¹ V. for a discussion of these aims an article of mine upon The Expressed Aims of the Long Prose Fiction in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, July, 1912. In both of these articles prose fiction alone is considered.

¹ In conversation within fictions such remarks appear earlier; can they then be called conscious in the sense that a preface can? V. p. 11 of Firenzuola's L'Asino d'Oro, ed. Parma, 1889: “And, having turned to the other, I added: ‘And you who with dull ear and obstinate heart refuse to give credence to that which is per-adventure most true, do you not know that through bad custom those things are usually adjudged untrue, which either are seldom heard, or are difficult to see, or surpass the feeble powers of our understanding?‘”

¹ Though the names which I have chosen to designate types of fiction before 1740 are in general clear, it may be well to append a classification which I have based upon authors' own statements. I recognize, then, the romance, the realistic fiction, the voyage imaginaire, the chronique scandaleuse, the frame-work conte de fée, and the letter-novel as the six great types of pre-Richardsonian fiction. The romance I further subdivide into the following seven species: chivalric, pastoral, allegorical, religious, heroico-historical, informational-conversational, satirical. The realistic fictions I class thus: the picaresque tale, the novel of manners, the historical novel, and the psychological novel. V. again my article referred to in note to p. 213.

¹ Cf. Preschac's L'Illustre Parisienne (1679; translated by Mrs. Haywood as The Disguised Prince, 1726): “contain only matters of fact, and have, indeed, something so very surprising in themselves, that they stand not in need of any embellishments from fiction”: and Prévost's Manon Lescaut: “I must advise the reader that I have written his history almost as soon as I heard it, and that one can be assured in consequence that nothing is more exact and faithful than this narration.”

¹ In the prose Merlin the phrases “as the story rehearseth,” “so saith the book,” or “Blaise wrote in his book” occur 76 times. In the Palmerin d'Ingleterra (Southey's translation, Vol. iv, p. 429) occurs a long list of authorities, e. g., Joannes de Esbrec, Jaymes Brut, and Anrico Frustro; cf. Vol. i, p. 307; iii, 64. V. also Helyas, pp. 23; 65; 105; 149; Robert the Devil, p. 8; 51; Greene's Menaphon (Works, Vol. vi, pp. 91; 116) and Perimedes (Works, Vol. vii, pp. 11; 13); Lodge's Robert the Devil, preface and pp. 10; 24. The persistence of the movement is seen best in Polexandre, ed. 1632, Vol. ii, p. 969. Gomberville also devotes a long appendix at the close of Pt. V of the 1637 ed. to arraying his authorities. He defends the use of an invisible island by references, more or less extended, to Ptolemy, Juan de Mendoc (History of China, Pt. III, Bk. 3), Bercius, and others; Diodorus Siculus is transcribed verbatim; and Lopez is severely censured for the incredulity expressed in his History of the West Indies, Bk. xvi, ch. 28.

¹ A list follows, wherein we read the names of Heraclitus, Xenophon, Mersenne, Gilbert, Helvetius, and Gassendi.

² “The principal ones are de Thou, Aubigné, Brantôme, Cabrera, Camprana, Adriani, Natalis Comes, Duplex, Mathieu Mayerne, Mèzerai, le Labourent sur Castelnau, Strada, Meteren, l'Historien de dom Juan d'Autriche, les Éloges du P. Hilarion de Cosse, un livre Espagnol des dits et faits Héroïques de Philippe II, une relation de la mort et des obsequies de son fils … There is in addition citation from divers pieces serving for history, as many in manuscript as printed. Among others from a little book in verse, entitled Diogenes, which treats this matter profoundly, and from a manuscript of Monsieur de Peyrèse, expressly upon this subject. Nevertheless, for the greatest satisfaction of readers, one has put at the margin of the most singular passages … the principal authors from which they have been drawn.”

¹ Breton (Le Roman au 18ème Siècle, p. 115) speaks of the preface to Clèveland as being unnecessary because the characters are so real. Despite the truth of this remark from a modern point of view, there is much in the book that could not be accounted for, were it not for the feeling which underlay Prévost's preface.

