Finally, the importance of the Morrell narratives may be seen in terms of the realistic fiction that was to achieve fulfillment in the eighteenth-century novel. The clear presence of fictional elaboration, in _The Notorious Impostor_, caught the attention of both Frank Wadleigh Chandler and Ernest Bernbaum.[9] Elkanah Settle thus rightly belongs with writers, like Francis Kirkman, who masked fiction as the truth. Historians of the novel, moreover, attach significance to _The Notorious Impostor_ in its resemblance to the novels of Defoe, Mrs. Heywood, and Smollett. Only the claim of influence on Smollett's _Ferdinand Count Fatham_ has been investigated to any extent. In a full analysis of Smollett's novel, Chandler's strong statement will have to be taken into account: "The resemblance, indeed, between the two anti-heroes and the terms in which the accounts of their cheating are couched is so strong as to suggest actual borrowing on the part of Smollett."[10] Spiro Peterson Miami University Oxford, Ohio Since writing the above, I have been informed by G. F. Osborn, archivist of the City of Westminster Public Libraries, that the registers of St. Clement Danes, in his keeping, have the following entry under 12 January 169-1/2: "William Morrell alias Bowier a man bur[ied] poor." Notes to the Introduction [1] See F. C. Brown, _Elkanah Settle: His Life and Works_ (1910), pp. 22, 29, 127. [2] _The Life and Times of Anthony Wood_, ed. Andrew Clark (1892), II, 48-49. [3] _Games and Gamesters of the Restoration_, ed. Cyril Hughes Hartmann (The English Library, 1930), pp. 123-137. [4] E.g. Alfred Beasley's in _The History of Banbury_ (1841), pp. 448-492, and G. T. Crook's in _The Complete Newgate Calendar_ (1926), pp. 117-124. [5] The text of _The Compleat Memoirs_ is indeed a composite. Paragraph one of p. 1 unites a paragraph from p. 1 of Part One and a paragraph from pp. 34-35 of Part Two; pp. 1-27 are the same as pp. 5-27 of Part One; pp. 27-46: pp. 2-21 of Part Two; pp. 46-50: pp. 27-29 of Part One; pp. 50-57: pp. 22-29 of Part Two; pp. 57-65: pp. 30-36 of Part One; pp. 66-71: pp. 29-36 of Part Two. [6] _The Post Boy_ advertised _The Compleat Memoirs_ from February 17 to April 23, 1698. See also W. Carew Hazlitt (_Bibliographical Collections_, Third Series, p. 229) for a description of a copy dated 1699. [7] Morrell's last impersonation involving the fake will resembles Pantalon's "last Will and Testament" jest in Mabbe's _The Rogue or The Life of Guzman de Alfarache_ (The Tudor Translations, 1924), II, 184-186.