indeed, when we may return to them a little, we shall find them
exercising direct and powerful influence on modern European fiction, and
so both directly and indirectly on English: but that is a time a good
way removed from the actual beginning of our journey. Still, _Apollonius
of Tyre_, which is probably the oldest piece of English prose fiction
that we have, is beyond all doubt derived ultimately from a Greek
original of this very class: and the class itself is an immense advance,
in the novel direction, upon anything that we have before. It is on the
one hand essentially a "romance of adventure," and on the other
essentially a "love-story"--in senses to which we find little in
classical literature to correspond in the one case and still less in the
other. Instead of being, like _Lucius_ and the _Golden Ass_, a tissue of
stories essentially unconnected and little more than framed by the main
tale, it is, though it may have a few episodes, an example of at least
romantic unity throughout, with definite hero and definite heroine, the
prominence and importance of the latter being specially noteworthy. It
is in fact the first division of literature in which the heroine assumes
the position of a protagonist. If it falls short in character, so do
even later romances to a great extent: if dialogue is not very
accomplished, that also was hardly to be thoroughly developed till the
novel proper came into being. In the other two great divisions, incident
and description, it is abundantly furnished. And, above all, the two
great Romantic motives, Adventure and Love, are quite maturely present
in it.

To pass to the deluge, and beyond it, and to come to close quarters with
our proper division, the origin of Romance itself is a very debatable
subject, or rather it is a subject which the wiser mind will hardly care
to debate much. The opinion of the present writer--the result, at least,
of many years' reading and thought--is that it is a result of the