A. P.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION
CHARLES DICKENS, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an
examination I once made of the mechanism of "Barnaby Rudge," says- "By
the way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his 'Caleb Williams'
backwards? He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties,
forming the second volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for
some mode of accounting for what had been done."
I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure on the part of
Godwin- and indeed what he himself acknowledges, is not altogether
in accordance with Mr. Dickens' idea- but the author of "Caleb
Williams" was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage
derivable from at least a somewhat similar process. Nothing is more
clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to
its denouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only
with the denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its
indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the
incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the
development of the intention.
There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing
a story. Either history affords a thesis- or one is suggested by an
incident of the day- or, at best, the author sets himself to work in
the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his
narrative-designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue,
or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from
page to page, render themselves apparent.
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