popularity of the drama. In the eighteenth century the drama gave
place to the essay, and it is to the sketch and essay that we must go
to trace the evolution of the story during this period. Voltaire in
France had a burning message in every essay, and he paid far greater
attention to the development of the thought of his message than to the
story he was telling. Addison and Steele in the _Spectator_ developed
some real characters of the fiction type and told some good stories,
but even their best, like _Theodosius and Constantia_, fall far short
of developing all the dramatic possibilities, and lack the focusing of
interest found in the nineteenth century stories. Some of Lamb's
_Essays of Elia_, especially the _Dream Children_, introduce a
delicate fancy and an essayist's clearness of thought and statement
into the story. At the close of this century German romanticism began
to seep into English thought and prepare the way for things new in
literary thought and treatment.

The nineteenth century opened with a decided preference for fiction.
Washington Irving, reverting to the _Spectator_, produced his
sketches, and, following the trend of his time, looked forward to a
new form and wrote _The Spectre Bridegroom_ and _Rip Van Winkle_. It
is only by a precise definition of short-story that Irving is robbed
of the honor of being the founder of the modern short-story. He loved
to meander and to fit his materials to his story scheme in a leisurely
manner. He did not quite see what Hawthorne instinctively followed and
Poe consciously defined and practiced, and he did not realize that
terseness of statement and totality of impression were the chief
qualities he needed to make him the father of a new literary form. Poe
and Maupassant have reduced the form of the short-story to an exact
science; Hawthorne and Harte have done successfully in the field of
romanticism what the Germans, Tieck and Hoffman, did not do so well;