But it gives us "disjectae membra _novellae_" rather than a novel itself: and the oftener one reads it the more clear one is that the time for writing novels had not yet come.

The materials are there; the desire to utilise--and even a faint vague idea of _how_ to utilise--them is there; but the art is almost completely absent.

Even regarded as an early attempt in the "picaresque" manner, it is abortive and only half organised.
The subject of the English "Heroic" Romance, in the wide sense, is one which has been very little dealt with.

Dunlop neglected it rather surprisingly, and until Professor Raleigh's chapter on the subject there was little of a satisfactory kind to be found about it anywhere.

It must, however, be admitted that the abstainers from it have been to some extent justified in their abstention.