equally good, and her quiet and delightful humor and irony all-pervasive.
Scott, with customary generosity, praised her 'power of rendering ordinary
things and characters interesting from the truth of her portrayal,' in
favorable contrast with his own facility in 'the Big Bow-Wow strain.'
Nevertheless the assertion of some present-day critics that she is the
greatest of all English authoresses is certainly extravagant. Her novels,
though masterly in their own field and style, do not have the fulness of
description or the elaboration of action which add beauty and power to most
later ones, and her lack of a sense for the greater issues of life denies
her legitimate comparison with such a writer as George Eliot.

SUMMARY. The variety of the literary influences in eighteenth century
England was so great that the century can scarcely be called a literary
unit; yet as a whole it contrasts clearly enough both with that which goes
before and with that which follows. Certainly its total contribution to
English literature was great and varied.




CHAPTER X

PERIOD VIII. THE ROMANTIC TRIUMPH, 1798 TO ABOUT 1830


THE GREAT WRITERS OF 1798-1830. THE CRITICAL REVIEWS. As we look back
to-day over the literature of the last three quarters of the eighteenth
century, here just surveyed, the progress of the Romantic Movement seems
the most conspicuous general fact which it presents. But at the, death of
Cowper in 1800 the movement still remained tentative and incomplete, and it