ves matter for thought on our
subject. Here are some half-dozen stories or a little more. It is not
much, some one may say, for the produce of two hundred years. But what
it lacks in volume (and that will be soon made up in French, while it is
to be remembered that we have practically nothing to match it in
English) it makes up in variety. The peculiarity, some would say the
defect, of mediaeval literature--its sheep-like tendency to go in
flocks--is quite absent. Not more than two of the eight, _Le Roi Flore_
and _La Comtesse de Ponthieu_, can be said to be of the same class,
even giving the word class a fairly elastic sense. They are short prose
_Romans d'aventures_. But _Asseneth_ is a mystical allegory; _Aucassin
et Nicolette_ is a sort of idyll, almost a lyric, in which the adventure
is entirely subordinated to the emotional and poetical interest;
_L'Empereur Constant_, though with something of the _Roman d'aventures_
in it, has a tendency towards a _moralitas_ ("there is no armour against
fate") which never appears in the pure adventurous kind; _Troilus_ is an
abridgment of a classical romance; and _Foulques Fitzwarin_ is, as has
been said, an embryonic historical novel. Most, if not all, moreover,
give openings for, and one or two even proceed into, character- and even
"problem"-writing of the most advanced novel kind. In one or two also,
no doubt, that aggression and encroachment of allegory (which is one of
the chief notes of these two centuries) makes itself felt, though not to
the extent which we shall notice in the next chapter. But almost
everywhere a strong _nisus_ towards actual tale-telling and the rapid
acquisition of proper "plant" for such telling, become evident. In
particular, conversation--a thing difficult to bring anyhow into
verse-narrative, and impossible there to keep up satisfactorily in
various moods--begins to find its way. We may turn, in the next chapter,
to matter mostly or wholly in verse forms. But prose fiction is started
all the same.

[Sidenote: And on the short story generally.]

Before we do so, however, it may not be improper to point out that the
short story undoubtedly holds--of itself--a peculiar and almost
prerogative place in the history and morphology or the novel. After a
long and rather unintelligible unpopularity in English--it never
suffered in this way in French--it has been, according to the way of the
world, a little over-exalted of late perhaps. It is undoubtedly a