Again, I think there is little doubt that the ordinary reader is fatigued by too much talking, and that a long novel, mainly relying on dialogue and reducing narrative to a merely subordinate position, is in great danger of becoming tedious. This it may do in one of two ways――or, if it is very unfortunate, in both――at different places. The writer may try to tell too much by dialogue, with the result that his characters speak at great length, and he topples over the line which divides dialogue from speech-making. Or, on the other hand, alive to the perils of speech-making, he may try to cut it all up into question and answer, and to enliven it by constant epigrams or some other form of wit. This latter expedient may not bore the reader so much as the speech-making, but it will probably fatigue him more. Dialogue does, in fact, make a greater claim on the reader than narrative. I think this is true even when it is good dialogue. Something may be done to help him by skilful comment or description――clever stage-directions in effect――but none the less he is deprived, or curtailed, of much of the assistance on his way which the narrative form can give him. I think that probably the best advice to offer to a novice would be: As few long conversations as possible――but as many short ones. Let the dialogue break up the narrative, and the narrative cut short any tendency to prolixity in the dialogue. Just now I referred to the possibility of assisting dialogue by comment or description, much as when you read a play you are assisted to follow and appreciate the lines written to be spoken on the stage by the directions inserted to guide the actor. This reference, I dare say, raised in your minds the thought that the dialogue I have been speaking of――dialogue as it is used in novels――is very rarely pure dialogue at all. The objection is well founded, and its application is wide, though the degree of its application varies immensely. You may find pure dialogue, without stage-directions, here and there, even in novels. George Borrow, for instance, is fond of it, and is a master of a peculiar quality of it. But far the more general form is dialogue assisted by comment and description――a hybrid kind of composition, in which the author plays a double part, speaking through the characters’ mouths at one moment, describing their actions, gestures, even their unspoken thoughts, at the next. This is the normal form of novel dialogue. The variations occur in the relative amount of this description or comment――of this stage-direction, as I have called it. And I call it that because this comment or description takes the place of what they call ‘business’ on the stage. The actor’s task is divided between his words and his ‘business’, and the playwright is entitled to rely on the ‘business’ to help out the words, just as the novelist describes or comments on the actions and gestures of his speakers, in order to assist and elucidate the meaning of the actual