interest, and, it may be added, with special
reference to love as a motor force, simply because love it is
which binds together human beings in their social relations.

This aim sets off the Novel in contrast with past fiction which
exhibits a free admixture of myth and marvel, of creatures
human, demi-human and supernatural, with all time or no time for
the enactment of its events. The modern story puts its note of
emphasis upon character that is contemporary and average; and
thus makes a democratic appeal against that older appeal which,
dealing with exceptional personages--kings, leaders, allegorical
abstractions--is naturally aristocratic.

There was something, it would appear, in the English genius
which favored a form of literature--or modification of an
existing form--allowing for a more truthful representation of
society, a criticism (in the Arnoldian sense) of the passing
show. The elder romance finds its romantic effect, as a rule, in
the unusual, the strange and abnormal aspects of life, not so
much seen of the eye as imagined of the mind or fancy. Hence,
romance is historically contrasted with reality, with many
unfortunate results when we come to its modern applications. The
issue has been a Babel-like mixture of terms.

Or when the bizarre or supernatural was not the basis of appeal,
it was found in the sickly and absurd treatment of the amatory
passion, quite as far removed from the every-day experience of
normal human nature. It was this kind of literature, with the
French La Calprenede as its high priest, which my Lord
Chesterfield had in mind when he wrote to his son under date of
1752, Old Style: "It is most astonishing that there ever could
have been a people idle enough to write such endless heaps of
the same stuff. It was, however, the occupation of thousands in
the last century; and is still the private though disavowed
amusement of young girls and sentimental ladies." The chief
trait of these earlier fictions, besides their mawkishness, is
their almost incredible long-windedness; they have the long
breath, as the French say; and it may be confessed that the
great, pioneer eighteenth century novels, foremost those of
Richardson, possess a leisureliness of movement which is an
inheritance of the romantic past when men, both fiction writers
and readers, seem to have Time; they look back to Lyly, and
forward (since history repeats itself here), to Henry James. The
condensed, breathless fiction