Dr. Johnson defines the novel as a tale ‘usually of love’ and there is no doubt that most novels since the Greek romances, have been very full of this passion. In his English Novel during the Time of Shakespeare, M. Jusserand gives some statistics as to the preponderance of fiction in modern English literature. In 1885 there were more books of theology than novels, but novels took the first place in 1887, 1888, 1889. In the last year, 1,040 novels were published. This gives us, at the very least, the stories of 2,080 human hearts; but it would be more fair to multiply the number of novels by nine, allowing for four ‘first lovers’ in each, the villain (generally attached to the heroine), and four unsuccessful adorers, male or female. Thus the year 1889 may have provided about 8,000 studies of the passion of love, as it is fair to make allowance for novels in which treasure, or murder, or theology was the main interest. Thus it would seem as if what is called the ‘love-interest’ were the main attraction of romance, and yet there seems reason to doubt whether this is not a mere statistical illusion. It is frequently said, by novelists themselves, that what the great majority of their readers like is a love story; that their success is assured if they can only make their love scenes attractive. Of course this is a strain on the energies of the most vigorous novelist. A man can only write really well out of his own experience. Now novelists, as Mr. James Payn has assured an anxious world, ‘live like other men, only more purely.’ It is, therefore, clear that their experience must be limited, and that when they have made copy out of their own emotions they must draw on their imagination. We see how Sir Walter Scott, the most reticent of men where his own heart was concerned, inspired himself, as to his heroines, by recollections of that one lady who broke his heart, after which, as he says, it was ‘handsomely mended.’ She is the heroine of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, of Old Mortality and of Redgauntlet at least, while I fancy that Scott's own unhappy love inspires Rebecca of York in Ivanhoe.