OK...
I had just posted the graph for those who seemed to care, because it was available in my file. 'didn't realize that it would draw interest. I'll try to make the thing more palatable; maybe the attached will help some.
SO...This is a graph of relative maximum lift coefficients for various canard and tailled configurations, ranging from tiny "pure" canards to conventional configurations with tiny tails. Typically, when the graph lines are highest above the bottom horizontal line, the lift coefficient values are highest, and for lower heights you have lower lift coefficients, etc. The lift coefficient is a value that indicates how high the total lift is for some chosen wing area, speed, and atmospheric conditions. Lift for any plane is proportional to its lift coefficient. So you can just assume "equivalent" planes (in areas or drag - not sure which here) and see how well they lift for different wing/tail (or canard) proportions by seeing how high their graph lines are. They're just comparative. The horizontal scale across the bottom compares forward and rear wing spans as the front wing rises from zero span and the rear wing reduces to zero span, left to right.
I don't have the original full paper at hand, but I wrote down on this graph page that for these data, the static margins were optimized. That means in simplest terms that the c.g. has been placed for best stability vs. performance - the original topic of this thread. Total area of forward and aft wings may have been maintained maintained as equal, but they may have gone with constant induced drag. I don't know.
Anyway, the scale across the bottom records the ratio of forward (canard) wing span to rear (main) wing span as it progresses from 0.0 to 1.0 at the graph's center, where they are the same span (ratio = 1.0). Past that, as the front wing becomes the main wing and the rear one reduces to a tail towards the right, it gives the ratio of of rear (tail) span to Front (main) wing span, until the tail span becomes zero. They switch nomenclature and ratios to avoid dividing by zero and having to show ratios approaching infinity. "b" is almost universally used for "span" and shows up here as span. The three graph lines correspond to three chosen ratios of forward and aft "wing" aspect ratios. On the left, from top to bottom, the ratios of canard to main wing aspect ratios are .5, 1, and 2 respectively. The lines are continuous across the center, but the ratios then become inverted so that the smaller is always compared to the larger span - tail to "wing" on the right. So on the right, the aft wing (tail) aspect ratio is now in the numerator. That's confusing in words, I know, but you can see that each graph plot (line) represents the same continuing ratio of fore/aft aspect ratio. It's just that the canard has morphed into a main wing, and the original main wing has morphed into a tail.
SO... the graph just shows that as the front surface increases in span relative to the rear, total aircraft's maximum lift increases until it is no longer a canard, but a main wing and the aft wing has been reduced to a tail. Best lift comes torward the right where the plane has the more conventional aft tail, rather than canard configuration. I've tried to illustrate that in the picture below, but it was done with Microsoft Word drawing tools which do not allow great accuracy in sizing or positioning of anything. I hope this helps with understanding the original graph.
SK