¹ Photius, Bibliotheca, ed. Bekker, Vol. i, p. 111: “These things Dinias related to Cymba, and taking cypress tablets he exhorted the Athenian Erasinides to write down the things, following closely after Cymba; he was a word-artist. And he introduced to them Dercyllis; and she also brought cypress tablets. And he instructed Cymba rightly to inscribe all the things discoursed of, and himself to keep one of the tablets, and Dercyllis he instructed that at the time he died she place the other enclosed in a coffer near his tomb.

“Diogenes Antonius, introducing Dinias discoursing of all these things to Cymba, nevertheless writes to Faustina that he put together Of the Wonders Beyond Thule, and that he dedicates the romance () to his sister Isidora. And he says … that if he invents marvels and lies, at least he has for the greater part of the tales related by him the testimony of the ancients. And he ranges for each book the men who fathered these things, so that the lies shall not seem to lack authority. And at the beginning of the book he writes an epistle to his sister Isidora … yet he introduces one Balagron writing to his wife Phila that at the capture of Tyre by Alexander … a soldier came to Alexander, saying that he would disclose a thing strange and marvelous, and that the wonder was outside of the city. The king taking with him Hephaestion and Parmenion followed the soldier and they discovered stone coffers under the earth, on which were written [here is detailed a list of the descendants of the characters of the romance] … Passing by these they came near a wall to a small coffer of cypress-wood, on which was inscribed ‘O stranger, whoever you are, open this in order that you may learn what will amaze you.‘ Those with Alexander, opening the coffer, find the cypress tablets which (as it seems) Dercyllis placed there at the command of Dinias. He (Diogenes Antonius) introduces Balagron writing to his wife in order that, having written about the tablets, he might send them to his wife. And for the rest the story passes to the recognition and translation () of the tablets.”

¹ It should be noted that the Du Vray et Parfaict Amour is regarded even so late as 1670 (V. Huet's L'Origine des Romans) as what it purports to be—a translation from the Greek of Athenagoras. Undoubtedly the Sergas de Esplandian exercised vast influence; for Herberay transcribed the preface in his translation of 1540. The Spanish runs: “the Sergas de Esplandian, his son [Amadis's], which until now has not been seen, and which was found in a stone tomb under the ground in a hermitage near Constantinople, and which was thence brought by a Hungarian merchant to these parts of Spain, in letter and on parchment so antique that only through much labor could it be read by those who knew the language.” Of later prefaces the most worthy of study are those to Jaques Sadeur, the Persian Tales, the Turkish Tales, the Peruvian Tales, the Soirées Bretonnes, the Lettres Persanes, Defoe's Avery, Moll Flanders, and Roxana, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Desfontaines's Nouveau Gulliver, the English Hermit, Gaudentio de Lucca, Marianne, Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité, Clèveland, Le Doyen de Killerine. The Turkish Spy, though scarcely a fiction in any sense, has a most interesting preface—which grows in various translations!

¹ The changes upon the finding of the ms., the condition of the papers that compose it, and the clever account of how the ms. passes from hand to hand must be read in order to be appreciated. The work is an important document in the “return to nature” movement. What is of importance here, however, is that preface and narrative are practically one, and must be read together. The editor, it seems, is a friend of Signor Rhédi, Librarian of St. Mark's at Venice, who one day in return for a service rendered him by the editor displays a unique literary treasure—the ms. of a confession made before the Inquisition at Bologna by one Gaudentio de Lucca. This ms. the librarian had previously received in recompense for a gift made by him to Ivorio, Secretary of the Inquisition at Bologna. The letter accompanying the gift of the ms. is fully transcribed. In addition to all this matter, there is a large amount of extremely vivacious and circumstantial detail concerning the appearance, character, and secret trial of Gaudentio. Finally, we meet the ms. Given, as has been said, in the form of a confession before the Inquisition, it has, as a result, a peculiar method of narration. Sometimes it proceeds in the form of direct autobiography; sometimes through the medium of questions by the Grand Inquisitor—questions so ingeniously worded that the answers are amplifications of a recital the “confessee” wishes to hasten; sometimes, finally, in the shape of explanatory notes by Rhédi (who represents pretty well a doubting reader). These notes comprise about 21 pages out of 215, and are three times “renoted” by the English editor. Missing portions of the ms., here and there, are ascribed to the negligence of customs house officials at Marseilles. The ms. closes with an addendum by Ivorio to the effect that Lucca is to be freed, on condition of leading missionaries to the ideal republic, Mezzorania!

