that it is often difficult to account for the hero's
presence in every scene, that he cannot be an eye-witness to events
happening at the same time in different places, and that it is hard to
account for his possession of knowledge regarding those details of
the plot which have no immediate bearing on himself. It seems always
somewhat lame to state, as heroes telling their own stories are
frequently obliged to do, "These things I did not know at the time,
and found out only afterwards; but I insert them here, because it is
at this point in the plot that they belong."

Many of these disadvantages may be overcome by telling the tale
from the point of view, not of the leading actor, but of some minor
personage in the story. In this case again, analysis of character is
precluded; but the narrator may delineate the leading actor directly,
through descriptive and expository comment. In stories where the hero
is an extraordinary person, and could not without immodesty descant
upon his own unusual capabilities, it is of obvious advantage to
represent him from the point of view of an admiring friend. Thus when
Poe invented the detective story, he wisely decided to exhibit the
extraordinary analytic power of Dupin through a narrative told not by
the detective himself but by a man who knew him well; and Dr. A. Conan
Doyle, following in his footsteps, has invented Dr. Watson to tell the
tales of Sherlock Holmes.

The actual instance of Boswell and Johnson substantiates the
possibility of a minor actor's knowing intimately all phases of
a hero's life and character. And since the point of view of the
secondary personage is just as internal to the events themselves as
that of the leading actor, the story may be told with an immediacy, a
vividness, and a plausibility approximating closely the effect derived
from a narrative told by the hero. And there is now less difficulty
in accounting for the narrator's knowledge of all the details of the
plot. He can witness minor necessary scenes at which the hero is not
present; he can know things (and tell them to the reader) which at the
time the hero did not know; and if his presence be withheld from an
important incident, the hero can narrate it to him afterward.

Nevertheless, it is often very difficult to maintain throughout a long
story the point of view of a minor actor in the plot. Thackeray breaks
down completely in his attempt to tell "The Newcomes" from the point
of view of Arthur