the various achievements of the principal writers mentioned in this
chapter, of one or two who might have been, but are perhaps, on the
whole, best postponed to the next, such as Lever, and of the great army
of minorities who have been of necessity omitted. In every direction and
from every point of view novel is _growing_. Although it was abused by
precisians, the _gran conquesta_ of Scott had forced it into general
recognition and requisition. Even the still severe discipline of family
life in the first half of the nineteenth century, instead of excluding
it altogether, contented itself with prescribing that "novels should not
be read in the morning." A test which may be thought vulgar by the
super-fine or the superficial, but a pretty good one, is the altered
status and position of the writers of novels. In the eighteenth,
especially the earlier eighteenth, century the novelist had not merely
been looked down upon _as_ a novelist, but had, as a rule, resorted to
novel-writing under some stress of circumstance. Even when he was by
birth a "gentleman of coat armour" as Fielding and Smollett were, he was
usually a gentleman very much out at elbows: the stories, true or false,
of _Rasselas_ and Johnson's mother's funeral expenses, of the _Vicar of
Wakefield_ and Goldsmith's dunning landlady, have something more than
mere anecdote in them. Mackenzie, though the paternity of his _famille
déplorable_ of novels was no secret, preserved a strict nominal
incognito. Women, as having no regular professions and plenty of time at
their disposal, were allowed more latitude: and this really perhaps had
something to do with their early prominence in the novel; but it is
certain that Scott's rigid, and for a long time successful, maintenance
of the mask was by no means mere prudery, and still less merely prudent
commercial speculation. Yet he, who altered so much in the novel,
altered this also. Of the novelists noticed in the early part of this
chapter, one became Prime Minister of England, another rose to cabinet
rank, a baronetcy, and a peerage; a third was H.M. consul in important