The bond of union between the tavern tale and the story of modern fiction is not difficult to detect. The tavern tale is the confidential narrative of the unpretentious traveller to his handful of uncritical common people whose instincts are primitive and whose primary desire is for amusement: the story of modern fiction is the confidential narrative of the author to a single ordinary or average reader, who sits down in the privacy of his closet to be amused and instructed--chiefly amused. The style required in both cases is personal, familiar, and conversational. Formality is thrown aside, and unrestrained by any critical audience or the presence of a judge of mature mind and high appreciation, both tale-teller and story-writer speak freely of the privacy of life, and of its most sacred secrets as well as its most hidden vices. Such a medium is very far from the lofty dignity of poetry; yet it is perhaps the only truly democratic form of literary art. As we have seen, the modern novel was at first nothing more than an almost verbatim report of the tavern tale-teller’s narrative. Then, in Richardson and Fielding, we find the same kind of gossip invented by the author and set forth with a trifle more fancy and imagination, as it is done in letters. The powers of the prose essay invented by Addison and his fellows were soon added to the style of the novel, an early illustration of which we may find in Goldsmith’s _Vicar of Wakefield_. Scott gave the novel the dignity and romantic interest of history--history made human and therefore turned into true literature. Dickens added the sentimental, poetic style of the ballad, and Thackeray the teaching of the familiar homily.[1] In the stories of Hawthorne we see what the ancient fable and allegory contributed to the modern fictitious phantasy. In Balzac for the first time we discover any attempt to make fiction the vehicle for the broad national drama which Homer gave us in his epic poems. In Poe we find the beginnings of an application of dramatic principles to the construction of the short story, and in this very small field Maupassant brought the art of dramatic construction well nigh to perfection. We may imagine that a novel ought to be as complete and perfectly constructed a drama as one of Shakspere’s plays; but the fact that we find no such novels suggests that fiction as an art is yet incomplete and not fully matured. The origin of fiction was very low; but it was an origin very near to the common people, and so to the simple and natural instincts of all of us. With this broad foundation the possibilities of development are enormous, and we may reasonably hope that some day the novel will take a place in literary art that is much above that of the epic poem or even the poetic drama. It is not hampered by the mechanical limitations of either of these, and the variety and literary opportunity which characterize it are the possession of fiction alone.