He was unhappy in the choice of his subject of a civil war for a poem, which obliged him to descend to minute descriptions, and nothing merely narrative can properly be touched in poetry, which demands flights of the imagination and bold images.

The form under which they appear, or the external character that marks them, is of three sorts: either purely dramatic, like the dialogue of tragedy or comedy; or purely narrative, where a former conversation is supposed to be committed to writing, and communicated to some absent friend; or of the mixed kind, like a narration in dramatic poems, where is recited, to some person present, the story of things past.

But it is comparatively seldom that this foible of Sterne obtrudes itself upon the strictly narrative and dramatic parts of his work; and, next to the abiding charm and interest of his principal figure, it is by the admirable life and colour of his scenes that he exercises his strongest powers of fascination over a reader.

The narrative in Jeremiah states definitely that the large proportion of those who had rallied about Gedaliah after his death found a temporary asylum on the eastern borders of Egypt.

Still, there is sufficient data, to be had for the digging, upon which to transcribe, inferentially at least, an interesting narrative.

Accordingly Wace, perhaps partly because of his own milieu, partly because of his royal patroness, wove into Geoffrey's narrative more pronouncedly chivalric material.