a mere vagrant spurt of genius, is evident from the fact that so many great novelists, contemporaries with each other, make lustrous the first half of the reign. It might have been supposed that this progress would only have been possible along the lines which Scott had laid down. But the truth is, that while the principal writers of the new period were filled with the warmest admiration of Scott, in none did it take the form of imitation. The subjects of Dickens and Thackeray, of Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, are not the subjects of the author of Waverley, nor is his manner theirs. A true note of originality is present in them all. For when we compare these writers with each other, we find that each has a distinct individuality. The democratic atmosphere of Dickens's novels is not more violently in contrast with the society life of Thackeray's, than are the styles of these two writers with each other. Again, it is scarcely possible to conceive of a point of view and a method of treatment in more complete contrast than are those of Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot.

The latter half of the reign has no names quite so important as these, yet it has well sustained the tradition of great beginnings, even in the quality of its work in fiction, while in the quantity of such work it quite eclipses all former records. The note of originality, however, is not so manifest.

The progress of Victorian fiction has witnessed revivals and new developments of an interesting kind.

After the extraordinary successes of Scott in the sphere of the historical novel, it was natural that he should have many would-be imitators. And undoubtedly, Bulwer Lytton's achievements in this field, although lacking the full distinction of the master, were powerful and brilliant; but the monotonous and heavy productions of a host of writers in the school of G. P. R. James and Harrison Ainsworth brought discredit upon the historical romance. Still, failure cannot altogether be pronounced regarding a period that has produced such brilliant works as the Esmond of Thackeray, the Westward Ho! and Hypatia of Kingsley, and The Cloister and the Hearth of Charles Reade.

Quite recently the historical novel has again come into vogue, and it now appears as if a lengthened career of prosperity awaited it. In this revival the way has been led by such writers as Blackmore and Shorthouse, Stanley J. Weyman and Conan Doyle, all of whom have produced fictions of romantic and historical interest, as stimulating as they are true and healthy.

No one can fail to see how much the Problem novel has in our time taken the place of the old tale of domestic incident or of romantic adventure. This is largely due to the more humanitarian and scientific interest that is being felt for all that concerns men and women as they are to be found grouped in the various relations of social life. Much of this writing has the distinct and laudable purpose of correcting what is wrong in that life. Unfortunately not a little

of it is the product of unripe experience and pure faddism, glaring in its extravagances, and as wrongheaded in its diagnosis of social disease as in its haphazard remedies for its cure.

The strangest and least admirable form of this novel and of all the phases of Victorian fiction, is that to which the name 'Neurotic' has been given. In its hysterical vehemence, its want of judgment and of art, its unreserve and ignorance of life, together with its unhealthy insistance upon the woman's relations to the other sex, we see the work mainly of women of a highly-strung nervous temperament, of a crude, illregulated, and hurtful genius. Happily this disease of Victorian fiction has passed its crisis, and the British novel would seem to have emerged once more into a healthier atmosphere. The phenomenal success, however, of some of these writers will doubtless remain one of the curiosities of literature in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The true antidote to this kind of writing has been found in the tale of Romantic Adventure, which also has had its revival in the last decade of Victorian fiction. Dealing with subjects far remote from present day introspectiveness, concerning itself solely with elementary passions in the simplest and most primitive situations, it substitutes for the hectic discontents and morbid broodings of the home that form so large a part of the unsavoury neurotic fiction, strong faith and simple valour, daring the most desperate hazards to redress the wrong, to defend the

right, or, it may be, simply to achieve the triumph of an almost impossible adventure. As we read such tales, a breath as of the strong mountain air blows round us, and the novel seems to be won back to the old sweet wholesomeness it once had under Scott.

A somewhat unaccountable success has also attended a certain form of the religious novel, in which the mental conflicts of a soul slowly drifting away from old beliefs is made the subject of a representation, often far from true or convincing, but successful, probably because of the curiosity it awakens in both the friends and the foes of orthodoxy. The writer who has most largely profited by this phase is Mrs Humphry Ward, whose Robert Elsmere, however, has qualities of genius quite sufficient to establish a reputation apart from such adventitious circumstances.

There seems no just reason to despair of the English novel, or to fear that because of the fermenting processes through which it has recently passed, it will not settle down to something worthy of its great traditions. Its true corrective will be found in the popular taste, and that, notwithstanding certain unaccountable aberrations, is on the whole sound and healthy, and gives the assurance that the best works in fiction will still have the best chance of ultimate

success.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870).-Any review of Victorian fiction will naturally begin with the im

mortal author of Pickwick, published in the first year of Queen Victoria's reign. Charles Dickens was born on February 7th, 1812, at Landport, a suburb of Portsea, Hampshire, but his earliest recollections were of the Medway and the green lanes around Rochester, whither the family had removed on his father's obtaining a situation in the Chatham dockyard. He was a feeble child, and at an age when other boys were at their sports, was engaged, as he tells us, in devouring Fielding and Smollett, Goldsmith and Defoe. The vivid imagination of the boy would also seem to have been stimulated by interesting local associations. Witness the story he tells of Gadshill Place, an important house, situated high on the road between Rochester and Gravesend, to which partly by features in itself, and partly by old Shakespearian traditions concerning it, his childish fancies and desires were so strongly drawn-a house which Dickens afterwards made his own, lived, wrote, and died in.

At this time no dream could have seemed less likely of accomplishment. The family fortunes were far from prosperous, and when a removal to London was effected, circumstances grew worse instead of better. It must have been now that Charles became apprentice in Mr Lamert's blacking manufactory, an experience which was full of humiliation for him, and which he has described for us in the opening chapters of David Copperfield. These experiences were, however, not without their uses. Consciously or unconsciously, the observant and sensitive boy was storing