more than amusement.1 Another scholar of Dickens, but of more definite type, and the chief author of the "sensational" novel, was Wilkie Collins (1824-1886), whose Dead Secret (1857), Woman in White (1860), and No Name (1862) have had few superiors in at least temporary popularity; while Henry Kingsley (1836-1876), a younger brother of Charles, surpassed his brother in fertility, and perhaps in equality of merit,―Ravenshoe (1861) is his best book,—but wrote on a lower literary level, though not a low one. 1 By a curious but not quite unique chance, much, if not most, of Besant's best work was done in collaboration with another writer, James Rice (1843-1881), whose independent composition was worthless. It was a trick with criticasters who do not know, or wish to conceal, the fact that it is the easiest thing in the world to avoid the obvious, and the most difficult thing in the world to do or say the obvious well,-that the doing of the latter, or, in the classic phrase, "making the common uncommon," is indeed the main object of art, -to reproach Besant with obviousness. This was idle, yet here as elsewhere in this bevy there was undoubtedly something which prevented any one of such books as Ready-Money Mortiboy (1871), The Golden Butterfly (1876), The Chaplain of the Fleet (1881), All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882), Dorothy Forster (1884), and (in some ways the most remarkable of all) Children of Gibeon (1886) from being a masterpiece. Comparing Besant with Blackmore, it is perhaps worth while to record that in the latter, though he was a keen observer, the romantic temperament had the clear mastery. In the former, realism-his studies of the East of London and of "labour" problems set an example which has been oftener followed than acknowledged-and romance are yoked unequally and jar. names of things far off, but not unhappy, nor exactly forgotten, crowd on us, but must be despatched after the precedent of Gyas and Cloanthus,—the fertile and well-reputed activity of Mrs Craik (Dinah Mulock) (1826-1887); the brilliant artificialities ("nor quite that neither") of George Alfred Lawrence (1827-1876), the author of Guy Livingstone (1857); the genial sporting and other novels of Major Whyte Melville (1821-1878). Other The New There are incidents in the later history of the novel-such as the change of its form from the long consecrated three volumes to one; and the Romance. vogue, after long unpopularity, of the short story; as the sudden enlargement, on French and other foreign patterns, of the gauge of decency in fiction; and others-which are more proper to be referred to here, than to be discussed at any length, because they are too near. A more important and a less dubitably permanent phenomenon-one which has at any rate lasted for a time sufficient to give it permanence in history is the strong turn of the tide towards the romance, as distinguished from the novel proper, which latter had absorbed most of the attention of the middle quarters of the century, or rather of its third and fourth fifths. Hypatia and Westward Ho! showed a set in this direction which was not maintained; Lorna Doone, another which, though not very rapidly or decidedly pushed on, was. But for the last two decades there has been no doubt about the matter, and there are, as yet, no signs of fresh ebb. Most of the practitioners of the new Romance are alive, and young enough long to live, but two very remarkable figures have passed away, and may be dealt with here. It may be permitted to think that justice has not yet been done to the prose romances of the poet, William Morris. He practically began Morris. with the kind in those contributions to the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856) which, long inaccessible, recently came, not fresh, but afresh, to some readers, with the half-pleasant, half-painful seasoning of a forty years' memory. They were exceedingly crude-for the most part jumbled reminiscences of Malory and Fouqué, with followings of such newer models as Kingsley, and even Miss Yonge, written in an equally jumbled dialect, part archaism, part Ruskin, part pure and rather jarring modernity. But the fragmentary Hollow Land, the chief of them, had, and still has for some, a singular and individual charm. Poetry, however, at that time, fortunately drew the poet to its side, and the exercises of his middle period in Scandinavian translation showed no necessary desertion. But these exercises provided him with a language which, still objected to by some not hostile critics as artificial, as "Wardour Street," is a great improvement on the perpetually breaking down falsetto of the early work. And in the last ten years of his life-influenced consciously or unconsciously, no doubt, by the general set of tide-he used this constantly in a long series of curi ous romances, from The House of the Wolfings (1889) to the posthumous Sundering Flood (1898), to which once more one feels almost inclined to prophesy, and much more than almost disposed to wish, a far wider and more enthusiastic audience than they seem to have yet had. For, while full of beautiful and attractive fancy, they are the most absolutely unscientific-nay, anti-scientific-things that we have had for generations. And it stands to reason, on the showing of all history, that the twentieth century must be "science-sick" before very long; just as the eighteenth became sick of theology, and the nineteenth of common-sense philosophising. The other novelist of the New Romance (though a very different new romance), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), was of a younger generation, Stevenson. and followed totally different ideals and methods. His popularity, though not quite immediate, was, when at last obtained by Treasure Island (1883), very great, and it has maintained itself, not merely during the short remainder of his life, but, rather curiously, during that difficult decade which follows a man's death. Stevenson relied on two things, the adoption of a very elaborate style, and that of a very simple-a quite fairy-tale or "boy's book"-variety of adventure. How much of the singular charm with which he treated the latter depends on the former is no question for this book to do more than pose. But the spell shows no sign of being worked out: which thing, like others, is an allegory. I 130 CHAPTER III. ENGLISH AND FRENCH-PERIODICAL LITERATURE- THE FRENCH CRITICISM FOREMOST-THE PREDECESSORS OF SAINTE-BEUVESAINTE-BEUVE HIMSELF-THE CHARGES AGAINST HIM-EMPTINESS OF THESE-HIS UNIQUE MERIT-NISARD AND OTHERS-GAUTIER— JUNIORS: SCHERER- MONTEGUT TAINE-FLAUBERT AND SINGLE WORD THE GONCOURTS AND ZOLA AS CRITICS-HELLOENGLISH: FLOURISHING OF THE PERIODICAL-REVIVAL OF CRITICISM AFTER A SHORT DECADENCE-INDIVIDUALS : BRIMLEY AND OTHERS-RUSKIN-MATTHEW ARNOLD-HIS TENDENCY AND THAT OF OTHERS-PATER-MR SYMONDS, ETC.-JEFFERIES AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYISTS. IT is by this time a recognised truism that, next to the novel, the newspaper, in its widest sense,-ranging from the quarterly periodical, which is as much a book as most things published in countries where they do not bind, to the most ephemeral sheet of day or evening, is the special production of the nineteenth century; and, as such, it seems proper that it should have a place to itself in this History. Yet one at least of the very secrets of its importance makes it in itself both difficult to deal with and |