Since the earliest story-writing of which we have record in the tales of the Egyptian papyri (4000 B. C.?), there have been short fictional narratives in many lands, some of which meet almost every requirement of the short-story form as we now know it. But that every such approach to the short-story was sporadic rather than from intention to conform to a recognized standard is certain because in each case there was shown no progress toward a repetition of the form, but, instead, a reversion to the types common to all short fiction--the straightforward, unplotted chain of incidents which we call the _tale_; the light delineation of some mood, character, or fixed situation, likewise without real plot, which we name the _sketch_; the condensed outline of what might well be expanded into a long story, which we term the _scenario_; and the brief recital of some incident with a point, known as the _anecdote_. With occasional accidental exceptions, as just noted, all the Egyptian tales, Greek and Roman stories, sacred narratives, mediæval tales, legends, and wonder-stories, and modern short fictions down to the first quarter of the nineteenth century, were of these four types. The short-story as a conscious genre was developed in America and in France about the same time, with the weight of opinion favoring Poe as its “inventor.” In 1830 Balzac began a brilliant series of novelettes, almost short-stories, which lack only compression and unity of impression to stamp him and not Poe as the first consistent and conscious producer of the new form. As it is, these remarkable stories are so near to technical perfection (as short-stories, for there can be little adverse criticism upon them as fiction), that he must share with two Americans the distinction of producing little stories which must have helped Poe materially to see the new form in clear constructive vision--I mean Irving and Hawthorne. Prior to 1835--the date of “Berenice,” Poe’s first technically perfect short-story--both Irving and Hawthorne had produced short fictions incomparably in advance of any consistently frequent short narrative work theretofore. Irving’s style was kin to Addison’s essay-stories in the _Spectator_, and even in those altogether admirable tale-short-stories, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the influence of the essay form is quite evident. Hawthorne’s stories were chiefly symbolical tales, up to 1835,[1] or expanded anecdotes done to create a single effect upon the mind. In this they rival the singularly potent unity of Poe’s best work. But shortly Hawthorne turned more and more aside from the short-story to the long symbolical romance, in which he stands without a peer in any land.