between. For readers would not have stood this in instalments: you had
to provide some bite or promise of bite in each--if possible--indeed to
leave each off at an interesting point. But this itself rather tended to
a jumpy and ill-composed whole--to that mechanical shift from one part
of the plot to another which is so evident, for instance, in Trollope:
and there was worse temptation behind. If a man had the opportunity, the
means, the courage, and the artistic conscience necessary to finish his
work before any part of it appeared, or at least to scaffold it
thoroughly throughout in advance, no harm was done. But perhaps there is
no class of people with whom the temptation--common enough in every
class--of hand-to-mouth work is more fatal than with men of letters. It
is said that even the clergy are human enough to put off their
sermon-writing till Saturday, and what can be expected of the profane
man, especially when he has a whole month apparently before him? It is
pretty certain that Thackeray succumbed to this temptation: and so did a
great many people who could much less afford to do so than Thackeray.
It was almost certainly responsible for part of the astonishing
medley of repetitions and lapses in Lever: and I am by no means
sure that some of Dickens's worst faults, especially the ostentatious
plot-that-is-no-plot of such a book as _Little Dorrit_--the plot which
marks time with elaborate gesticulation and really does not advance at
all--were not largely due to the system.

Let it only be added that these expensive forms of publication by no
means excluded cheap reprints as soon as a book was really popular. The
very big people kept up their prices: but everybody else was glad to get
into "popular libraries," yellow-backed railway issues, and the like, as
soon as possible.

It will have been seen that the present writer puts the novel of