ly obliged to do, "These things I did not know at the time,
and found out only afterward; but I insert them here, because it is at
this point in the plot that they belong."

=2. The Point of View of Some Subsidiary Actor.=--Many of these
disadvantages may be overcome by telling the tale from the point of
view, not of the leading actor, but of some minor personage in the
story. In this case again, analysis of character is precluded; but the
narrator may delineate the leading actor directly, through descriptive
and expository comment. In stories where the hero is an extraordinary
person, and could not without immodesty descant upon his own unusual
capabilities, it is of obvious advantage to represent him from the
point of view of an admiring friend. Thus when Poe invented the
detective story, he wisely decided to exhibit the extraordinary
analytic power of Dupin through a narrative told not by the detective
himself but by a man who knew him well; and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
following in his footsteps, has invented Dr. Watson to tell the tales
of Sherlock Holmes.

The actual instance of Boswell and Johnson substantiates the
possibility of a minor actor's knowing intimately all phases of a
hero's life and character. And since the point of view of the
secondary personage is just as internal to the events themselves as
that of the leading actor, the story may be told with an immediacy, a
vividness, and a plausibility approximating closely the effect derived
from a narrative told by the hero. And there is now less difficulty in
accounting for the narrator's knowledge of all the details of the
plot. He can witness minor necessary scenes at which the hero is not
present; he can know things (and tell them to the reader) which at the
time the hero did not know; and if his presence be withheld from an
important incident, the hero can narrate it to him afterward.

Nevertheless, it is often very difficult to maintain throughout a long
story the point of view of a minor actor in the plot. Thackeray breaks
down completely in his attempt to tell "The Newcomes" from the point
of view of Arthur Pendennis, the hero of a former novel. Stevenson
assigns to Mackellar the task of narrating "The Master of Ballantrae":
but when the Master disappears and Mackellar remains at home with Mr.
Henry, it is necessary for the author to invent a second personage,
the Chevalier de Burke, to tell the story of the Master's wanderings.

=3. The Points of