642 



NOVELS 



narrative poetry such as we mean )>y the wonl 

 'iiaiiad.' In France tlie place of tlic ballad \\.i- 

 supplied by much longer iiml more elaborate com- 

 positions, like tlie r/i<m.v<.v tie gettc, ami to thc-e 

 tlie title of 'roinans' won very generally given, lint 

 it is noteworthy that, 'romance' or ' romaiis,' it 

 was applied, in Spain exclusively ami in France all 

 but exclusively, to rum positions in verse, and that 

 the prose- works which we now call the romances 

 far excellenre were not so styled in their own time. 

 The romances of chivalry were called l>y their 

 authors or editors chronicles, histories, or books ; 

 but, except in one edition of Lancelot, never 

 romances; and the still more typical romances, 

 the heroic romances of the 17th century, Potex- 

 andre, Oattandrf, I'ltiirntnniiil, Himhim, anil the 

 like, seem to have lieen indebted to Scan-on, but 

 certainly not to their authors, for the name. 

 Neither 'novel' nor ' romance,' in short, has any 

 historical or etymological claim to stand for the 

 latest development of jirose fiction ; nor is there 

 any warrant for a distinction between the novel 

 and the romance founded on a predominance of 

 the real or the ideal, the ordinary or the extra- 

 ordinary, the comic or the tragic, a distinction 

 which, in practice, it would be impossible to draw. 

 The names are purely conventional. What we 

 call a novel the French call a romnn ; if they 

 shared our somewhat contemptuous feeling for the 

 romantic perhaps they would have followed our 

 example, as we perhaps might have followed theirs 

 if, instead of bad news, we talked of hearing bod 

 novels. 



For the origin of the thing so called there is no 

 need to search very far. To ask where fiction 

 came from, or what particular race or people were 

 the inventors of it, is very much like asking who 

 invented singing. If we must find a source for it, 

 or lix it upon someone, a child in a corner telling a 

 story to itself, with its playthings for dramatu 

 personce, or Maggie Tulliver unfolding the tale of 

 the earwig's domestic troubles to her cousin Lucy, 

 will be as near the fountain-head of liction as we 

 need go. The demand for fiction seems to follow- 

 very closely upon the demand for food. ' Tell me 

 a story' is among the earliest expressions of our 

 wants in life, and so far as we can see it has been 

 one from time immemorial, and everywhere and 

 always story-tellers of one sort or another are to be 

 found striving as tast they can to comply with the 

 call. It is true that we cannot see very far back, 

 and that our only available sources of information 

 convey a very imperfect idea of story-tellers and 

 story-telling in the remote post. The fragments 

 and specimens that have come to us through tradi- 

 tion and literature can no more give a complete 

 view of the liction of the age they lielong to than 

 the fossils in a cabinet of the fauna and Mora of the 

 glolie when they were living things. They have 

 been preserved by accident, or by the possession 

 of some property or feature conducing to preserva- 

 tion, while types and species less favoured have 

 left no trace behind them of their existence. To 

 take an example, every one at all acquainted with 

 it must have noticed how strongly the didactic 

 element asscrtti itself in early eastern liction. By 

 far the greater numlicr of the siHjcimens that have 

 comedown to us through the I'nii,-li,itniih;t, Ilitu- 

 wide a i, Itidpai, Lokman, .Ksop for in strictness 

 he must ! counted among the Orientals and 

 other channels are fables with a moral attached. 

 Now it is obvious that these cannot be the earliest 

 type of liction. Children call for stories, but not 

 (in real life at least) for instruction or improve- 

 ment until mime years have passed over their 

 heads ; and what is true of children is true of 

 lium.uiity. Hut the very earliest productions of 

 the fable family are entirely destitute of this 



appendage, and are mere stories told for their own 

 sal.e. 1'ropcrly they belong to a still earlier type 

 than the fable, the story where animals and in- 

 animate things sjMMik and act like human livings, 

 the immediate descendant, no doubt, of the story 

 the child tells to it -elf aUmt such objects as take 

 its fancy (see UI:\M i.\i:i.i.si. It U easy to see 

 how the moral came to be added, and how, once 

 added, it became protective. The story furnished 

 with a moral was preserved by and for the sake nf 

 its moral when those told for the story's sake alone 

 dropped out of circulation ; and in virtue of its 

 moral it found its way into literature as soon as 

 there was a literature to receive it. It is simply 

 an instance of snnival of the fittest; not nece- 

 sarily of the liest, but of the best lilted to survive 

 in the struggle for existence. 



