Puritanism was a cheek to the imagination. From Elizabeth to the Restoration, the only notable fiction is the Argenis, by .John Barclay, composed in Latin (1621) and soon translated into French and English. Mainly a political romance framed to the Greek story of adventure, it is significant as an attempt also at history. It seems to be an important link between an tiquity and the French roman dr longue haleine cultivated by Gomberville. La Galprenede, and Mlle. `c•udEry. Of this type the best examples are Scudcrt's Grand Cyrus and Clair, each in ten octavo volumes. The extravagances of Were turned to finer issues by Madame de la Fayette in the Princess' de Ch'res (16781, often regarded, because of its sane analysis of passion, as the first French novel. To this period belongs also a famous pastoral, the Astn'e, by (161(1-27), which was burlesqued by liarles Sorel in the Berger extraragant (1627). There were, moreover. many realistic novels, as Sorel's Francion. (1622), Searron's Boman co mique (1651-57), and Furetiere's Roman bour geois (1666). Akin to the Spanish picaresque novel, they all give a humorous description of middle and low-class life.
After the Restoration, no•el-writing was re sumed in England. French romance was imi tated; and a long series of low adventures was put together by Richard Head under the title The English Rogue (first part. 1665). Of more interest is Oroonoko (11196; written much earlier), by Mrs. Aphra Beim (q.v.). In this short novel, founded on real events, there is some attempt at, local color. But of all writer: of tins time John (q.v.) did most for lietion. Bunyan spoke from the heart. And, however impossible might be the talc he undertook to tell, he knew bow to add the minute details that make fiction seem truth. Bunyan's successor was Daniel Defoe (q.v.). In narrative power Defoe was Homeric. His style is all movement: even description is turned into narrative. Be cause of its style, its interesting incidents so treated as to give the illusion of reality. and its ethical import, Po/di/son I'r•oxee (1719) is rightly regarded as the first worthy treatment of adventure. it has been asserted that Defoe was forestalled by Grimmelshausen's Sintp/ieis shuns (about 161191. This German story of adventure, however. belongs to the old order. In Franc', Lesage had already published the first part of Gil Mas (1715). in which the picaresque novel was as a vehicle of large satire on contemporary manners. Defoe took acT•antage of the immediate popularity of Robinson The succeeding novels possess all the qualities of the first except interesting subject matter. In Gullirer's Too., Is (1726), Swift at once gave the satirical romance its perfect finish.
THE REALism. After Defoe and Lesage, the novel was in danger of beemning plotless. It was Richardson who made the novel dramatic. Panic/a (1710) is an expansion of the current bourgeois comedy such as Steele wrote. Clarissa Marlowe (1747-48) i5 an expansion of bourgeois tragedy sueh as Ot way wrote. "jr Charles Grandison (1753) is likewise a comedy with its scene shifted to high life. Richardson's drama is nol thus merely formal. lie ereates character tyl,c•s, and he develops them in act and conversa• tine before the mind's eye. fielding, with his experienee as a playwright. was able to improve upon Richardson's clumsy epistolary method. Josrph. Andrews (1742) contains the matter of the comic romances, such as Cervantes and Sear ron wrote, but is molded to the form of ancient comedy. His masterpiece, Tour Jones (17 19), is a clever union of many types of comedy for many effects. Amelia (1751) is time pathetic drama of family life, then common in France and England. Fielding makes no use of letters (except for burlesque) or of journals and memoirs. }lis
characters speak directly. and the narrative, though hampered at times by episodes, is mostly in the third person. All the essentials of the novel were thus worked out by Richardson and Fielding. Since their time the advance in struc ture has been only in details. The novel left their hands a well-ordered literary species. They both aimed, each in his own way, to depict the inner and the outward life as it is. They were realists. True, a good deal that was traditional in fiction found its way into their work. The dastardly scenes in Richardson, which now so shock readers, were survivals from Greek ro mance. And Fielding appropriated the old pica resque eseapades. Later realists, having mostly rid themselves of all this material, depend rather upon their own experience and observation. And though few novelists have dared discard love altogether as a motive, it is now treated less in its physical aspects. In spite of all this, which is indicative of the later development of fiction, probably no novel takes to itself more of human life than Tom Jones. No characters stand in clearer outline than its hero and Squire Western.
Riehardson's work ended with Sir Charles Grandison, and Fielding died in 1754. Tobias Smollett survived them. Much under the influ enee of the picaresque writers, he was c•ureles.s in manner, and his imagination delighted in coarse and brutal scenes. He, however, created many caricature types at once professional and national —the Irishman, the Welshman, and the Scotch man. Roderick Random (1748) is the first novel of the sea from the pen of a seaman. Humphrey Clinker (1771) is, said Thackeray, •'the most laughable story ever written." In distinction from the humor of Fielding. Smollett is comic. His formlessness and audacity became affecta tions with Laurence Sterile. Tristram Shandy (1759-671, beginning nowhere and ending no where, is hardly a novel, but it contains passages of the highest beauty, and a brotherhood of fools unequaled outside of Shakespeare. At this time Oliver Goldsmith wrote the Vicar of Wakefield (1766), the source of many idyls of village life.
The novel thus began at once to break up into several varieties. This process, owing to social conditions, went on apace. In the next generation there was a numerous class of writers who resorted to the novel for the purpose of popularizing theories of education and govern ment. They were inspired by Rousseau and other French philosophers. Among then] were Robert Rage, Charlotte Smith. Elizabeth Inchbald, Thomas Holcroft. and William Godwin. It may be claimed for them that they founded the didac tic novel. Fielding had depieted his characters through what they said in dialogue. Except in the case of Squire Western. little stress was placed upon how they spoke. Here was another lesson to he learned from the drama or rather from the actor. And as soon as it was learned, we had the novel of manners. Frances Burney was the pioneer with her Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782). in the Irish tales of Maria Edgeworth, as Castk Rarkrent (1800) and The Absentee (1812), the interest centres wholly on the speech and appearance of the characters. They are the first dialect stories. The novel of manners reached its highest art in the work of Jane Austen, well represented by Pride and Tn.:iodic° (1813) and Mansfield Park (18141, admirable in structure, movement, and tone. Here first the drama and the epic became per fectly fused. The sentimental novel has perhaps had its greatest exponent in Goethe, whose Leiden des jungen Werther (1773-74) set half of Europe to pondering over suicide and other morbid themes. Wilhelm Meister (1795. begun some twenty years earlier), on the other hand, is an autobiographic and to some extent a didac tic novel.