But it borrows from the romance-idea the liberty of a large accretion and divagation of minor and accessory plot:-not the mere "episode" of the ancients, but the true minor plot of Shakespeare.
"The English Novel"
George Saintsbury
But while the kind had not conquered, and for a long time did not conquer, any high place in literature from the point of view of serious criticism-while, now and long afterwards, novel-writing was the Cinderella of the literary family, and novel-reading the inexhaustible text for sermons on wasted, nay positively ill-spent, time-the novelists themselves half justified their critics by frequent extravagance; by more frequent unreality; by undue licence pretty often; by digression and divagation still oftener.
"The English Novel"
George Saintsbury
It was he who invented the modern dramatic method of seizing a situation at the point at which it can last be seized, and from there pushing it forward with imperturbable logic and not one divagation.
"Since Cézanne"
Clive Bell