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.