rary_, published by Messrs. Harper &
Brothers, 1909.]

In the _True Revelation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal_, Defoe
is again strangely in advance of his time, as he is in so many other
ways. Here is an almost perfect example of the most modern method of
handling a ghost-tale. Surely, in whatever department of literature
we seek, we shall find nothing to surpass it in the quality of
_verisimilitude_. The way in which Drelincourt's _Book on Death_ is
introduced and subsequently twice referred to is a master-stroke of
genius. In days gone by, before they were parted, we are told, Mrs.
Veal and Mrs. Bargrave "would often console each other's adverse
fortunes, and read together Drelincourt _On Death_ and other good
books." At the time when the story opens Mrs. Bargrave has gone to
live in Canterbury, and Mrs. Veal is in Dover. To Mrs. Bargrave in
Canterbury the apparition appears, though she does not know that it is
an apparition, for there is nothing to denote that it is not her old
friend still alive. One of the first things the apparition does is
"to remind Mrs. Bargrave of the many friendly offices she did her in
former days, and much of the conversation they had with each other in
the times of their adversity; what books they read, and what comfort
in particular they received from Drelincourt's _Book on Death_.
Drelincourt, she said, had the clearest notions of death and of the
future state of any who had handled that subject. Then she asked Mrs.
Bargrave whether she had Drelincourt. She said, 'Yes,' Says Mrs. Veal,
'Fetch it.' Some days after, when Mrs. Bargrave, having discovered
that the visitor was a ghost, has gone about telling her neighbors,
Defoe observes, 'Drelincourt's _Book on Death_ is, since this
happened, bought up strangely,'"

This masterpiece of Defoe is before its time by a hundred years;
nothing can be found in the realm of the English prose short-story to
approach it in symmetry until the Ettrick Shepherd commenced to write.

Of all the models of prose-fiction which the Tudor translations had
given to English literature, the first to be copied was that of
Cervantes's _Don Quixote_, rendered into English by Thomas Shelton in
1612. Swift must have had the rambling method of Cervantes well in
mind when he wrote his _Gulliver_; and Smollett confessedly took it as
his pattern and set out to imitate. The most that was required by such
a method in the way of initial construction was to select a her