novel--of the story of incident and the story of character and
motive--is a mistake logically and psychologically. It is a very old
mistake, and it has deceived some of the elect: but a mistake it is. It
made even Dr. Johnson think Fielding shallower than Richardson; and it
has made people very different from Dr. Johnson think that Count Tolstoi
is a greater analyst and master of a more developed humanity than
Fielding. As a matter of fact, when you have excogitated two or more
human beings out of your own head and have set them to work in the
narrative (not the dramatic) way, you have made the novel _in posse_, if
not _in esse_, from its apparently simplest development, such as
_Daphnis and Chloe_, to its apparently most complex, such as the
_Kreutzer Sonata_ or the triumphs of Mr. Meredith. You have started the
"Imitation"--the "fiction"--and _tout est là_. The ancients could do
this in the dramatic way admirably, though on few patterns; in the
poetical way as admirably, but again not on many. The Middle Ages lost
the dramatic way almost entirely, but they actually improved the
poetical on its narrative side, and the result was Romance. In every
romance there is the germ of a novel and more; there is at least the
suggestion and possibility of romance in every novel that deserves the
name. In the Tristram story and the Lancelot cycle there are most of the
things that the romancer of incident and the novelist of character and
motive can want or can use, till the end of the world; and Malory (that
"mere compiler" as some pleasantly call him) has put the possibilities
of the latter and greater creation so that no one who has eyes can miss
them. Nor _in the beginning_ does it much or at all matter whether the
vehicle was prose or verse. In fact they mostly wrote in verse because
prose was not ready.

In the minor romances and tales (taking English versions only) from
_Havelok_ to _Beryn_ there is a whole universe of situation, scenario,