rance some of our
authors wore; they show how in the course of centuries, Guy of Warwick
was transformed from an armour-clad knight into a plain squire with a
cane and a cocked hat; and they exemplify the way in which foreign
artists were in several cases imitated with the burin, in the same books
in which foreign literary models were imitated with the pen. Objection
having been taken, in the very kindly criticisms passed upon this work,
to the absence of the only known representation of Greene, this defect
has been supplied in the present edition.

I need not say that the translator of the portions written originally in
French took the trouble to overlook my additions, and to revise my
revisions. I need say that my heartiest thanks are due also to the
well-known Elizabethan scholar, Mr. A. H. Bullen, who, putting aside for
a while much more important work, has shown me the great kindness of
reading the proofs of this volume. J._

SAINT HAON-LE-CHATEL, _Nov., 1890_.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

EXPLANATORY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 11

INTRODUCTION 23

CHAPTER I.

_BEFORE SHAKESPEARE_ 31

I. Remote origin of the novel--Old historical romances or
epics--Beowulf.

The French conquest of England in the eleventh
century--The mind and literature of the new-comers--Their
romances, their short tales 31

II. Effects of the conquest on the minds of the English
inhabitants--Slow awakening of the native
writers--Awakening of the clerks, of the translators and
imitators--The English inhabitants connected through a
literary imposture with Troy and the classical nations of
antiquity--Consequences of this imposture.

Chaucer--His lack of influence on later prose
novelists--The short prose tales of the French never
acclimatized in England before the Renaissance--More's
Latin "Utopia" 37

III. Printing--Caxton's _role_--Part allotted to fiction
in the list of his books--Morte Darthur.

Development of printing--Mediaeval romances set in type in
the sixteenth century