A book, which counts here from the time of its appearance, and from a certain oddity and air of "key" about it, rather than from much merit as literature, or any as a story, is the _Adventures of Gaudentio di Lucca_ by Simon Berington.[8] It appeared in 1737, between Defoe and Swift on the earlier, and Richardson on the later side, while the English world was to the novel as an infant crying for the light--and the bottle--at once. It begins and ends with adventures and discoveries of an ordinary romantic type. But the body consists of a revelation to certain Italian Inquisitors (who are not at all of the lurid type familiar to the Protestant imagination, but most equitable and well-disposed as well as potent, grave, and reverend signers) of an unknown country of "the Grand Pophar" in the centre of Africa. This country is civilised, but not yet Christianised: and the description of it of course gives room for the exercise of the familiar game of contrast--in this case not so much satiric as didactic--with countries nearer home which are at least supposed to be both civilised and Christian. It is a "respectable" book both in the French and the English sense: but it is certainly not very amusing, and cannot even be called very interesting in any way, save historically. [8] The not infrequent attribution of this book to Berkeley is a good instance of the general inability to discriminate _style_. The other example which we shall take is of even less intrinsic attraction: in fact it is a very poor thing. There are, however, more ways than one in which _corpora vilia_ are good for experiment and evidence: and we may find useful indications in the mere bookmaking of the time. Lowndes, the fortunate publisher of _Evelina_, some dozen years before that windfall came, had issued, or reissued, a collection called _The Novelist_ and professedly containing _The select novels of Dr. Croxall_ [the ingenious author of _The Fair Circassian_ and the part destroyer of Hereford Cathedral] _and other Polite Tales_. The book is an unblushing if not an actually piratical compilation; sweeping together, with translations and adaptations published by Croxall himself at various times in the second quarter of the century and probably earlier, most of the short stories from the _Spectator_ class of periodical which had appeared during the past two-thirds of a century. Most of the rest are obvious (and very badly done) translations from the French and even from Cervantes' _Exemplary Novels_; seasoned with personal and other anecdotes, so that the whole number of separate articles may exceed four-score. Of these a few are interesting attempts at the historical novel or novelette--short sketches of Mary Queen of Scots (very sympathetic and evidently French in origin from the phrase "a _temple_ which was formerly a church"), Jane Shore (an exquisitely absurd piece of eighteenth-century middle-class modernising and