anished from that novel the tendency to conventional "lingo" which,
though never so prevalent in it as in eighteenth-century drama, had
existed. It may seem to some readers that there is an exaggerated and
paradoxical opposition between this high praise and the severe censure
pronounced a little above--that both cannot be true. But both are true:
and it is a really natural and necessary cause and proof at once of
their truth that Hook never wrote a really good novel, hardly even a
really good tale ("Gervase Skinner" is probably the best), and yet that
he deserves the place here given to him.

Ainsworth and James perhaps deserve to be taken next, not so much in
point of merit as because both, though continuing (especially Ainsworth)
very late, began pretty early. Indeed, a book in which Ainsworth had a
hand, though it is said to be not wholly his, _Sir John Chiverton_, was
with Horace Smith's _Brambletye House_ (1826), the actual subject of
Scott's criticism above quoted. Both Ainsworth and James are unconcealed
followers of Scott himself: and they show the dangers to which the
historical romance is exposed when it gets out of the hands of genius.
Of the two, James had the greater scholarship, the better command of
English, and perhaps a nearer approach to command also of character:
Ainsworth more "fire in his interior," more variety, somewhat more
humour (though neither was strong in this respect), and a certain not
useless or despicable faculty of splashy scene-painting and rough but
not ineffective stage-management. But of Scott's combination of poetry,
humour, knowledge of life, reading, grasp of character, and command of
effective dialogue and description, both were utterly destitute: and
both fell into the mistake (which even Dumas did not wholly avoid) of
attempting to give the historical effect by thrusting in lardings of
pure history, by overloading descriptions of dress, etc., and, in short,
by plastering the historic colour on, instead of suffusing it, as Scott
had managed to do. Popular as they were, not merely with youthful
readers, they undoubtedly brought the historical novel into some
discredit a little before the middle of the century.[20]

[20] Here and in a good many cases to come it is impossible to
particularise criticism. It matters the less that, from
Ainsworth's _Rookwood_ (1834) and James' _Richelieu_ (1829)
onwards, the work of both was very much _par sibi_ in merit and
defe