One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name.

1A Royal Crescent has been the subject of a complete restoration and renovation programme by the Bath Preservation Trust during 2012 to reincorporate it into 1 Royal Crescent of which it was the original servants' quarters. 1910); also The Later Nineteenth Century (1909). For ten years he was actively engaged in journalism becoming an important member of the staff of the Saturday Review.