I noticed that the hat was of soft felt, and one might easily guess that it had been bought at a bargain sale. It lent a comfortable sense of satisfaction to its owner, and suggested to him the idea of going to church.
In the former, the writer’s point of view is that of one looking out of a window at a crowd, and it is proper that he should say “turns, departs;” but after the crowd has departed he cannot see whether it disintegrates or not. If he should say, “Turns, disintegrates, departs,” one could find no fault. In the second example, the point of view is at first that of an observer who sees the hat on the head of a stranger; then, without warning, it is shifted to the mind of any observer,—“one,”—and then, in a twinkling, to the thought of the wearer himself, which has been by the hat turned to the idea of going to church.
We shall have to do later with the point of view in its application to the various sorts of composition. Here it is enough to add the warning to inexperienced writers: Do not write to discover what you think, or how you feel about a subject. These questions are to be settled before writing is begun. In half the themes which I read, it is apparent that the writer has been going ahead in a sort of forlorn hope of ultimately learning his own opinions. To be in doubt when one begins, either of where one is bound or of how the attempt to get there is to be made, is as fatal in writing as in horse-racing. There is a good deal of what might be called the June-bug style of composition. Just as a beetle bangs his clumsy thick head against a window or a netting in hope that he may chance to strike a place where he can get through to the lamp within, so the June-bug writer goes banging absurdly down his page, bumping against any obstacle, trusting to fate and the chapter of accidents to show somewhere and somehow a way through. The man who has learned to write does not begin until he has an idea what his way through is to be. This being clear in his mind, he goes consistently toward it, and his consistency is what is called keeping the point of view.
The point of view being selected, it is often necessary to give the reader a clue to it. Sometimes it is needful to use no inconsiderable amount of skill to bring him to accept it. The well-trained reader always endeavors to put himself into complete sympathy with an author. The author is bound to make this as easy as possible, and even, if may be, to render it inevitable, to the end that the reader shall be forced to share the outlook of the writer, whether with conscious willingness or not. In obvious matters, like descriptions, the simple device of naming the point of view is enough. When Keats begins a poem,—
I stood tiptoe upon a little hill,—
he gives the point of view. So does Spenser when he opens the “Faerie Queene:”—
A gentle knight was pricking on the plain.
Equally is Lowell giving the point of view in the opening of the essay on Chaucer, already quoted: “Will it do to say anything more about Chaucer?” Here he at once puts the reader into the attitude of examining with fresh attention a subject which has been greatly discussed; by implication he intimates that there is still enough wheat in the often-threshed straw to make it worth while once more to turn it over. With equal skill and felicity he puts the reader into the mood in which he writes of Carlyle by the first sentence of another essay:—
A feeling of comical sadness is likely to come over the mind of any middle-aged man who sets himself to recollecting the names of the authors that have been famous, and the number of contemporary immortalities whose end he has seen since coming to manhood.
The reader perceives at once that the subject which is to be treated is to be regarded as of less assured permanence of importance than has been sometimes held. Evidently Lowell would not allude to the many transient so-called immortalities if he had not at least a suspicion that the contemporary reputation of Carlyle is likely to be lessened by time. The key-note is struck, and what follows is governed by it.