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London, April 1893.

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A Parisian Hebraist has been attracting a moment's attention to his paradoxical and learned self by announcing that strong-hearted and strong-brained nations do not produce novels. This gentleman's soul goes back, no doubt in longing and despair, to the heart of Babylon and the brain of Gath. But if he looks for a modern nation that does not cultivate the novel, he must, I am afraid, go far afield. Finland and Roumania are certainly tainted; Bohemia lies in the bond of naturalism. Probably Montenegro is the one European nation which this criterion would leave strong in heart and brain. The amusing absurdity of this whim of a pedant may serve to remind us how universal is now the reign of prose fiction. In Scandinavia the drama may demand an equal prominence, but no more. In all other countries the novel takes the largest place, claims and obtains the widest popular attention, is the admitted tyrant of the whole family of literature.

This is so universally acknowledged now-a-days that we scarcely stop to ask ourselves whether it is a heaven-appointed condition of things, existing from the earliest times, or whether it is an innovation. As a matter of fact, the predominance of the novel is a very recent affair. Most other classes of literature are as old as the art of verbal expression: lyrical and narrative poetry, drama, history, philosophy—all these have flourished since the sunrise of the world's intelligence. But the novel is a creation of the late afternoon of civilisation. In the true sense, though not in the pedantic one, the novel began in France with La Princesse de Clèves, and in England with Pamela—that is to say, in 1677 and in 1740 respectively. Compared with the dates of the beginning of philosophy and of poetry, these are as yesterday and the day before yesterday. Once started, however, the sapling of prose fiction grew and spread mightily. It took but a few generations to overshadow all the ancient oaks and cedars around it, and with its monstrous foliage to dominate the forest.