The sweetmeats or _hors d'oeuvre_ of the older caterings for that taste are here collected together to form a _piece de resistance_.

It is true that _The Novelist_ is only a true title in the older sense--that the pieces are _novelle_ not "novels" proper.

But they are fiction, or fact treated like fiction: and though the popular taste itself was evidently ceasing to be satisfied with these morsels and demanding a substantial joint, yet the substance was, after all, the same.
We rise higher, if not very high, with the novels of Mrs.Eliza Haywood (1693-1756), one of the damned of the _Dunciad_, but, like some of her fellows in that _Inferno_, by no means deserving hopeless reprobation.
Every one who has devoted any attention to the history of the novel, as well as some who have merely considered it as a part of that of English literature generally, has noticed the curious contrast between the earlier and the later novels of this writer.

_Betsy Thoughtless_ (1751) and _Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy_ (1753) could, without much difficulty, be transposed into novels of to-day.

_Idalia_ (1723) is of an entirely different mood and scheme.