I am determined she shall have such a figurehead as old Neptune never saw in his life. And what is more, as there is a secret in the matter, you must pledge your credit 50 not to betray it."

"Certainly," said Drowne, marveling, however, what possible mystery there could be in reference to an affair so open, of necessity, to the inspection of all the world as the figurehead of a vessel. "You may depend, Captain, on my being as secret as the nature of the case will permit."

then took 60

Captain Hunnewell Drowne by the button, and communicated his wishes in so low a tone that it would be unmannerly to repeat what was evidently intended for the carver's private ear. We shall, therefore, take the opportunity to give the reader a few desirable particulars about Drowne himself.

He was the first American who is known to have attempted-in a very 70 humble line, it is true-that art in which we can now reckon so many names already distinguished, or rising to distinction.

From his earliest boyhood he had exhibited a knack-for it would be too proud a word to call it genius-a knack, therefore, for the imitation of the human figure in whatever material came most. readily to hand. The snows of a New 80

41. Britannia with the trident. Great Britain was sometimes pictured as a woman holding a three-pronged spear, symbolic of the supremacy of the seas. The idea is taken from mythology, where Neptune is so represented.