reached. At any rate, the kind of ebb or half ebb, which so often,
though not so certainly, follows flood-tides in literature, came upon
the novel in the twenties and thirties. Even the striking appearance of
Dickens and _Pickwick_ in 1837 can hardly be said to have turned it
distinctly: for the Dickensian novel is a species by itself--neither
strictly novel nor strictly romance, but, as Polonius might say, a
picaresque-burlesque-sentimental-farcical-realist-fantastic nondescript.
Not till _Vanity Fair_ did the novel of pure real life advance its
standard once more: while the historical novel-romance of a new kind may
date its revival with--though it should scarcely trace that revival
to--_Esmond_, or _Westward Ho!_ or both.

Between Scott on the earlier side and Dickens and Thackeray on the
other, there was an immense production of novels, illustrated by not a
few names which should rank high in the second class, while some would
promote more than one of them to the first. The lines of development, as
well as the chief individual practitioners, may be best indicated by
short discussions of Hook, Bulwer, Disraeli, Ainsworth, James, Marryat,
and Peacock.

The most probable demur to this list is likely to be taken at the very
first name. Theodore Hook has had no return of the immense popularity
which his _Sayings and Doings_ (1826-1829) obtained for him; nor,
perhaps, is he ever likely to have any; nor yet, further, save in one
respect, can he be said to deserve it. Flimsily constructed, hastily
written, reflecting indeed the ways and speech of the time after a
fashion, but in a distorted mirror and with a thin and superficial
representation, nearer to bad drama than to good literature, full of
horseplay and forced high jinks--his stories have all the inseparable
faults of improvisation together with those of art that is out of