The practice of telling tales of love and heroism is older than history itself. Ever since men sat about the fire of an evening and recited the deeds of their chieftains or extolled the beauty of their princesses, in other words, ever since the days when poetry first began, stories and tales have been handed down, first by word of mouth, then by carvings and inscriptions and at last by writing and printing. The first fiction was a simple, imaginative invention of adventure, told to pass the time. Æsop's "Fables" and Apuleius's "Story of Cupid and Psyche," ancient as they are, show the progress already made in the art of narration, the one simple and insistent in its purpose of teaching common sense by whimsical anecdotes, the other a delicately artistic legend told with exquisite grace. In "Jewish Literature" the story of Tobit's wonderful adventures at once calls to mind the "Arabian Nights," which were of similar origin, told by professional story-tellers for centuries before they were finally written down and translated for our perpetual delight. =The novel=, a new feature in fiction, shows its first faint beginnings in the tumult and enthusiasm of the Renaissance, that strenuous age of new ideas and discoveries. Cervantes in writing "Don Quixote" had a definite purpose in mind beyond mere entertainment; the passing of the age of chivalry and the pathos and humor of life form the true subject of his tale. Bunyan in the "Pilgrim's Progress" shows the same intent of doing something more than providing interesting reading; the growth of a noble character through struggle and temptation on the journey through life is the central thought of his work. His hero, Christian, changes in character, becoming a stronger, better man as the story goes on. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe goes through much of the same evolution. And this is the underlying principle of the novel, that it has a purpose beyond simple story-telling, possessing a plot or unified succession of incidents, with actors whose characters develop. It is a picture of human life, with strength and weakness, happiness and misery, all bound together and forming a united and well-proportioned whole.