violent denunciations of the great eighteenth-century men. There are
numerous monographs on parts of the subject: but nothing else that I
know even attempting the whole. I should, of course, have liked to deal
with so large a matter in a larger space: but one may and should
"cultivate the garden" even if it is not a garden of many acres in
extent. I need only add that I have endeavoured, not so much to give
"reviews" of individual books and authors, as to indicate what Mr.
Lanier took for the second part of his title, but did not, I think,
handle very satisfactorily in his text.

I may perhaps add, without impropriety, that the composition of this
book has not been hurried, and that I have taken all the pains I could,
by revision and addition as it proceeded, to make it a complete survey
of the Novel, as it has come from the hands of all the more important
novelists, not now alive, up to the end of the nineteenth century.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

_Christmas_, 1912.




CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. THE FOUNDATION IN ROMANCE
II. FROM LYLY TO SWIFT
III. THE FOUR WHEELS OF THE NOVEL WAIN