The novel, then, had to wait for the drama's decline, but there was
literary story-telling long before that. There were mediaeval romances
in prose and verse; Renaissance pastoral tales, and stories of
adventure; collections, plenty of them, of short stories like
Boccaccio's, and those in Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_. But none of
these, not even romances which deal in moral and sententious advice like
_Euphues_, approach the essence of the novel as we know it. They are all
(except _Euphues_, which is simply a framework of travel for a book of
aphorisms) simple and objective; they set forth incidents or series of
incidents; long or short they are anecdotes only--they take no account
of character. It was impossible we should have the novel as distinct
from the tale, till stories acquired a subjective interest for us; till
we began to think about character and to look at actions not only
outwardly, but within at their springs.
As has been stated early in this book, it was in the seventeenth century
that this interest in character was first wakened. Shakespeare had
brought to the drama, which before him was concerned with actions viewed
outwardly, a psychological interest; he had taught that "character is
destiny," and that men's actions and fates spring not from outward
agencies, but from within in their own souls.
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