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Rh little girls are learning now, that the earliest English novel dates mistily from the earliest English history, and that there is no such thing as a firm starting-point for their uncertain feet to gain. Long, long before Lodge's "Rosalynde" led the way for Shakespeare's "Rosalind" to follow, romantic tales were held in such high esteem that people who were fortunate enough to possess them in manuscript—the art of printing not having yet cheapened such precious treasures—left them solemnly by will to their equally fortunate heirs. In 1315, Guy, Earl of Warwick, bequeathed to Bordesley Abbey in Warwickshire his entire library of thirty-nine volumes, which consisted almost exclusively, like the library of a modern young lady, of stories, such as the "Romaunce de Troies," and the "Romaunce d'Alisaundre." In 1426, Thomas, Duke of Exeter, left to his sister Joan a single book, perhaps the only one he possessed, and this too was a romance on that immortal knight and lover, Tristram.

Earlier even than Thomas of Exeter's day, the hardy barons of England had discovered that when they were "fested and fed," they