without limitation:  it is not so certain, though vigorous efforts have been made to popularise the others, that even their subjects are clearly known to many people. Captain Singleton (1720), Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack (both 1722) are picaresque romances with tolerably sordid heroes and heroines, but with the style entirely rejuvenated by Defoe’s secret. Roxana (1724), a very puzzling book which is perhaps not entirely his writing, is of the same general class:  the Voyage round the World (1725), the least interesting, but not uninteresting, is exactly what its title imports,—­in other words, the “stuffing” of the Robinson pie without the game.  The Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) approach the historical novel (or at least the similar “stuffing” of that) and have raised curious and probably insoluble questions as to whether they are inventions at all—­questions intimately connected with that general one referred to above.  One or two minor things are sometimes added to the list:  but they require no special notice.  The seven books just mentioned are Defoe’s contribution to the English novel.  Let us consider the quality of this contribution first—­and then the means used to attain it.

Their novel-quality (which, as has been hinted, has not been claimed so loudly or so steadily as it should have been for Defoe) is the quality of Story-Interest—­and this, one dares say, he not only infused for the first time in full dose, but practically introduced into the English novel, putting the best of the old mediaeval romances aside and also putting aside The Pilgrim’s Progress, which is not likely to have been without influence on himself.  It may be said, “Oh! but the Amadis romances, and the Elizabethan novels, and the ‘heroics’ must have interested or they would not have been read.”  This looks plausible, but is a mistake.  Few people who have not studied the history of criticism know the respectable reluctance to be pleased with literature which distinguished mankind till very recent times; and which in fact kept the novel back or was itself maintained by the absence of the novel.  In life people pleased themselves irregularly enough:  in literature they could not get out of the idea that they ought to be instructed, that it was enough to be instructed, and that it was discreditable to ask for more.  Even the poet was allowed to delight grudgingly and at his peril; was suspected because he did delight, and had to pay a sort of heavy licence-duty for it, in the shape of concomitant instruction to others and good behaviour in himself.  In fact he was a publican who was bound to serve stodgy food as well as exhilarating drink.