The Novel.—­Those who have the time to study the beginnings of the novel will be interested in reading, Guy, Earl of Warwick (Morley’s Early Prose Romances) or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Retold in Modern Prose, with Introduction and Notes, by Jessie L. Weston (London:  David Nutt, two shillings).

Two Elizabethan novels:  Lodge’s Rosalynde (the original of Shakespeare’s As You Like It) and Greene’s Pandosto (the original of The Winter’s Tale) are published in The Shakespeare Classics, edited by Gollancz (Duffield & Company, New York, $1 each). Pandosto may be found at the end of the Cassell National Library edition of The Winter’s Tale (15 cents).  Selections from Lodge’s Rosalynde are given in Craik, I., 544-549.  These should be compared with the parallel parts of As You Like It.  Selections from Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller are given in Craik, I., 573-576, and selections from Sidney’s Arcadia in the same volume, pp. 409-419.  Deloney’s The Gentle Craft and Jack of Newberry are given in his Works, edited by Mann (Clarendon Press).

For the preliminary sketching of characters that might serve as types in fiction, read The Spectator, No. 2, by Steele.  Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe will be read entire by almost every one.

In Craik, IV., read the following selections from these four great novelists of the middle of the eighteenth century; from Richardson, pp. 59-66; from Fielding, pp. 118-125; from Sterne, pp. 213-219; and from Smollett, pp. 261-264 and 269-272.  Manly, II., has brief selections.

Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield should be read entire by the student (Eclectic English Classics, or Gateway Series, American Book Company).  Selections may be found in Craik, IV., 365-370.

Sketch the general lines of development in fiction, from the early romance to Smollett.  What type of fiction did Don Quixote ridicule?  Compare Greene’s Pandosto with Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, and Lodge’s Rosalynde with As You Like It.  In what relation do Steele, Addison, and Defoe stand to the novel?  Why is the modern novel said to begin with Richardson?

Philosophy.—­Two selections from Berkeley in Craik, IV., 34-39, give some of that philosopher’s subtle metaphysics.  The same volume, pp. 189-195, gives a selection from Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature.  Try stating in your own words the substance of these selections.

Gibbon.—­Read Aurelian’s campaign against Zenobia, which constitutes the last third of Chap.  XI. of the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  Other selections may be found in Craik, IV., 460-472; Century, 453-462.

What is the special merit of Gibbon’s work?  What period does he cover?  Compare his style, either in description or in narration, with Bunyan’s.