The morning journal-courier., 1908-06-18

THE TECHNIQUE or THE NOVEL By
 Prof. Charles F, Horne of the College
 of the City of New YorK, Published
 by Harper X Brothers New York
 sl50.
 A b6ok of real and permanent val ue. presenting an entertaining and profitable discussion of subject of interest to the general reader as well as the amateur and tho professional novelist, Dr. Horne is well equipped for the work, being instructor In English in tho College of tho City of New York and himself writer of short stories, including the highway man tales of The Moonman," which received special prize in short- story contest few years ago. He is a writer of verse. and has been identi- fled with the work of editing.
 The book follows the historic meth cd of clear and precise statements, nowhere trenching on debatabe ground, and aims to trace with appro. pgiate examples the evolution of story writing, IL ia expected to supply a much needed text as a guide for col lege work, at the same time affordins entertaining reading,
 Prof. Horne's work Is not intended to furnish the brains with which to produce a brilliant novel, but 1t does lay down. the general principles un- deriving the proper making of one. The book evidences wide research in the novel writing field. It reviews the field from it's crude and earliest beginnings to the present day. The essentials of the modern novel Prof. Horne finds after a comprehensive study of the subject are CD Plot. CD Motive or verisimilitude (3) Charac- ter portrayal. (4) Emotional excite ment. (5) Background. (6) Style. The combination of all these things was scarcely attained before the nine teenth century. The antique romano es are always lacking in one or all of these essentials. Fiction in its earli est and simplest form was plain false hood-"the intentional separation of the expression from the fact" This being the case. this form of fibbing must have been prevalent before the budding of the human intellect, for as the professor remarks:
 "The cat. when she strolls with that lazy, somewhat bored air away from the half dead mouse only to turn and bounce on 1t as 1t crawls brokenly to- ward its hole, Is fictionlst skilled to the finest detail. The fox when he trots back over It's own trail, then leaps aside into the brush. tells such a complete and artistic lie as baffied both dog and man"
 Prof. Horne surmses that: Our ,protoplasmic ancestors did)not lie. The starfish does not; none of the radiata do. Even the articulata are gentle men of their word, and may be relied on to the last grasp" But with the coming of elf-consoiousness vanity was born, and following naturally Imagination was born. and story-tell- CTS multiplied and replenished the earth. The next advances were ob- vious, says Prof. Horne:
 If one man could invent tale, SC could another; and each must make his heroes overmatch the last. The soaring talent. In its poetic exaltatior of mundane fact or its simple Joy oi self laudation, had not then to en- counter carping critics. There were no all-wise cyclopedias. no known laws of nature even to guide and curb 1t
 The discussion of the early begin nings of story telling among the Egyp' tians and the Greeks is very interest ing. The oldest story in the world known as the "Westcar Papyrus," oi Tales of the Maglclans," dates back about 4,O0O years before the Christian era, quite while previous also. 10 tho story of Ruth in our Bible or Pa mela' or "Robinson Crusoe." The "Westcar Papyrus" presents stories oi yarns" told by sons of King Cheopi to their father in which, for instance there is an unfaithful wife who fall in love with page and who comei to grief through being betrayed by { servant while the page is swallowed by a crocodile which Is convenient. evolved for the occasion out of wa! and swels to large proportion in ordel to fully absorb and thereby punish thu unlucky and misguided young lover.
 The clements of the true novel al laid down by Stevenson and others arr referred to by the author and thi' from stevenson seems to come near t filling the bill.
 "Passion, wisdom creative force. tn power of mystery or color, are allotted In the hour of birth, and can nelthe be learned nor simulated. But th' just and dextrous use of the qualities we have, the proportion of one par to another and to the whole, the eli sion of the useless, the accentuation 0 the important, and the preservation O a uniform character from end to end these, which taken together constitut technical perfection, are to some degre' within the reach of industry and intel ectual courage. What to put in an what to leave out: whether some par ticular fact be organically necessary 0 purely ornamental; whether, If it b, purely ornamental, 1t may not weaker or obscure the general design; anc finally. whether, if we decide to use it we should do so grossly and notably, 0 in some conventional disguise as ques tons of plastic style continually rearis ing"
 In other words. novellsts, like poets are born not made to order. Prof Horne gives the history of tho moderI novel and discourses on the style an' methods of Richardson Fielding, Bal zac, Smolett, Charlotte Bronto, Jan Austin, Dickens. Trollone. Thackera, and many other noveliSts all in an at tractive fashion
 In closing Prof Horne remarks: '' would close as began by insietinl that in these two principles, in trutl and unity, truth to life underlying su per1oial lack of fact and unity of pur pose underlying superficial variety q
 l... Il 4 L.