most the first class as regards incident, with no lack of
character-openings to boot. Nor could anybody want a better "curtain"
than the falling back of the scorned and baffled false lover, the
concert of the minstrels, and Katherine's stately stepping down the dais
to complete the insult by dancing with another.

[Sidenote: The interest of _named_ personages.]

One more general point may be noticed in connection with the superiority
of this story, and that is the accession of interest, at first sight
trivial but really important, which comes from the _naming_ of the
personages. Both in the earlier _fabliaux_ and in these _Nouvelles_
themselves, by far the larger number of the actors are simply called by
class-names--a "knight," a "damsel," a "merchant and his wife," a
"priest," a "varlet." It may seem childish to allow the mere addition of
a couple of names like Gerard and Katherine to make this difference of
interest, but the fact is that there is a good deal of childishness in
human nature, and especially in the enjoyment of story.[84] Only by
very slow degrees were writers of fiction to learn the great difference
that small matters of this kind make, and how the mere "anecdote," the
dry argument or abstract of incident, can be amplified, varied,
transformed from a remainder biscuit to an abundant and almost
inexhaustible feast, by touches of individual character, setting of
interiors, details of conversation, description, nomenclature, and what
not. Quite early, as we saw in the case of the _St. Alexis_, persons of
narrative gift stumbled upon things of the kind; but it was only after
long delays, and hints of many half-conscious kinds, that they became
part of recognised craft. Even with such a master of that craft as
Boccaccio before them, not all the Italian novelists could catch the
pattern; and the French, perhaps naturally enough, were slower still.

It must be remembered, in judging the fifteenth-century French tale,
that just as it was to some extent hampered by the long continuing
popularity of the verse _fabliau_ on the one hand, so it was, as we may
say, "bled" on the other by the growing popularity of the farce, which
consists of exactly the same material as the _fabliaux_ and the
_nouvelles_ themselves, with the additional liveliness of voice and
action. These later additions imposed not the smallest restraint on the
license which had characterised and was to characterise the plain verse
and prose for