of the historical novel and of the novel of pure modern society, almost
uneventful. In parts of some of his later books, especially _Little
Dorrit_, _Great Expectations_, and _Our Mutual Friend_, Dickens at
least tried to exchange his picaresque-fantastic cloudland for actual
ordinary modern life. But on the whole the method of Thackeray was the
method of the novel, though shot with a strong romantic spirit, and the
method of Dickens the method of the romance applied, for the most part,
to material which could hardly be called romantic. Both, therefore, in a
manner, recalled the forces of fiction from the rather straggling and
particularist courses which it had been pursuing for the last quarter of
a century.

In fact, even in the two mighty men of genius whom we have just been
discussing, there may be seen--at their beginnings at least--something
of that irresolution, uncertainty, and want of reliance on the powers of
the novel, it-by-itself-it, which we have noticed before: and which the
unerring craftsmanship of Scott had already pointed out in the
"Conversation of the Author of _Waverley_ with Captain Clutterbuck" more
than once referred to. They want excuses and pretexts, bladders and
spring-boards. Even Dickens, despite his irrepressible self-reliance,
burdens himself, at the beginning of _Pickwick_, with the clumsy old
machinery of a club which he practically drops: and, still later, with
the still more clumsy framework of "Master Humphrey's Clock" which he
has not quietly to drop, but openly to strip off and cast away, before
he has gone very far. Thackeray takes sixteen years of experiment before
he trusts his genius, boldly and on the great scale, to reveal itself in
its own way, and in the straight way of the novel.

Yet in this time also a great advance was made, as is shown not only by
the fact that Dickens and Thackeray themselves became possible, but by