e so-called Elizabethan period, the more are we struck by the
fact that, ever since, we have been simply making variations upon the
themes, which the men of those times gave us. Modern science, modern
poetry, modern drama, sat like pages at the feet of the Great Queen.
Among these the novel cut but an insignificant figure, although it was
the novel which had perhaps the longest future before it. We need not
wonder therefore that our first English novelist has been treated by
many with neglect. None I think have done more to make amends in this
direction than Professor Raleigh and M. Jusserand; the former in his
graceful, humorous, and penetrating little book, _The English Novel_;
and the latter in his well-known work on _The English Novel in the time
of Shakespeare_, which gives one, while reading it, the feeling of being
present at a fancy-dress ball, so skilfully does he detect the forms and
faces of present-day fiction behind euphuistic mask and beneath arcadian
costume. To these two books the present writer owes a debt which all
must feel who have stood bewildered upon the threshold of Elizabeth's
Court with its glittering throng of genius and wit.

Sudden, however, as was this crop of warriors wielding pen, it must not
be forgotten that the dragon's teeth had first been sown in mediaeval
soil. With Lyly the English novel came into being, but that child of his
genius was not without ancestry or relations. And so, before discussing
the character and fortunes of the infant, let us devote a few
introductory remarks to pedigree. Roughly speaking, the prose narrative
in England, before _Euphues_, falls into three divisions, the romance of
chivalry, the _novella_, and the moral Court treatise,--and all three
are of foreign extraction, that is to say, they are represented in
England by translations only. Chaucer indeed is a mine of material
suitable for the novel, but the father of English literature elected to
write in verse, and his _Canterbury Tales_ have no appreciable influence
upon the later prose story. For some reason, the mediaeval prose
narrative seems to have been confined to the so-called Celtic races.
Certainly, both the romance of chivalry and the _novella_ are to be
traced back to French sources. The _novella_, which, at our period, had
become thoroughly naturalized in Italy, under the auspices of Boccaccio,
had originally sprung from the _fabliaux_ of 13th century France. Nor
was the _fabliau_ the only artic