lcomed with rejoicing by the poets of the romantic
revival. To tell men, not about knights or kings or types of heroes, but
about themselves in the guise of plain men and women, about their own
thoughts and motives and struggles, and the results of actions upon their
own characters,--this was the purpose of our first novelists. The eagerness
with which their chapters were read in England, and the rapidity with which
their work was copied abroad, show how powerfully the new discovery
appealed to readers everywhere.

Before we consider the work of these writers who first developed the modern
novel, we must glance at the work of a pioneer, Daniel Defoe, whom we place
among the early novelists for the simple reason that we do not know how
else to classify him.

DANIEL DEFOE (1661(?)-1731)

To Defoe is often given the credit for the discovery of the modern novel;
but whether or not he deserves that honor is an open question. Even a
casual reading of _Robinson Crusoe_ (1719), which generally heads the list
of modern fiction, shows that this exciting tale is largely an adventure
story, rather than the study of human character which Defoe probably
intended it to be. Young people still read it as they might a dime novel,
skipping its moralizing passages and hurrying on to more adventures; but
they seldom appreciate the excellent mature reasons which banish the dime
novel to a secret place in the haymow, while _Crusoe_ hangs proudly on the
Christmas tree or holds an honored place on the family bookshelf. Defoe's
_Apparition of Mrs. Veal, Memoirs of a Cavalier_, and _Journal of the
Plague Year_ are such mixtures of fact, fiction, and credulity that they
defy classification; while other so-called "novels," like _Captain
Singleton, Moll Flanders_, and _Roxana_, are but, little better than
picaresque stories, with a deal of unnatural moralizing and repentance
added for puritanical effect. In _Crusoe_, Defoe brought the realistic
adventure story to a very high stage of its development; but his works
hardly deserve, to be classed as true novels, which must subordinate
incident to the faithful portrayal of human life and character.

LIFE. Defoe was the son of a London butcher named Foe, and kept his family
name until he was forty years of age, when he added the aristocratic prefix
with which we have grown familiar. The events of his busy seventy years of
life, in which he passed through all extremes, from poverty to wealth, from
pr