novels of the most various kinds, sometimes almost achieving the purely
domestic variety, sometimes branching to other sorts. The novels of Mrs.
Gore, chiefly in the "fashionable" kind, are said to have attained the
three-score and ten in number; Mrs. Crowe dealt with the supernatural
outside of her novels if not also in them; the luckless poetess "L.E.L."
was a novelist in _Ethel Churchill_ (1837) and other books; Mrs.
Trollope, prolific mother of a more prolific son, showed not a little
power, if not quite so much taste, in _The Vicar of Wrexhill_ (1837) and
_The Widow Barnaby_. Single books, like Morier's _Hajji Baba_ (1824),
Hope's _Anastasius_ (1819), Croly's _Salathiel_ (1829), gained fame
which they have not quite lost: and the little known Michael Scott
(1789-1835) left in _Tom Cringle's Log_ and _The Cruise of the Midge_ a
pair of stories of West Indian scenery and adventure which are nearly
first rate. In 1839, not long after _Pickwick_, Samuel Warren's _Ten
Thousand a Year_ blended Bulwer and Dickens in a manner which to this
day is a puzzle in its near approach to success. Yet he never repeated
this approach, though he had earlier done striking things in the _Diary
of a Late Physician_ (1830). But in the latest thirties and early
forties there arose two writers who were to eclipse every one of their
contemporaries in this kind.

The remarkable originality and idiosyncrasy of Dickens have perhaps, to
some extent and from not a few persons, concealed the fact that he was
not, any more than other people, an earth-born wonder. Scanted of
education as he was, he has in several places frankly and eagerly
confessed his early acquaintance with the great older novelists, and his
special fancy for Smollett--whose influence indeed is traceable on him
from first to last, and not least in the famous "interiors" of which he
made far more than his example had done. Even in _Pickwick_ the expert
will trace suggestions from others. But if the work is read in its