One or two minor things are sometimes added to the list: but they require no special notice.

The seven books just mentioned are Defoe's contribution to the English novel.

Let us consider the quality of this contribution first--and then the means used to attain it.
Their novel-quality (which, as has been hinted, has not been claimed so loudly or so steadily as it should have been for Defoe) is the quality of Story-Interest--and this, one dares say, he not only infused for the first time in full dose, but practically introduced into the English novel, putting the best of the old mediaeval romances aside and also putting aside _The Pilgrim's Progress_, which is not likely to have been without influence on himself.

It may be said, "Oh! but the _Amadis_ romances, and the Elizabethan novels, and the 'heroics' must have interested or they would not have been read." This looks plausible, but is a mistake.

Few people who have not studied the history of criticism know the respectable reluctance to be _pleased_ with literature which distinguished mankind till very recent times; and which in fact kept the novel back or was itself maintained by the absence of the novel.