¹ Cf. Histoire Secrète d'Henri IV (1664): “I have been assured that this history was found with some others of the same nature among the papers of an illustrious dame who died a year or two ago.” In this particular instance the chief proofs seem to be letters, of which some are inserted in the text, and about 43 printed in an appendix. V. also the prefaces to Sandras's Rochefort (1691), Colbert (1694), d'Artagnan (1700), and Montbrun (1703). The Memoirs of d'Artagnan was that source of the Trois Mousquetaires which Dumas supposed to be genuine.

¹ The Journey to the Moon (169?) may be by Defoe. If so, he began in quite another fashion than that indicated by the Storm (1704). The preface begins with a rejection of “truth-telling,” and sneers at the geese of Gonzales (1638). The writer of this Journey “fix'd” himself “upon an high mountain at the time of the Full-Moon,” and turned his thoughts “wholly upon that globe” so as to “subtract them” from his own. Presently he found his “imagination drawn in a direct line to the world in the moon, and so left the machine of” his body “in a sound repose.” He “almost instantly arrived” at the “desired post.” It is interesting that Mr. H. G. Wells in A Modern Utopia uses the same idea.

¹ V. the opening of Bk. iii, Vol. 1 of the Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité, where the close of the Comte de Rosambert's story is summarized, because the memoirs of that lord are already before the public in complete form.

² Travels of Marco Polo, ed. by Wright, p. 25: “The foregoing narrative may be considered as a preliminary chapter, the object of which is to make the reader acquainted with the opportunities Marco Polo had of acquiring a knowledge. …”

³ V. in the preface the letter from Giles to Buslyde; the twice-expressed anxiety to recall every detail; the debate concerning the bridge of Amaurote; the puzzling over the rights of publication; the prevention of any answer to the query, “Where is Utopia?” through the interruption of the questioner, once by the entrance of a servant, and once by a fit of coughing; the translation of some Utopian verse; and the subjoining to the book of a Utopian alphabet.

¹ A reason is given for this license: that travelers must repeat tales to satisfy the curious. In the preface to the Sevarambians Swift's suggestion that explorers be “sworn” is forestalled.

² Less quoted is the solemn preface to Robinson Crusoe, Pt. III, ed. 1720: “I, Robinson Crusoe, being at this time in perfect and sound mind and memory, thanks be to God therefor, do hereby declare … that the story, though allegorical, is also historical.” Lemuel Gulliver in the signed edition of 1727 cries out against “alterations and insertions to compliment the memory of her late Majesty”; v. also Gulliver's elaborate defense for not having reported his discoveries to the government (pp. 274-275).

³ Travels of Marco Polo, ed. Wright, p. 429.

¹ An idea as old at least as the Decameron. In the proemio, pp. 16-17, Boccaccio (ed. 1880, Firenze), writes: “the names of whom I should give truly, if a just reason did not keep me from saying them—which is this,—that I do not wish that, through the matters which follow, recounted and heard of them, any of them in time to come may be shamed.” Again, in the Fiammetta, the heroine says (p. 36): “And in truth still my forces endure to such an extent that, although I write most true matters, under such an order have I disposed them that, save for him who knows them as I, being the cause of all, no one, however acute understanding he have, will be able to know who I am.” Greene has a similar remark about Roberto in Never Too Late (Works, Vol. viii, p. 33). The Mémoires de la Vie du Comte D … (1696), even though “the author proposes in no way to make known those of whom he speaks,” have to be re-edited, we are told, “because he has often failed of this precaution.” As a result, the editor (is it really, as the title-page declares, St. Évremond?) “has been obliged to change” ranks, dates, etc. “more than once.” Cf. further, the following passage (Vol. i, p. 136): “The precautions which I take in writing these memoirs, in order not to reveal who I am, keep me from giving here the detail of an action which distinguished me in the battle.” V. also ibid., Vol. i, p. 250; ii, p. 85; and the Mémoires de la Contesse de M … (1697), p. 47.

