APRIL 12, 1933 ALTHOUGH the realistic novel appeared in England
in the middle of the eighteenth century and within a hundred
years had made great advances in both England and France, it was
not firmly established in the United States until after the
Civil War. Our first three important novelists worked outside
the realistic tradition. Cooper, influenced of course by Scott,
introduced the romantic novel of frontier adventure, fathering a
numerous but undistinguished branch of American fiction.
Hawthorne, though an incomparably greater artist, left no direct
descendants, perhaps because the very perfection of his delicate
and bloodless allegories demonstrated the impossibility of
further progress in that particular direction. Melville, too,
stands alone, not merely our first but our only metaphysical
novelist. The indirect influence of these men has doubtless been
considerable; their direct influence has been slight. For
certainly, whether we consider numbers or distinction, it is the
realistic tradition that h