The case of .Ksop a)x>ve referred to is an illustra- 

 tion of the connection between oriental and Euro- 

 pean fiction. Some critics maintain that he was 

 nnOriental himself, and identify him with Lokman ; 

 but without going so far it may be safely wiid that 

 the fables bearing his name are mainly of oriental 

 origin, and from some source in common with the 

 Panchataiitra. But this is not the only instance. 

 It is significant that, with scarcely an exception, 

 Greek prose liction came from Asia Minor, or from 

 islands oil' the coast, and in most instances the 

 Asiatic influence is distinctly perceptible. Of the 

 Milesian tales we know little, lint from that little 

 it seems likely that they were compositions some- 

 what in the nature of the French fabliaux, and 

 like them largely indebted to the eastern story- 

 tellers, lamblichus, the author of the lin/iylontca, 

 and Hcliodorus, the author of the more famous 

 T/icttt/ciics and Chariclca, were both Syrians, and 

 clearly drew their inspiration from the Mine quarter. 

 Achilles Tatius, the follower of Hcliodorus, was of 

 Alexandria. Xcnophon, who wrote the tale of 

 Aurocomas and Antltia, was of Ephesus. Jusajilmt 

 and liurliiain was by John of Damascus. Lncian 

 was another Syrian, but he cannot be properly 

 included among those who wrote stories for the 

 story's sake, nor indeed among those distinctly 

 influenced by eastern liction, any more than the 

 author of the graceful pastoral of I><i/i/nii.i and 

 Cliloe, whoever lie may have l>cen, for 'Longus' is 

 probably a mere clerical error. As M. Chassang 

 says, in his Illxlnin tin Human : ' The taste for the 

 romance passed from the Kast to Greece; ' but it 

 won to the artistic instinct of the Greeks that the 

 novel or romance owed the remarkable develop- 

 ment we see in I><i/,hnix mnl Chive and Tktay&ut 

 am/ I 7, , i, -irlr.a. The taste passed into Italy also 

 about the same time, but more probably through 

 the medium of the Milc-ian ami S\ halite tale- 

 than directly from the Kast ; and it I Hire fruit in 

 the ftaliirii-iiH of IVtionius Arbiter and the M,iu- 

 iiiin-/i/i',xix, or Ciihli n Ass, of Apuleius, in each of 

 which the best-known epiwxlc is derived from an 

 eastern story. The ('n)ml uml /'.si/r/ie of Apuleiug 

 and IVtronins' }\'n!a,r ../ A///II-XH.V arc found in 

 divers forms, and of the latter there is even a 

 ( 'liine-e variant. 



The collection of fables, partly from the J'fincfia- 

 timlrn and II it,, /an/,. -m. called Kiililn im I li HI nit 

 had a great share in the spread of oriental stories 

 in the middle ages throughout western Europe, but 

 ehiclly in Spain, where, introduced probably by the 

 A rah-, it helped to furnish material for the llixrifi/ina 

 f'/iTcW/.v oi i'cdio Alfonso and the Cnm/i l.n,<ii,nr 

 of llon.luan Manuel. Hut even more Influential 

 w.-is a work that still circulates as a chap book in 

 most European countries, 'II,, ,s, o ;, It',.-,, Mnxtrrt 

 nt f,'"ni' , which, under a variety of titles, J'.'/,mtiit, 



I'll/ll/Hll/KIX, ,^1/lltl/IIIX, Sllll/llllll/ .\llllllll. Unillllllltir, 



Tin- Sri-fii i'lzirx, and through Latin, Greek, 

 Hebrew, Arabic, and I'crbian, may be traced back 



