furnish out a Romance; they'll make a very pretty Novel."

This clearly marks a distinction: it gives a hint as to the
departure made by Richardson in 1742, when he published
"Pamela." It is not strictly the earliest discrimination between
the Novel and the older romance; for the dramatist Congreve at
the close of the seventeenth century shows his knowledge of the
distinction. And, indeed, there are hints of it in Elizabethan
criticism of such early attempts as those of Lyly, Nast, Lodge
and others. Moreover, the student of criticism as it deals with
the Novel must also expect to meet with a later confusion of
nomenclature; the word being loosely applied to any type of
prose fiction in contrast with the short story or tale. But
here, at an early date, the severance is plainly indicated
between the study of contemporary society and the elder romance
of heroism, supernaturalism, and improbability. It is a
difference not so much of theme as of view-point, method and
intention.

For underlying this attempt to come closer to humanity through
the medium of a form of fiction, is to be detected an added
interest in personality for its own sake. During the eighteenth
century, commonly described as the Teacup Times, an age of
powder and patches, of etiquette, epigram and surface polish,
there developed a keener sense of the value of the individual,
of the sanctity of the ego, a faint prelude to the note that was
to become so resonant in the nineteenth century, sounding
through all the activities of man. Various manifestations in the
civilization of Queen Anne and the first Georges illustrate the
new tendency.