the line where romance ends; but this
element of excessive imagination and of impossible heroes and incidents is
its distinguishing mark in every literature.

Where the novel begins it is likewise impossible to say; but again we have
a suggestion in the experience of every reader. There comes a time,
naturally and inevitably, in the life of every youth when the romance no
longer enthralls him. He lives in a world of facts; gets acquainted with
men and women, some good, some bad, but all human; and he demands that
literature shall express life as he knows it by experience. This is the
stage of the awakened intellect, and in our stories the intellect as well
as the imagination must now be satisfied. At the beginning of this stage we
delight in _Robinson Crusoe;_ we read eagerly a multitude of adventure
narratives and a few so-called historical novels; but in each case we must
be lured by a story, must find heroes and "moving accidents by flood and
field" to appeal to our imagination; and though the hero and the adventure
may be exaggerated, they must both be natural and within the bounds of
probability. Gradually the element of adventure or surprising incident
grows less and less important, as we learn that true life is not
adventurous, but a plain, heroic matter of work and duty, and the daily
choice between good and evil. Life is the most real thing in the world
now,--not the life of kings, or heroes, or superhuman creatures, but the
individual life with its struggles and temptations and triumphs or
failures, like our own; and any work that faithfully represents life
becomes interesting. So we drop the adventure story and turn to the novel.
For the novel is a work of fiction in which the imagination and the
intellect combine to express life in the form of a story and the
imagination is always directed and controlled by the intellect. It is
interested chiefly, not in romance or adventure, but in men and women as
they are; it aims to show the motives and influences which govern human
life, and the effects of personal choice upon character and destiny. Such
is the true novel,[213] and as such it opens a wider and more interesting
field than any other type of literature.

PRECURSORS OF THE NOVEL. Before the novel could reach its modern stage, of
a more or less sincere attempt to express human life and character, it had
to pass through several centuries of almost imperceptible development.
Among the early precursors of the