Chapter 5

The _Arcadia_, and the same may be said of the Elizabethan novel generally, shows its near relationship to poetry in both ways, in its style and in the purely imaginative nature of the story, the characters, and the life depicted. In the introduction to Defoe’s _Roxana_ and _Moll Flanders_, published in this series, I compared the opening of Defoe’s stories, _Robinson Crusoe_, for instance, so definite as to time and place, so particular in the mention of names and the exact circumstances in which the events occur,…