² Typically “Bandellian” is the dedication to the 51st novella of the Novelle, Pt. I: “Marvellous, indeed, are the chances which befall out of the ordinary course of our daily way of life, and oftentimes, whenas we read them, they move us to wonderment … wherefore … I have chosen to send it to you [Fanzino delle Torre] who went to speak with the lady in question ere she died.”

¹ “The only fault I find is that the author, after the manner of travelers, is a little too circumstantial.” Swift adds that, had he left the ms. with all its minutiae in regard to soundings, etc., it would have been twice the length it is.

¹ The preface to the Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell (1720) indicates intricacies of this movement which I have not ventured to impose upon the reader. One bit is delicious. The quack Campbell is made to call his “editor” [Defoe] a “good old gentleman.”

² Doubtless to these should be added a love of mystification, and an urgent desire to avoid peril (many French works are from Dutch and English presses). But such purposes are never expressed.

¹ V. the article referred to in note to p. 213.

² V. dedication to novella 51 of Pt. I.

³ Histoires Tragiques, épistre to Vol. iv. In France and in England this motive was made to subserve the introduction into Italian novelle of the most grievous obscenities. Cf. the treatment by Bandello, Belleforêt, and Fenton of the tale of Cardenio and Plaudina.

¹ Letters to His Son, No. lxvi.

² Sandras in La Guerre de Holland (1687) “aims to improve upon history in giving the secret affairs of the cabinets”—said cabinets being manipulated by the “mistresses” of the king, etc. Mme. d'Aulnoy writes of her Mémoires de la Cour d'Espagne (1691): “It is not in general histories that one learns particularities.”

¹ Novella 5, Day IX. But v. also p. 230, note 1.

² Vol. ii, p. 191.

¹ V. p. 222, note 1.

² Tudor Translations (Rabelais by Urquhart, Vol. i, p. 26).

¹ Ibid., Vol. i, p. 199.

² Don Quixote, ed. 1605, p. 128.

³ Of course the long romances did not expect to be genuinely believed. E. g., the preface to the German Amadis of 1569 contains: “Other critics are found, who although they do not entirely reject such works and handle them more courteously, … yet, because these contain fables and imaginative material (Fabeln und erfundue Sachen), …” So the Spanish Amadis of 1579, side by side with the tale of the “ms.” containing the Sergas de Esplandian, has such passages as the following: “But such blows as these we may attribute more to the writers [of romances] than as having passed in very truth.” A distinction is also drawn between patrañas and crónicas, and the Amadis ranked as a patraña.

¹ V. p. 226 for a quotation from the Mémoires de la Comtesse de M … Sandras, prefacing the Marquis de Montbrun, speaks of unveracious memoirs, and adds that he knows some. But he is not ironically referring to his own works.

