But that
objection is not likely to be pressed very severely, and anyhow Harry
is firmly established in the forefront. He tells his story, he
describes the company and the scenes he has lived through; and all the
time it is by them that he is himself described.
It comes to this, that the picture which Harry Richmond gives of his
career has a function essentially dramatic; it has a part to perform
in the story, a part it must undertake as a whole, over and above its
pictorial charge. It must do something as well as be, it must create
even while it is created. In Esmond and in Copperfield it is
otherwise; there the unrolling scene has little or no part to play, as
a scene, over against another actor; it holds no dialogue, so to
speak, sustains no interchange, or none of principal importance, with
the figure of the narrator. He narrates, he creates the picture; but
for us who look on, reading the book, there is nothing in the picture
to make us perpetually turn from it and face towards the man in the
foreground, watching for the effect it may produce in him. Attention
is all concentrated in the life that he remembers and evokes. He
himself, indeed, though the fact of his presence is very clear to us,
tends to remain in shadow; it is as though he leant from a window,
surveying the world, his figure outlined against the lighted square,
his features not very distinctly discerned by the reader within.
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