upon the well conceived "program"
of _Joseph Andrews_ and _Tom Jones_ with some surprise. But if one
looks in the right places one will realize that mid-eighteenth
century notions about prose fiction had a substantial background in
earlier writing. And as in the case of other branches of literary
theory in the Augustan period, the original expression of the
organized doctrine was French. In Georges de Scudery's preface to
_Ibrahim_ (1641)[1] and in a conversation on the art of inventing a
"Fable" in Book VIII (1656) of his sister Madeleine's _Clelie_ are
to be found the grounds of criticism in prose fiction; practically
all the principles are here which eighteenth-century theorists
adopted, or seemed to adopt, or from which they developed, often by
the simple process of contradiction, their new principles.

That many of the ideas in the preface to _Ibrahim_ were not new even
in 1641 becomes plain if one reads the discussions of romance
written by Giraldi Cinthio and Tasso.[2] The particular way in which
Mlle. de Scudery attempted to carry out those ideas in her later,
more subjective works she obligingly set forth in _Clelie_ in the
passage already alluded to. There it is explained that a
well-contrived romance "is not only handsomer than the truth, but
withal, more probable;" that "impossible things, and such as are low
and common, must almost equally be avoided;" that each person in the
story must always act according to his own "temper;" that "the
nature of the passions ought necessarily to be understood, and what
they work in the hearts of those who are possess'd with them." He
who attempts an "ingenious Fable" must have great
accomplishments--wit, fancy, judgment, memory; "an universal
knowledge of the World, of the Interest of Princes, and the humors
of Nations," and of both closet-policy and the art of war;
familiarity with "politeness of conversation, the art of ingenious
raillery, and that of making innocent Satyrs; nor must he be
ignorant of that of composing of Verses, writing Letters, and making
Orations." The "secrets of all hearts" must be his and "how to take
away plainness and driness from Morality."[3]

The assumption that the new prose fiction could be judged, as the
Scuderys professed to judge their work, first of all by reference to
the rules of heroic poetry is frequent in the next century--in the
unlikely Mrs. Davys (preface, _Works_, 1725); in _Joseph Andrews_ of
course, where the rules of the