oic words
to Drouet d'Erlon: "Are you not going to get yourself killed?" For an
instant a thousand sabres flashed in the air. The deathly silence that
accompanied the ghostly onset was an added poignancy to the short-lived
dream. A moment later I beheld a hunched little figure mounted on a
white horse with housings of purple velvet. The reins lay slack in the
rider's hand; his three-cornered hat was slouched over his brows, and
his chin rested on the breast of his great-coat. Thus he slowly rode
away through the twilight, and nobody cried, _Vive l'Empereur!_

The ground on which a famous battle has been fought casts a spell upon
every man's mind; and the impression made upon two men of poetic genius,
like Victor Hugo and Edmond Rostand, might well be nearly identical.
This sufficiently explains the likeness between the fantastic silhouette
in "Les Miserables" and the battle of the ghosts in "L'Aiglon." A muse
so rich in the improbable as M. Rostand's need not borrow a piece of
supernaturalness from anybody.

PLOT AND CHARACTER

HENRY JAMES, in his paper on Anthony Trollope, says that if Trollope
"had taken sides on the rather superficial opposition between novels
of character and novels of plot, I can imagine him to have said (except
that he never expressed himself in epigram) that he preferred the former
class, inasmuch as character in itself is plot, while plot is by no
means character." So neat an antithesis would surely never have found
itself between Mr. Trollope's lips if Mr. James had not cunningly
lent it to him. Whatever theory of novel-writing Mr. Trollope may have
preached, his almost invariable practice was to have a plot. He always
had a _story_ to tell, and a story involves beginning, middle, and
end--in short, a framework of some description.

There have been delightful books filled wholly with character-drawing;
but they have not been great novels. The great novel deals with human
action as well as with mental portraiture and analysis. That "character
in itself is plot" is true only in a limited sense. A plan, a motive
with a logical conclusion, is as necessary to a novel or a romance as it
is to a drama. A group of skillfully made-up men and women lounging in
the green-room or at the wings is not the play. It is not enough to say
that this is Romeo and that Lady Macbeth. It is not enough to inform
us that certain passions are supposed to be embodied in such and such
persons: these persons shou