only
made its failure the more felt. The caricature of the heroic romance and
the attempt at the novel of common life were without effect. Their
authors had come too soon, and remained isolated; the false heroism now
scoffed at in France continued in England until the eighteenth century.
The writers under Queen Anne, in order to destroy it, were obliged to
recommence the whole campaign. Addison, as we have seen, found heroism
still in fashion, and the great romances in their places in ladies'
libraries. They were still being reprinted. There is, for example, an
English edition of "Cassandra" dated 1725, and one of "Cleopatra" dated
1731. Fielding saw heroism still in possession of the stage, and he
satirized it in his amusing "Tom Thumb." Carey attacked it in his
"Chrononotontologos."[365]

The hundred years which follow Shakespeare's death are, therefore, taken
altogether, a period of little invention and progress for romance
literature. The only new development it takes, consists in the
exaggeration of the heroic element, of which there was enough already in
many an Elizabethan novel; it consists, in fact, in the magnifying of a
defect. The imitation of France only resulted in absurd productions
which were so successful and filled the literary stage so entirely that
they left no space for other kinds of romances. In vain did a few
intelligent persons, such as the authors of "The Adventures of Covent
Garden" and of "Zelinda," attempt to bring about a reaction; their words
found no echo. The other kinds of novels started in Shakespearean times
continued to be cultivated, but were not improved. The picaresque
romance as Nash had understood it, includes in the seventeenth century
no original specimen but Richard Head's "English Rogue,"[366] one of
the worst compositions in this style to be found in any literature. The
allegorical, social, and political novel, as inaugurated by Sir Thomas
More, continued by Bacon, by Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, and by
Godwin,[367] that novel which was to gain new life in the hands of Swift
and Johnson, is, if we except Bunyan's eloquent manual of devotion,
mainly represented in the second half of the century by barren
allegories, such as Harrington's "Oceana," 1656, and Ingelow's
"Bentivolio and Urania," 1660; or by short stories like "The perplex'd
Prince," "The Court Secret," &c.[368] When we have read ten pages of
these it is difficult to speak of them with coolness and without an