meron_ when he states that, of the hundred tales,
over fifty are not much more than anecdotes, about forty are but
outlined plots, three follow the modern short-story method only part
way, and, of the hundred, two[13] alone are perfect examples, yet those
two perfect examples remained and were capable of imitation. The
explanation of this neglect is, perhaps, that the Elizabethans were
too busy originating to find time for copying; they were very willing
to borrow ideas, but must be allowed to develop them in their own
way--usually along dramatic lines for stage purposes, because this was
at that time the most financially profitable.

[Footnote 13: The second novel of the second day, and the sixth of the
ninth day.]

VII

The blighting influence of constitutional strife and intestine war
which followed in the Stuarts' reigns turned the serious artist's
thoughts aside to grave and prophetic forms of literary utterance,
while writers of the frivolous sort devoted their talent to a
lighter and less sincere art than that of the short-story--namely,
court-poetry. It was an age of extremes which bred despair and
religious fervor in men of the Puritan party, as represented by Bunyan
and Milton, and conscious artificiality and mock heroics in those
of the Cavalier faction, as represented by Herrick and the Earl of
Rochester.

The examples of semi-fictional prose which can be gathered from this
period serve only to illustrate how the short-story instinct, though
stifled, was still present. Isaak Walton as a diarist had it; Thomas
Fuller as an historian had it; John Bunyan as an ethical writer had
it. Each one was possessed of the short-story faculty, but only
manifested it, as it were, by accident. Not until Daniel Defoe and the
rise of the newspaper do we note any advance in technique. Defoe's
main contribution was the _short-story essay_, which stands midway
between the anecdote, or germ-plot, buried in a mass of extraneous
material, and the short-story proper. The growth of this form, as
developed by Swift, Steel, Addison, Goldsmith, and Lamb, has been
traced and criticised elsewhere.[14] It had this one great advantage
that, whatever its departures from the strict technique of the modern
short-story, it was capable of being read at one sitting, stood by
itself, and gained "the immense force derivable from _totality_."

[Footnote 14: In the third chapter of _The Great English Essayists_,
vol. iii of _The Reader's Lib