In a sudden burst of prolific inventiveness, which can be paralleled in all letters only by the period of Marlowe and Shakespeare, masterpiece after masterpiece poured from the press.

Within two generations, besides Richardson and Fielding came Sterne and Goldsmith and Smollett and Fanny Burney in naturalism, and Horace Walpole and Mrs.Radcliffe in the new way of romance.

Novels by minor authors were published in thousands as well.

The novel, in fact, besides being the occasion of literature of the highest class, attracted by its lucrativeness that under-current of journey-work authorship which had hitherto busied itself in poetry or plays.

Fiction has been its chief occupation ever since.
Anything like a detailed criticism or even a bare narrative of this voluminous literature is plainly impossible without the limits of a single chapter.