serious epic and of the heroic
romance are to aid the author in copying the ancient but, as it
happens, nonexistent comic epic; and in Fielding's preface to his
sister's _David Simple_ (1744). Both Richardson and Fielding were
attacked on epic grounds.[4] Dr. Johnson's interesting and
unfriendly essay on recent prose fiction (_Rambler_ No. 4) adopted
the terminology familiar in the criticism of epic and romance and
showed that Johnson, unlike d'Argens and Fielding, did not intend
to give any of the old doctrines new meanings in a way to justify
realism. Johnson laughed a little in that essay at the heroic
romances; but like Mlle. de Scudery, whose _Conversations_ he drew
on for a footnote in his edition of Shakespeare (1765),[5] he
believed that fiction should be "probable" and yet should idealize
life and men and observe poetic Justice. Many other writers on prose
fiction borrowed the old neo-classic rules, and they applied them
often so carelessly and so insincerely that one is glad to come
eventually on signs of rebellion, even if from the sentimentalists:
"I know not," wrote Elizabeth Griffith in the preface to _The
Delicate Distress_ (1769), "whether novel, like the _epopee_, has
any rules, peculiar to itself.... Sensibility is, in my mind, as
necessary, as taste, to intitle us to judge of a work, like this."

The theory of prose fiction offered by the Scuderys was, on the
whole, better than their practice. The same remark can be made with
even greater assurance of _The Secret History of Queen Zarah, and
the Zarazians_ (1705) and the other political-scandalous "histories"
of Mary De la Riviere Manley. For in spite of the faults of _Queen
Zarah_, the preface is one of the most substantial discussions of
prose fiction in the century. Boldly and reasonably it repudiates
the most characteristic features of the heroic romance--the vastness
produced by intercalated stories; the idealized characters, almost
"exempted from all the Weakness of Humane Nature;" the marvelous
adventures and remote settings; the essay-like conversations; the
adulatory attitude; and poetic Justice. _Vraisemblance_ and
_decorum_, we are told, are still obligatory, but the probable
character, action, dialogue will now be less prodigious, will be
closer to real life as the modern English reader knows it. Thus Mrs.
Manley announced a point of view which was, at least in most
respects, to dominate the theory and invigorate the practice of
prose fic