To bring our discussion to a vital example, let us consider Thackeray’s “Henry Esmond,” an all but perfect fiction, in which every element of excellent narrative is present. The first element is plot. A story must begin in an interesting set of circumstances and arrive by a series of events to a conclusion that satisfies. The plot of “Esmond” is unusually well made, and it is composed of rich matter. From the first chapter in which Henry is introduced to us as “no servant, though a dependent, no relative, though he bore the name and inherited the blood of the house”--a youth with a mystery--on through the schemes for the restoration of the Stuart King, through Esmond’s unsuccessful rivalry with the other suitors of Beatrice, to the end of the high intrigues of politics and the quiet conclusion of Esmond’s career, the story moves steadily with well-mannered leisure. It takes its own time, but it takes the right time, slow when events are preparing, rapid and flashing when events come to a crisis. The great crisis, when Esmond overtakes the prince at Castlewood, breaks his sword and renounces both allegiance to the Stuarts and his own birthright, is one of the supreme dramatic scenes in literature. There Thackeray matches, even excels, Scott and Dumas. And such is the variety of his power that on other pages he writes brilliant and witty comedy surpassed only by the lighter plays of Shakespeare, on yet other pages he gives compact lucid summary of events, the skill of which an historian might envy, and again he writes pages of comment on human character which equal the best pages of Esmond’s friend, “the famous Mr. Joseph Addison.”