But at a time when the drama was paramount in popularity, when
the young Shakspere was writing his early comedies, fiction,
which was in the fulness of time to conquer the play form as a
popular vehicle of story-telling, began to rear its head. The
loosely constructed, rambling prose romances of Lyly of
euphuistic fame, the prose pastorals of Lodge from which model
Shakspere made his forest drama, "As You Like It," the
picaresque, harum-scarum story of adventure, "Jack Wilton," the
prototype of later books like "Gil Blas" and "Robinson Crusoe,"--these
were the early attempts to give prose narration a closer knitting,
a more organic form.

But all such tentative striving was only preparation; fiction in
the sense of more or less formless prose narration, was written
for about two centuries without the production of what may be
called the

Novel in the modern meaning of the word. The broader name
fiction may properly be applied, since, as we shall see, all
novels are fiction, but all fiction is by no means Novels. The
whole development of the Novel, indeed, is embraced within
little more than a century and a half; from the middle of the
eighteenth century to the present time. The term Novel is more
definite, more specific than the fiction out of which it
evolved; therefore, we must ask ourselves wherein lies the
essential difference. Light is thrown by the early use of the
word in critical reference in English. In reading the following
from Steele's "Tender Husband," we are made to realize that the
stark meaning of the term implies something new: social
interest, a sense of social solidarity: "Our amours can't