Among the changes in the art of fiction between the eighteenth century, when that art began to assume its modern shape, and the present, when it has arrived at what may be the ultimate degree of sophistication, one of the most basic is, doubtless, the increasing degree of particularity in the characterization. The change is perhaps mainly a phenomenon of the novel, which by its conditions is extremely favorable to minute character-studies; nevertheless, the problem of particularity affects all kinds of writing in which character is portrayed at all. The theoretical treatment of the issue in the eighteenth century broadened out beyond the limits of any one art, and a modern treatment may justifiably do the same.