seventeenth century, the want of original composition of the kind. The
unconscionable amount of talk and of writing "about it and about it"
which _Euphues_ and the minor Euphuist romances display is at least as
prominent in the _Arcadia_: and this talk rarely takes a form congenial
to the modern novel reader's demands. Moreover, though there really is a
plot, and a sufficient amount of incident, this reader undoubtedly, and
to no small extent justly, demands that both incident and plot shall be
more disengaged from their framework--that they should be brought into
higher relief, should stand out more than is the case. Yet further, the
pure character-interest is small--is almost nonexistent: and the
rococo-mosaic of manners and sentiment which was to prove the curse of
the heroic romance generally prevents much interest being felt in that
direction.[1] It would also be impossible to devise a style less suited
to prose narrative, except of a very peculiar kind and on a small scale,
than that either of _Euphues_ or of the _Arcadia_, which, though an
uncritical tradition credits it with driving out Lyly's, is practically
only a whelp of the same litter. Embarrassed, heavy, rhetorical, it has
its place in the general evolution of English prose, and a proper and
valuable place too. But it is bad even for pure romance purposes: and
nearly hopeless for the panoramic and kaleidoscopic variety which should
characterise the novel. To the actual successors of the _Arcadia_ in
English we shall come presently.

[1] As a work of general literature, the attraction of the
_Arcadia_ is of course much enhanced by, if it does not chiefly
depend upon, its abundant, varied, and sometimes charming
verse-insets. But, as a novel, it cannot count these.

_The Unfortunate Traveller_ is of much less importance than the other
two. It has obtained such reputation as it possesses, partly because of
its invention or improvement of the fable of "Surrey and Geraldine";
more, and more justly, because it does work up a certain amount of
historical material--the wars of Henry VIII. in French Flanders--into
something premonitory (with a little kindness on the part of the
premonished) of the great and long missed historical novel; still more
for something else. Nash, with his quick wit, seems to have been really
the first to perceive the capabilities of that foreign travel and
observation of manners which was becoming common, stripped of th