writer, though there are perhaps not a dozen consecutive pages of
Kingsley's novels to which, at some point or other, he is not prepared
to append the note, "This is Bosh," is prepared also to exalt him miles
above writers whose margins he would be quite content to leave without a
single annotation of this--or any other--kind. In particular the variety
of the books, and their vividness, are both extraordinary. And perhaps
the greatest notes of the novel generally, as well as those in which the
novel of this period can most successfully challenge comparison with
those of any other, are, or should be, vividness and variety. His books
in the kind are seven; and the absence of _replicas_ among them is one
of their extraordinary features. _Yeast_, the first (1848), and _Alton
Locke_, the second (next year), are novels of the unrest of thought
which caused and accompanied the revolutionary movement of the period
throughout Europe. But they are quite different in subject and
treatment. The first is a sketch of country society, uppermost and
lowermost:[25] the second one of town-artisan and lower-trade life with
passages of university and other contrast. Both are young and crude
enough, intentionally or unintentionally; both, intentionally beyond
all doubt, are fantastic and extravagant; but both are full of genius.
Argemone Lavington, the heroine of _Yeast_, is, though not of the most
elaborately drawn, one of the most fascinating and real heroines of
English fiction; an important secondary character of the second book,
the bookseller Sandy Mackaye, is one of its most successful
"character-parts." Both, but especially _Yeast_, are full of admirable
descriptive writing, not entirely without indebtedness to Mr. Ruskin,
but very often independently carried out, and always worthy of a "place
on the line" in any gallery. There is much accurate and real dialogue,
not a little firm character-drawing. Above all, both are full of
blood--of things lived and seen, not vamped up from reading or
day-dreaming--and yet full of dreams, day and other, and full of