² Expressions of indifference (real or assumed) are not especially rare, even before 1670. Still, the tone of most such prefaces is different from that after 1728. The author of the Tombeau des Romans (1626) also does not seem especially to mean his thirty-page discussion (pp. 51-81) of the folly of demanding truth from fiction. Some of the more significant prefaces are those to Sorel's L'Orphize de Chrysante (1618), the Voyage to the World of Cartesius (1692), Mrs. Aubin's Comte de Vinevil (1719) and Life of Madame Beaumont (1721), Mrs. Barker's Exilius (1715), the Adventures of Abdallah, Son of Hanif (1712). Sorel writes: “Do not seek whether this book is ancient or modern, whether it has been translated from Greek into French, whether the histories are false or true, whether it is assuredly an Athenian that has made it, and what author is this Chrysante, of whom you have never heard.” Daniel (if Daniel wrote the Voyage to the World of Cartesius) is the boldest of the group; he admires Lucian's “I lie,” but admits that such a stand is not to be taken in his own day—wherefore he will strive for vraisemblance at least. The Comte de Vinevil is thus prefaced: “As for the truth of what this narrative contains, since Robinson Crusoe has been so well received, which is more improbable, I know no reason why this should be thought a fiction.” Of the Life of Madame de Beaumont we read: “I'll not give myself much trouble to clear their doubts about this.” Before Exilius Mrs. Barker explains: “As to the historical part, I suppose the reader does not expect much exactness, it being a romance, not a history; so it matters not who, or who, were contemporaries.” It should, perhaps, be noted that Defoe's prefaces to Captain Avery and to Colonel Jacques are mildly indifferent … Cf., however, with any one of these comments the preface to Desfontaines's Mémoires de Madame de Barneveldt (1632): “One would perhaps wish that I should render account of the manner in which these memoirs have fallen into my hands. That is what ordinarily editors do. … As for me, on the contrary, I should fear unseasonably to search for praise, should I tell the truth upon this point. The public will believe what it judges proper.” V. also that to Lamekis (1735), which leaves the public to judge of “events so singular and extraordinary”; that to the Comte de Meilcœur (1735): “whether one ought to regard them purely as a work of imagination, or whether the adventures which they contain are real …”; and, finally, the splendidly mocking preface of Tanzai et Néadarné (1734).

¹ Non-fictionists apparently believed in the imagination. Sidney the critic might be cited with this from the Defense of Poesie (Cassell, 1900, p. 83):“ the poet citeth not authorities of other's histories, but ever for his entry calleth the sweet muses to inspire him a good invention”; or this (p. 26): “Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature; in making things either Better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew … freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit.” The definitions of romance, too, emphasize imagination. Richelet's definition in 1680 begins: “today a roman is a fiction which consists of some amorous adventure written in prose. …” Phillips, in 1658, has: “a feigned story about amorous adventures or warlike achievements. …” It is noteworthy, also, that Huet says in his L'Origine des Romans (1670), p. 9: “Romances” are not only sometimes “false in the gross and true in some particulars,” but “may be altogether false in the whole, and every particular.”

¹ Tudor Translations (Shelton's Don Quixote, Vol. i, pp. 228-231; 148; Vol. ii, 239; 433-434; Vol. iii, 21; 51; 74; 133; 137; Vol. iv, 18).

² In Polixène (1622). On the pastoral romance v. p. 239, note 1, on Sidney—though the Arcadia has references to chronicles. The pastoral romance from Sannazaro onward held as its main theory that its characters were men and women of the day, disguised as shepherds and shepherdesses. V. the prefaces to Montemôr's Diana, Cervantes's Galatea, and d'Urfé's l'Astrée.

³ Barclay's Argents intendedly mingles history and fiction (v. pp. 129-131 of Kingsmill Long's translation of 1636), as does Gombauld's Endymion (1624), d'Aubignac's Macarise (1664), etc. The Nova Solyma (1648) states its theory thus (Begley's tr., Vol. 1, p. 300): “the scene of the tale is laid here in Nova Solyma … but whether the work is fact or fiction is a minor point compared with the intention of the book—that is to say, the right ordering of a Christian's life.”

¹ Pt. VIII. The conversation is also to be found verbatim in Conversations sur divers Sujets, Amsterdam, 1685. Von Waldberg, Der Empfindsame Roman in Frankreich, p. 188, goes far astray in all his conjectures, based upon the assigning of this conversation to 1685 and not to 1654. V. for another expression of Scudérian theory Clélie, Pt. iii, pp. 1378-1384, ed. 1660.

¹ P. 157 (ed. 1709). V. p. 216 for quotation from the Roman Bourgeois. Cf. the preface to Kirkmann's Unlucky Citizen (1673), and p. 171 of Mrs. Behn's Oroonoko (Works, Vol. i).

¹ Yonge's translation, p. 333.

² P. 157.

³ V. especially the Roman Bourgeois, Pt. I, p. 85; Pt. II, p. 280.

⁴ Cotterell's translation, p. 84.

