It would be possible to add a great many, and easy and not disagreeable to the writer to dwell on a few.

Of these few some are perhaps necessary.

Frank Coventry's _Pompey the Little_--an amusing satirical novel with a pet dog for the title-giver and with the promising (but as a rule ill-handled) subject of university life treated early--appeared in 1751--the same year which saw the much higher flight (the pun is in sense not words) of _Peter Wilkins_, by Robert Paltock of Clement's Inn, a person of whom practically nothing else is known.

It would be lucky for many people if they were thus singly yoked to history.

It was once fashionable to dismiss _Peter_ as a boy's book, because it discovers a world of flying men and women, modelled partly on Defoe, partly on Swift; it has more recently been fashionable to hint a sneer at it as "sentimental" because of its presentment of a sort of fantastic and unconventional Amelia (who, it may be remembered, made her appearance in the same year) in the heroine Youwarkee.