of a Kipling is the more logical
evolution.

Certainly, the English were innovators in this field, exercising
a direct and potent influence upon foreign fiction, especially
that of France and Germany; it is not too much to say, that the
novels of Richardson and Fielding, pioneers, founders of the
English Novel, offered Europe a type. If one reads the French
fictionists before Richardson--Madame de La Fayette, Le Sage,
Prevost and Rousseau--one speedily discovers that they did not
write novels in the modern sense; the last named took a cue from
Richardson, to be sure, in his handling of sentiment, but
remained an essayist, nevertheless. And the greater Goethe also
felt and acknowledged the Englishman's example. Testimonies from
the story-makers of other lands are frequent to the effect upon
them of these English pioneers of fiction. It will be seen from
this brief statement of the kind of fiction essayed by the
founders of the Novel, that their tendency was towards what has
come to be called "realism" in modern fiction literature. One
uses this sadly overworked term with a certain sinking of the
heart, yet it seems unavoidable. The very fact that the words
"realism" and "romance" have become so hackneyed in critical
parlance, makes it sure that they indicate a genuine
distinction. As the Novel has developed, ramified and taken on a
hundred guises of manifestation, and as criticism has striven to
keep pace with such a growth, it is not strange that a confusion
of nomenclature should have arisen. But underneath whatever
misunderstandings, the original distinction is clear enough and
useful to make: the modern Novel in its beginning did introduce
a more truthful representation of human life than had obtained
in the romantic fiction deriving from the medieval stories. The
term "realism" as first applied was suitably descriptive; it is
only with the subsequent evolution that so simple a word has
taken on subtler shades and esoteric implications.

It may be roundly asserted that from the first the English Novel
has stood for truth; that it has grown on the whole more
truthful with each generation, as our conception of truth in
literature has been widened and become a nobler one. The
obligation of literature to report life has been felt with
increasing sensitiveness. In the particulars of appearance,
speech, setting and action the characters of English fiction to-day
produce a semblance of life which adds tenfold to its p