vels were
awaited and received.

Meanwhile the part taken by Addison and Steele in preparing for this
change of taste must not be overlooked, and the direct link between
Addison, as a picturesque narrative essayist, and Richardson, as the
first great English novelist, is to be found in Pierre de Marivaux
(1688-1763), who imitated the _Spectator_, and who is often assumed,
though somewhat too rashly, to have suggested the tone of _Pamela_. Into
this latter question we shall presently have need to inquire again. It
is enough to point out here that when the English novel did suddenly and
irresistibly make its appearance, it had little in common with the
rococo and coquettish work which had immediately preceded it in France,
and which at first, even to judges so penetrating as the poet Gray, was
apt to seem more excellent because more subtle and refined. The rapidity
with which the novel became domiciled among us, and the short space of
time within which the principal masterpieces of the novelists were
produced, are not more remarkable than the lassitude which fell upon
English fiction as soon as the first great generation had passed away.
The flourishing period of the eighteenth-century novel lasted exactly
twenty-five years, during which time we have to record the publication
of no less than fifteen eminent works of fiction.

These fifteen are naturally divided into three groups. The first
contains _Pamela_, _Joseph Andrews_, _David Simple_, and _Jonathan
Wild_. In these books the art is still somewhat crude, and the science
of fiction incompletely understood. After a silence of five years we
reach the second and greatest section of this central period, during
which there appeared in quick succession _Clarissa_, _Roderick Random_,
_Tom Jones_, _Peregrine Pickle_, _Amelia_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_.
As though invention had been exhausted by the publication of this
incomparable series of masterpieces, there followed another silence of
five years, and then were issued, each on the heels of the other,
_Tristram Shandy_, _Rasselas_, _Chrysal_, _The Castle of Otranto_, and
_The Vicar of Wakefield_. Five years later still, a book born out of due
time appeared, _Humphrey Clinker_, and then, with one or two such
exceptions as _Evelina_ and _Caleb Williams_, no great novel appeared
again in England for forty years, until, in 1811, the new school of
fiction was inaugurated by _Sense and Sensibility_. The English novel,
therefor