The subject is a curious one: and it has an important place in the history of the Novel, because it shows at once how strong was the _nisus_ towards prose fiction and how surprisingly difficult writers seem, nevertheless, to have found it to hit upon anything really good, much more anything really original in kind.

For it is hardly too much to say that this century of attempt--we cannot call it a century of invention--from Ford to Congreve, does not add a single piece of any considerable merit to the roll of English books.

As for a masterpiece, there is nothing in respect of which the use of such a word would not be purely ridiculous.

And yet the attempts are interesting to the historian, and should not be uninteresting to the historical student of literature.

One or two of them have a sort of shadowy name and place in literary history already.
In tracing their progress and character, we must allow for two native models: and for three foreign sources, one ancient, two modern, of influence.