such topics as individual and social authorship; simplicity and complexity in the treatment of social life; the intermingling of the tragic and the comic, of the fictitious and the historical; familiarity and novelty of subject; relative values of plot and characters; the appeal to cultured and to popular audiences, etc. In some of these matters, the resemblance of the two types is clear; in others, their separate nature and function are more apparent.

Compare the burlesque of epic formulas in Don Quixote, The Rape of the Lock, The Battle of the Books, and in Fielding and Smollett. Trace the possible influences from the modern novel upon the Idylls of the King. — Distinguish the epic and the novelistic elements in Sordello, The Ring and the Book, and other long narrative poems of Browning. - Compare Taras Bulba and Dead Souls, both of which are supposed to be particularly epic in spirit. — Compare the treatment of the crusades in The Talisman, and in Jerusalem Delivered. — Outline an epic poem based upon Ivanhoe, The Last of the Mohicans, or War and Peace.

181. Biography. The general development of modern biographical writing in not a few particulars resembles that of the modern novel. The attitudes of romanticism and of realism towards the individual life appear in essentially the same manner in the real and in the fictitious biography. Froude's life of Carlyle shows the nature of nineteenth century realism, interpreting the life of a strong man, as clearly as any novel of the ethical school.

Many novelists have been authors of biography or autobiography, and their methods in these types can be compared in some detail with their novelistic methods. Bunyan, Rousseau, Goethe, Newman, Tolstoi, and many other famous men have left some interpretation of their own lives in both the autobiography and the novel.

In technic, it is obvious that the biography offers many problems similar to those of the novel; and one can imagine

a novelist learning much from a diligent study of the masters of the other type of literature. In theory, the novel has often been considered as essentially a fictitious biography. The word "life," as applied to the hero, has been common in the titles of novels for a long period.

Goethe announced a certain theory of biographical interpretation in his Dichtung und Wahrheit, and Defoe stated much the same idea in the preface of Colonel Jacque: "neither is it of the least moment to inquire whether the Colonel hath told his own story true or not; if he has made it a History or Parable, it will be equally useful,” etc.

From the reader's point of view the fictitious hero of a novel may appear more real, more vitally connected with the reader's experience, than the hero of a biography, however important in the world of actual history. As to ethical effects, the resolution against prejudice, the enlargement of sympathy, the sense of human isolation or fellowship, may be aroused quite as deeply by contact with a character existing only in the imagination as with one that actually sinned and repented.

Compare the treatment of famous historical characters in biography and in fiction. In many cases, the popular conception, which is sometimes the true one also, has been created largely by the interpretation of the novelist. — Assuming that Silas Marner was a real individual, recast the novel into the form of a biography.

182. History. At the present time, there is an effort to construct history in the spirit of exact science. So far as this effort succeeds, history passes altogether from the domain of literature proper; but in the past, and to a large extent in the present, history belongs among the types of artistic narrative.

The development of the historical sense, and the transfer of emphasis from the ecclesiastical to the secular, are

among the interesting points in which history may be compared with the novel. Many novelists have done good work in the other field; and Karamzin, recognized as one of the founders of historical writing in Russia, adapted to history the general method of interpretation of human experience which he first used in fiction.

Much of the preceding analysis of this volume may be applied to any history which is at the same time an artistic narrative. In a comparison with the novel, one may note as items of more than technical significance, the problems of relative emphasis upon events and persons, upon individuals and social groups; the continuous, pressing demand for selective process; the proportion between exhibition and interpretation; the possible interpretation of history in terms of biology or theology; and the methods of attaining illusion.

The theory of the novel has often allied it with history. Fielding writes in Tom Jones (IX, 1), “as we have good authority for all our characters, no less indeed than the vast authentic doomsday book of nature, our labors have sufficient title to the name of history." This entire chapter is well worth reading, and comparing with similar passages of the same author.—It is a curious fact that Defoe's Plague Year is not only often classified with history in the libraries, but has led to a spirited dispute among critics whether it is really to be considered as in any sense a novel. Sidney's famous discussion of history and philosophy, in their relations to poetry, may be applied, without essential change, to the criticism of the novel.

183. The Essay. — The essay, as commonly understood at present, originated in the awakened intellect of the Renaissance, and has stood for the wide variety of interests of the modern secular mind. In this respect, and in its lack of definite form, it resembles the novel. Many individual essays could be better compared with the short

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story, in that they give an isolated, intensive view of an episodic subject.

One can easily recall eminent novelists who have been. successful in the essay; but probably the typical essayist is too abstract in thought to cultivate so concrete a form of literature as the novel. The essay, as essay, does not aim at any illusion for its principal effect, though it may employ illusion as a means. It may, like the short story, be primarily the expression of a mood, or an endeavor to create a definite emotional or moral attitude in the reader. The border line between the essay and the novel is crossed, so far as form is concerned, by essays written in dialogic, epistolary, or narrative form, and by novels in which the expository comment really dominates the composition. The essay value of the author's comment, in brief passages or in complete chapters of a novel, is often quite apparent.

184. The Lyric. The kinship of romance and of certain types of short story to the lyric has been mentioned several times in the preceding pages. Pastoral romance, as represented by Sannazaro's Arcadia, is not only largely composed of verse, but is to a great extent an expression of the lyrical episodes of the author's experience. In important respects, the lyric is almost the exact antithesis of the novel proper. In England, the modern novel arose in a period when lyric poetry was at a very low ebb; and the lyrical schools of the romantic movement, and of preRaphaelitism produced little that is significant in prose fiction. It is not difficult to mention individual great novelists who have written great lyric poetry; but this condition may be considered somewhat exceptional, and in most cases it is easy to make clear distinction between the lyrical and the novelistic talent of an author, either in period of production or in artistic quality.

Hugo and Pushkin may be counted among the great lyrists, but their prose fiction, in the main, does not belong with the novel proper. Thackeray, George Eliot, George Meredith, and Thomas Hardy are all lyric poets of some accomplishment, but can hardly be recognized as among the great masters. Blake, Burns, Keats, Shelley, Heine, Rossetti- the pure lyrists — wrote nothing of great value in prose fiction.

A lyric may incidentally have many of the elements of novelistic form, dialogue, realistic settings, sharply defined incident, etc., but these elements do not belong to the real nature of a lyric. It may use dialect, but usually becomes less lyrical thereby. The dramatic lyric, such as Browning loved to write, has much in common with the prose character study, but it is just so far removed from the nature of pure song.

A lyric cannot be fairly judged by the same ethical standards as the novel. Scepticism, morbidity, misanthropy, have very different values, recorded in a lyric of transitory mood, and embodied in a novel which summarizes the habitual attitude of the author. Again, a song without any considerable ethical content might be worthy of our admiration, whereas a long novel without deep moral meaning might be severely condemned.

In the study of an individual novel, one may note the traces of lyrical attitude in the original impulse, and in the process of composition; the passages of lyrical quality in the final text; and the lyrical effects upon the reader. The incorporation of actual lyrics in a prose fiction has been briefly noticed in Section 12.

In Silas Marner, select "lyrical germs 99 or motifs which could be developed into a dirge, a pastoral song, a wedding hymn, a love sonnet, etc. Study a few lyrics in which the narrative element is sufficient to suggest a short story. - Compare realistic lyrics, such as Rossetti's Jenny, Tennyson's In the Children's Hospital, and Browning's La