ways; and, whatever is the nominal form of a work, we thankfully accept all kinds of good things that can artistically be brought into it. So, in a novel, if the writer can contrive, consistently with poetic method, or even sometimes by a slight strain on that method, to give us valuable matter over and above the mere fiction or story, we ought to allow all that is so given to go to his credit. As an example of a novel in which speculation, or critical and philosophical remark on many things, is blended in large proportion with the pure fiction, I may name Goethe's' Wilhelm Meister. The novels of Scott, and the Promessi Sposi of Manzoni, will occur to you as works in which, along with the fiction, we get valuable fragments of authentic history.

So much by way of theory of the Prose Fiction as an existing and matured form of literature; and now for the History of this form of literature, more particularly amongst ourselves.

The first and most notable fact in the history of this form of literature is its late appearance, as compared with other forms. This fact resolves itself into a still more general fact the historical priority of Verse to Prose. In speaking of these two modes of literature, I have hitherto represented them as modes existing together, and

equally available, according to the option of the writer and the nature of his task; and I have but incidentally hinted that, though coördinate now, they are not coëval. To this matter of their relative antiquity it is necessary now to attend.

That Verse is the more ancient, is a fact known to all. I am not sure, however, that we are in the habit of conceiving the fact with sufficient distinctness, or with a sufficient sense of all that it includes. The fact, it seems to me, amounts to nothing less than this-that Song, or rhythmical utterance, was the original form of all human speech; just as the mode of thinking and feeling, natural to such rhythmical utterance, was the original mode of all human consciousness; or as if, risking an analogous assertion, we were to say that men originally did not walk, but danced and leaped rhythmically. At all events, the earliest literature of all kinds - History and Philosophy, as well as Poetry was in the form of Song. To adopt an image suggested by the old designation of Verse as oratio vincta, or "bound speech," and of Prose, contrariwise, as oratio soluta, or “loosened speech," we are to fancy all kinds of human thought and mental activity as originally dammed up in Song, as in a lake with steep embankments -not only poetic or imaginative thought, and feeling or emotion, but also whatever of historical

record or tradition and of speculative doctrine or philosophy may be conceived to have been in existence. By a natural law, this lake overflows and bursts forward in "loosened speech," the stream throwing off, in its advance, first one form, and then another, of literature, according as human thought, becoming less and less homogeneous, is found to demand corresponding diversity in the modes of its expression. First, History is thrown off; then Philosophical Discourse is thrown off; then practical Oratory is thrown off: Verse relieving itself thereby, first of the business of record, next of that of speculative activity, next of that of direct social and moral stimulation - except in as far as in each of these kinds of literature, thus detached out of its own body, Verse may think it right to retain a parental interest. But, even after History, Science, and Oratory are thrown off, and Verse has retained to itself only Lyric Poetry, Narrative Poetry, and Dramatic Poetry, it does not retain these in homogeneous form, and within the same channel. Not only do differences evolve themselves in the metrical forms of the three kinds of Poetry, the Drama loosening itself into a lax metre nearly approaching Prose, the Epic or Narrative reserving somewhat more of metrical law, and the Lyric remaining locked up in the strictest metrical bonds of all, but each of these varieties

of metrical Poesy shows a tendency to detach from itself a corresponding variety of actual Prose. Theoretically, we should have expected, perhaps, that the order of detachment would have been as follows: first, the Prose Drama; secondly, the Fictitious Prose Narrative; and lastly, and with greatest difficulty, the Prose Ode or Lyric. In fact, however, when we make our examination in ancient literature, we find the Fictitious Prose Narrative making its appearance before any extant specimen of the Prose Drama. And yet, at how late a period in the whole history of the Classical Literature this appearance takes place! The Homeric period of the Grecian Epic was over; the period of Pindar and the Greek Lyric Muse was over; the glorious dramatic era of Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, was over; Greece had had her great historians in Herodotus and Thucydides, her great philosophic period in Plato and Aristotle, her noblest period of prose oratory in Demosthenes and his contemporaries ;all this was past and gone, and Greek Literature was in its dregs, before any specimens of the Prose Fiction, corresponding to what we should now call a Romance or a Novel, were produced in the Greek tongue.

If we except Xenophon, as the author of the Cyropædia, and one or two others, whose names

have been preserved, though their works have perished, the first Greek writers of prose fiction were Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius, and Longus all of whom lived after the third century of our era. In Latin, then the other language of the civilized world, the Prose Fiction had previously made its appearance in the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, and the Golden Ass of Apuleius-both of whom lived in the second century, after the list of the greater Roman classics had been closed. When we look into the works themselves, we can see that, by their nature, they belong to an age when the polytheistic system of society was in its decrepitude. They are, most of them, stories of the adventures of lovers, carried away by pirates or otherwise separated by fate — thrown from city to city of the Mediterranean coasts, in each of which they see strange sights of sorcery and witchcraft, are present at religious processions, private festivals, crucifixions and the like, become entangled in crimes and intrigues, and have hair'sbreadth escapes from horrible dens of infamy; sometimes even changed by magic into beasts; but at last reünited and made happy by some sudden and extraordinary series of coincidences. There is a force of genius in some of them; and they are interesting historically, as illustrating the state of society towards the close of the Roman