principle of emphasis is recognized in all the
arts; for it is only by an application of this principle that the
artist can gather and group in the background the subsidiary elements
of his work, while he flings into vivid relief those elements that
embody the essence of the thing he has to say. The halo with which the
Byzantine mosaicists surrounded the faces of their saints, the glory
of golden light that gleams about the figure of Christ in heaven in
Tintoretto's decorations, the blank bright walls of the Doge's palace
undermined by darkling and shadowy arcades, the refrain of a Provencal
song, the sharp shadow under the visor of Verrocchio's equestrian
statue, the thought-provoking chiaroscuro of Rembrandt's figure
paintings--these expedients are all designed to attract attention to
the essential elements of a whole of many parts. By technical devices
such as these, emphasis must be given to the central truth of a work
of art in order that the observer may not look instead at the mere
accidents of its investiture. Where many elements are gathered
together for the purpose of representing an idea, some of them must be
more important than the others because they are to a greater extent
imbued with it inherently; and the artist will fail of his purpose
unless he indicates clearly which elements are essential and which are
merely subsidiary.

=Many Technical Devices.=--Scarcely any other work of art, excepting
a Gothic cathedral or a theatrical performance, is made of elements
more multifarious than those of a fictitious narrative. The details of
a novel are so many and so various that the author needs at all times
a nice understanding and a careful application of the principle of
emphasis. It is therefore advisable that the present chapter should be
devoted to the enumeration and illustration of the different technical
devices which are employed by artists in narrative to cast the needed
emphasis on the essential features of their stories.

=1. Emphasis by Terminal Position.=--First of all, it is obviously
easy to emphasize by position. In any narrative, or section of a
narrative, that is designed to be read in a single sitting, the last
moments are of necessity emphatic because they are the last. When the
reader lays the narrative aside, he remembers most vividly the last
thing that has been presented to his attention; and if he thinks back
to the earlier portions of the story, he must do so by thinking
through the