ter,
motive before incident and action in the commoner sense--which had had
few if any representatives in ancient times, had not been disentangled
from the romantic envelope in mediaeval, but was to be the chief new
development of modern literature.

* * * * *

There seemed to be several reasons for separating Hamilton from the
other fairy-tale writers. The best of all is that he has the same
qualification for the present chapter as that which has installed in it
the novelists already noticed--that of idiosyncrasy. This leads to, or
rather is founded on, the consideration that his tales are fairy-tales
only "after a sort," and testify rather to a prevalent fashion than to a
natural affection for the kind.[281] Thirdly, he exhibits, in his
supernatural matter, a new and powerful influence on fiction
generally--that of the first translated _Arabian Nights_. Lastly, he is
in turn himself the head of two considerable though widely different
sub-departments of fiction--the decadent and often worthless but largely
cultivated department of what we may call the fairy-tale
_improper_,[282] and the very important and sometimes consummately
excellent "ironic tale," to be often referred to, and sometimes fully
discussed, hereafter.

The singularity of Hamilton's position has always been recognised; but
until comparatively recently, his history and family relations were very
little understood. Since the present writer discussed him in a
paper[283] now a quarter of a century old in print, and older in
composition, further light has been thrown on his life and surroundings
in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and more still in a monograph
by a lady[284] whose researches will, it is hoped, sooner or later be
published. A very little, too, of the unprinted work which was held back
at his death has been recovered. But this, it seems, includes nothing of
importance; and his fame will probably always rest, as it has so long
and so securely rested, on the _Memoires de Grammont_, the few but
sometimes charming independent verses, some miscellanies not generally
enough appreciated, and the admirable group of ironic tales which set a
fashion hardly more admirably illustrated since by Voltaire and
Beckford[285] and Lord Beaconsfield, to name no others. Of these things
the verses,[286] unfortunately, do not concern us at all; and the
_Memoires_ and miscellanies[286] only in so far as they add another, and