It will be evident from the above brief sketch of the Italian novel that in the sixteenth century the art of novel-writing was nearly identical with the art of narrative. This was fully possessed by most writers of fiction; but characterisation, ingenuity of construction and development of plot, underplot, episode, artful suspension of interest, above all the application of the novelist’s art to weighty purposes, were all in the most rudimentary condition. Compared with the modern novel, the ancient story is as a simple air upon a flute to the complicated harmony of an organ. It is true that the old romances abound with hints and germs only needing development, but development was slow in coming, and even when about the beginning of the eighteenth century romance and novelette had grown into the novel, it was still long before the novel became a vehicle of ideas and a potent factor in civilisation. The reason probably is that while the novel may employ the highest human faculties, it is at the same time the best medium for conveying ideas to the less cultivated orders of society. The extension of reading and writing to these classes has called forth a tribe of readers which had no existence in the days of the Cinque Cento, and has invested the only description of literature which powerfully appeals to them with extraordinary significance. The influence of the novel in the modern sense grows, and will continue to grow; but there is still abundant room for the short and simple story, the consistent development of a single incident or situation, compensating in art for what it lacks in variety, yet, now that human life has become so much richer and more complex than of old, at a further remove from mere anecdote than seemed necessary for its Italian prototype. FOOTNOTES: [16] The Italian style of novel has been imitated in English in _Stories after Nature_, by Charles Wells, author of _Joseph and his Brethren_, with great success, except for Wells’s deficiency in humour, and his employment of a more poetical diction than the Italians would have allowed themselves. CHAPTER XVII THE DRAMA