Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/230



novel presents one of the most remarkable examples in literary history of arrested development, and of all departments of literature is perhaps the only one which failed to attain perfection in the hands of the ancients. Great progress is indeed observable from its first artless beginnings under the Pharaohs, so recently recovered for us; but having advanced far along several lines, it becomes stationary upon all. The germ of the picaresque novel is clearly discernible in Petronius, of the novel of adventure in Apuleius, of erotic fiction in Longus; but these examples apparently remain ineffectual. Either the path is not prosecuted at all, or it leads to mere repetition. No new element appears until we encounter the chivalric romance, which in Spain produced an extensive prose literature, but in Italy ran almost entirely to verse. The more elaborate romances of Boccaccio, indeed, disclose influences from this quarter; but their reputation was slight in comparison with those short and familiar tales, commonly founded upon some anecdote and dealing with scenes and personages of real life, which prescribed the form for the national novelette. A more distinctively national type never existed. The extraordinary thing is that the nation never got beyond it. It should have seemed an obvious