⁵ Vol. i, p. 291. The hero of Jaques Sadeur knows the fates of the parents whom he was too young to remember, because he has “received a Memoir from a Father Jesuit of Lisbon.” Cf. the opening of Marianne. In Clélie the Carte de Tendre is accounted for as “having been copied down,” and “letters” are “so vivid as to be remembered exactly.” The whole theory is thus neatly put for the voyage imaginaire in Macaria (1641): “You travellers must take heed of two things principally in your relations; first, that you say nothing that is generally deemed impossible; secondly, that your relation hath no contradiction in it, or else all men will think you make use of the travellers' privilege, to wit, to lie by authority.” It is curious that after 1728 a revolt is raised against consistency. Thus Le Nouveau Gulliver has: “As the fictions of this work are less singular and daring [than Swift's], it ought to cost less effort to come to the goal of imposing.” Prévost before Clèveland is more explicit: “Verisimilitude is not a badge of truth.”

¹ From 1670-1740 the “mournful ending” was much in fashion—a fact that causes me to regard the remarks at the close of Marianne as a deliberate revolt toward the happy ending as more realistic.

¹ V. for an analysis of an ideal heroine of romance Faramond, Pt. III, Bk. iii, p. 383.

² In 1641 the Italian romance Coloandro Infidele was so severely criticised for the disloyalty of the hero that in the second edition the infidelity is made but a lapse of faith, and all ends happily. The change by 1728 is clear in the opening of Pt. viii of Marianne, where fidelity is questioned as being even possible! As for the chronique scandaleuse—infandum. The curious reader should see p. 163 of Lenglet-Dufresnoy's L'Usage des Romans (1734).

³ Valuable as forcing the portrayal of minor characters; injurious, it is true, from the point of view of structure. V. the opening of Scarron's Roman Comique.

¹ V. the preface to Gerzan's Histoire Afriquaine (1627) and Baudoin's Histoire Négropontique (1632).

² Davies's translation, p. 25.

¹ Die Geschichte des Französischen Romans im 17ten Jahrhundert, Pt. ii, p. 136.

² V. p. 242, note 1.

¹ The full force of the change is seen in the preface to Ffloyd's translation of the Peruvian Tales (1736): “In laying the scene of a romance, the geography of the country must be as well preserved and as nicely written as if the adventures represented thereon had really happened.” Maps, apparently first introduced into fiction in Mundus Alter et Idem (1608), were soon made subservient to the effort to force belief.

² The results of Sorel's diatribes are very plain in the sudden attention of the romancers to accurate costuming, etc. The theory is neatly put in the preface to Ibrahim (1641), though Camus and Gerzan had preceded Mlle. Scudéry in outlining a general scheme.

¹ I. e., the grandiose style peculiar to romances.

² The Oriental tales are not really gorgeous, with the exception of the partly genuine Persian and Turkish Tales. Montesquieu revolts thus before the Lettres Persanes: “I have relieved the reader, as much as I could, from the Asiatic style, and have exonerated him from the trouble of an infinite number of sublime and elevated expressions … I have retrenched those long compliments. …”

³ Prévost writes before the Doyen de Killerine: “If the wish to be truthful does not communicate to me beauty of imagination, which is a gift of nature, and the graces of style, which are ordinarily the results of art, it will render me sincere in my recital, modest in my expressions…” Cf. the prefaces to Defoe's Memoirs of an English Officer, “not set forth by any fictitious stories, nor embellished with rhetorical flourishes; plain truth is certainly most becoming an old soldier,” and to Jackson's Recantation (1675).

¹ P. 26 (1720 ed.). Cf. Mrs. Manley's Court Intrigues (1711), p. 137; the opening of Marianne; the preface to Les Aventures de … (1712). In Boursault's Lettres d'une Dame à un Cavalier (167?), we read: “my dear child, your words seem too well arranged to be sincere. My love voices itself more naturally than yours. …” (Letter vii).

² Connected with this general movement are the bad grammar of Vollichon in the Roman Bourgeois; the dialect in Deloney's Jacke of Newbery (159?); the lisping of Mazarin in Sandras's Coligny (1686); the Gasconese in the Baron du Foeneste (1641), etc.