broad term to cover all manner of story-telling, is a hoary
thing and within historical limits we can but get a glimpse of
its activity. Because it is so diverse a thing, it may be
regarded in various ways: as a literary form, a social
manifestation, a comment upon life. Main emphasis in this book
is placed upon its recent development on English soil under the
more restrictive name of Novel; and it is the intention, in
tracing the work of representative novel writers, to show how
the Novel has become in some sort a special modern mode of
expression and of opinion, truly reflective of the Zeitgeist.

The social and human element in a literary phenomenon is what
gives general interest and includes it as part of the
culturgeschichte of a people. This interest is as far removed
from that of the literary specialist taken up with questions of
morphology and method, as it is from the unthinking rapture of
the boarding-school Miss who finds a current book "perfectly
lovely," and skips intrepidly to the last page to see how it is
coming out. Thoughtful people are coming to feel that fiction is
only frivolous when the reader brings a frivolous mind or makes
a frivolous choice. While it will always be legitimate to turn
to fiction for innocent amusement, since the peculiar property
of all art is to give pleasure, the day has been reached when it
is recognized as part of our culture to read good fiction, to
realize the value and importance of the Novel in modern
education; and conversely, to reprimand the older, narrow notion
that the habit means self-indulgence and a waste of time. Nor
can we close our eyes to the tyrannous domination of fiction
to-day, for good or bad. It has worn seven-league boots of progress
the past generation. So early as 1862, Sainte-Beuve declared in
conversation: "Everything is being gradually merged into the
novel. There is such a vast scope and the form lends itself to
everything." Prophetic words, more than fulfilled since they
were spoken.

Of the three main ways of story-telling, by the epic poem, the
drama and prose fiction, the epic seems to be the oldest;
poetry, indeed, being the natural form of expression among
primitive peoples.

The comparative study of literature shows that so far as written
records go, we may not surely ascribe precedence in time either
to fiction or the drama. The testimony varies in different
nations. But if the name fiction be allowed for a Biblical
narrative like