merry tales such as the old woman told of Psyche in Apuleius, Boccace novels, and the rest, quarum auditione pueri delectantur, senes narratione, which some delight to hear, some to tell, all are well pleased with.
In the broadest sense, any extended fictional narrative, almost always in prose; customarily restricted to narratives in which the representation of character occurs either in a static condition or in the process of development as the result of events or actions; often implies that some organizing principle (plot, theme, idea) should be present
n A short story padded A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting Its distinguishing principle, probability, corresponds to the literal actuality of the photograph and puts it distinctly into the category of reporting; whereas the free wing of the romancer enables him to mount to such altitudes of imagination as he may be fitted to attain; and the first three essentials of the literary art are imagination, imagination and imagination The art of writing novels, such as it was, is long dead everywhere except in Russia, where it is new Peace to its ashes -- some of which have a large sale