No investigator of the expressed theory of pre-Richardsonian fiction need labor long before he discovers that all the declared aims of writers of prose fiction may probably be reduced to five: desire to entertain the reader, to edify him, to impart information to him, to depict life for him, to arouse his emotions. Gradually, however, if the student analyze these intentions, he will become aware of what might be called a sixth expressed aim—the conscious effort of an author to gain the implicit credence of the reader. Yet this effort is so much more than a mere expressed aim that it is perhaps best described as a striving toward a crude form of realism. As such, and in its effect upon both content and structure of nearly all types of early fiction, it merits close study. And nothing save quotation upon quotation can indicate the hold upon pre-Richardsonian fiction of this effort to force belief—so the movement may well be termed. For the phrase, “conscious effort,” does not here imply any consideration of such points as the grave, matter-of-fact tone of Robinson Crusoe or the carefully-maintained scale of measurement in Gulliver's Travels. Only direct remarks in prefaces—only deliberate interpolations of theory into the body of a narrative—will here be used as evidence.