was no reason for any one less hopelessly pessimist than Peacock's Mr.
Toobad, or Sydney Smith's Tuxford waiter, to take a gloomy view of the
future of the novel. Of the greater novelists mentioned in the last
chapter Charlotte Brontë and Mrs. Gaskell were indeed dead, and if
Kingsley had not wholly ceased writing novels, he had, before ceasing,
given signs that he had better do so. Yet, at least to the admirers of
"George Eliot," she was at her most admirable; some of the very best
stuff of Trollope was but just past, and some of all but his best was
still to appear; Charles Reade was writing busily with that curious
unsatisfactory genius of his; others were well at work.

There was also no lack of newer comers. Mr. Meredith had been writing
for some dozen years: and though he had achieved no general popularity,
though even critics might make reserves as to points in his procedure,
there could be no competent doubt of his great powers. Mr. Blackmore had
made his late beginning some time before: and had just caught the public
ear unmistakably with _Lorna Doone_ (1869). Mr. Hardy was on the eve of
catching it with the new and powerful attractions of _Under the
Greenwood Tree_ (1872). In the heart of the sixties (1863-4-6), the
_Chronicles of Carlingford_ had seemed the promissory notes of a
novelist of the absolutely first class in Mrs. Oliphant, though somehow
the bills were rather renewed than met. Others to be noticed immediately
had come or were coming on. Let us take a little more detailed notice of
them.

In the cases of Mr. Meredith and of Mr. Hardy--not to speak of others on
whom the bar still luckily rests--the "great ox" was, until the original
composition of this book was actually finished, "on the tongue" of any
one who does not disregard the good old literary brocard "_de_ vivis
_nil nisi_ necessarium." You may and must criticise, with as much