With the Coverley essays in the _Spectator_, the novel in one of its forms--that in which an invisible and all knowing narrator tells a story in which some one else whose character he lays bare for us is the hero--is as good as achieved.
Another manner of fiction--the autobiographical--had already been invented.

It grew directly out of the public interest in autobiography, and particularly in the tales of their voyages which the discoverers wrote and published on their return from their adventures.

Its establishment in literature was the work of two authors, Bunyan and Defoe.

The books of Bunyan, whether they are told in the first person or no, are and were meant to be autobiographical; their interest is a subjective interest.

Here is a man who endeavours to interest you, not in the character of some other person he has imagined or observed, but in himself.