Elizabethan when the ability (or inclination) to read is not general, when
men are dominated by the zest for action, and when cities have become
sufficiently large to keep the theaters well filled. It is also the natural
form in such a period as that of the Restoration, when literary life
centers about a frivolous upper class who demand an easy and social form of
entertainment. But the condition is very different when, as in the
eighteenth and still more in the nineteenth century, the habit of reading,
and some recognition of its educating influence, had spread throughout
almost all classes and throughout the country, creating a public far too
large, too scattered, and too varied to gain access to the London and
provincial theaters or to find all their needs supplied by a somewhat
artificial literary form. The novel, on the other hand, gives a much fuller
portrayal of life than does the drama, and allows the much more detailed
analysis of characters and situations which the modern mind has come more
and more to demand.

The novel, which for our present purpose must be taken to include the
romance, is, of course, only a particular and highly developed kind of long
story, one of the latest members of the family of fiction, or the larger
family of narrative, in prose and verse. The medieval romances, for
example, included most of the elements of the novel, even, sometimes,
psychological analysis; but the romances usually lacked the unity, the
complex and careful structure, the thorough portrayal of character, and the
serious attention to the real problems of life which in a general way
distinguish the modern novel. Much the same is true of the Elizabethan
'novels,' which, besides, were generally short as well as of small
intellectual and ethical caliber. During the Restoration period and a
little later there began to appear several kinds of works which perhaps
looked more definitely toward the later novel. Bunyan's religious
allegories may likely enough have had a real influence on it, and there