THE NOVEL (1) The faculty for telling stories is the oldest artistic faculty in the world, and the deepest implanted in the heart of man.

Before the rudest cave-pictures were scratched on the stone, the story-teller, it is not unreasonable to suppose, was plying his trade.

All early poetry is simply story-telling in verse.

Stories are the first literary interest of the awakening mind of a child.

As that is so, it is strange that the novel, which of all literary ways of story-telling seems closest to the unstudied tale-spinning of talk, should be the late discovery that it is.