ashionable ladies distinguished
themselves from the common sort by being "Arcadian" or "Euphuizd."[2]

Thus through these very efforts, a literature, chiefly intended for
women, was arising in England, and this is one characteristic more that
links these authors to our modern novelists. So that, perhaps, bonds,
closer than we imagine, unite those old writers lost in a far-off past
with the novelists whose books reprinted a hundred times are to be found
to-day on every reading-table and in everybody's hands.

We make no pretence of covering in the present volume this vast and
little trodden field. To keep within reasonable bounds we shall have to
leave altogether, or barely mention, the collections of tales translated
by Paynter, Whetstone and others from the Italian or French, although
they were well known to Shakespeare, and provided him with several of
his plots. In spite of their charm, we shall in like manner pass by the
simple popular prose tales, which were also very numerous, the stories
of Robin Hood, of Tom-a-Lincoln, of Friar Bacon, however "merry and
pleasant," they may be, "not altogether unprofitable, nor any way
hurtfull, very fitte to passe away the tediousness of the long winters
evenings."[3] We intend to deal here chiefly with those writers from
whom our modern novelists are legitimately descended. These descendants,
improving upon the early examples of their art left by the Elizabethan
novelists, have won for themselves a lasting place in literature, and
their works are among the undisputed pleasures of our lives. Our
gratitude may rightly be extended from them to their progenitors. We
must be permitted, therefore, to go far back in history, nearly as far
as the Flood. The journey is long, but we shall travel rapidly. It was,
moreover, the customary method of many novelists of long ago to begin
with the beginning of created things. Let their example serve as our
excuse.

[Illustration: CANCER.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Memoires et Journal inedit du Marquis d'Argenson," Paris, 1857, 5
vols.; vol. v., "Remarques en lisant."

[2] Dekker, "The Guls Horne-booke," 1609.

[3] "The Gentle Craft," 1598. "Early English Prose Romances," ed. W. J.
Thoms, London, 2nd edition, 1858, 3 vols., 8vo, contents: "Robert the
Devyll," "Thomas of Reading," by Thomas Deloney, "Fryer Bacon," "Frier
Rush," "George a Green," "Tom-a-Lincoln," by Richard Johnson, "Doctor
Faustus," &c. Nearly all the stories in this collection be