Little invention of situation or incident would have been needed, for neither could be imagined more intensely interesting; nor could the most finished artist have constructed a plot more coherent in all its details, or more strictly in accordance with the rules of composition,even to the preservation of the Aristotelian unities of time and place.

Above all, the style should be clear and perspicuous, which can only arise, as I before observed, from a harmony in the composition: one thing perfected, the next which succeeds should be coherent with it; knit together, as it were, by one common chain, which must never be broken: they must not be so many separate and distinct narratives, but each so closely united to what follows, as to appear one continued series.

[Illustration] Just as we may give either a paragraph or a whole theme coherence by following a given time-order, so may we make a paragraph or a whole theme coherent by arranging the parts in an order determined by their position in space.

Yet, I did not go straight away to develop; but sat with the rest of the bar, where we talked for some hours, trying to be coherent about the whole horrible business.

" "Did she go away?" asked Judith, trying to make something coherent out of the story.

"Oh, my God!" Beatrice, more coherent than any of them, scoffed at him.