But, as a novel, it cannot count these.
_The Unfortunate Traveller_ is of much less importance than the other two.

It has obtained such reputation as it possesses, partly because of its invention or improvement of the fable of "Surrey and Geraldine"; more, and more justly, because it does work up a certain amount of historical material--the wars of Henry VIII.

in French Flanders--into something premonitory (with a little kindness on the part of the premonished) of the great and long missed historical novel; still more for something else.

Nash, with his quick wit, seems to have been really the first to perceive the capabilities of that foreign travel and observation of manners which was becoming common, stripped of the special atmosphere of pilgrimage which had formerly enveloped it.

Even here, he had had the "notion of the notion" supplied to him by Lyly in _Euphues_: and a tolerably skilful advocate would not have so very much difficulty in claiming the book as one of the tribe of Euphuist pamphlets.