from the rest, but omnipresent),
and the crisp presentation of individual scene, incident, and character
of a kind. Story, in the general sense, there is none, or next to
none--the personages meet, go through a certain number of dinners
(Peacock is great at eating and drinking), diversions, and
difficulties, marry to a greater or less extent, but otherwise part. Yet
such things as the character of Scythrop in _Nightmare Abbey_ (a half
fantastic, half faithful portrait of Shelley, who was Peacock's intimate
friend), or of Dr. Folliott (a genial parson) in _Crotchet Castle_--as
the brilliant picture of the breaking of the dyke in _Elphin_, or the
comic one of the rotten-borough election in _Melincourt_--are among the
triumphs of the English novel. And they are present by dozens and
scores: while (though it is a little out of our way) there is no doubt
that the attraction of the books is greatly enhanced by the abundance of
inset verse--sometimes serious, more often light--of which Peacock,
again in an eccentric fashion, was hardly less a master than he was of
prose.

Here also it has seemed fit to dwell on a single writer, not perhaps
generally held to be of the absolutely first class, because these
"eccentrics" are of very great importance in the history of the English
novel. The danger of the kind--even more than of other literary
kinds--lies in the direction of mould and mechanism--of the production,
by the thousand, of things of no individual quality and character. This
danger has been and is being amply exemplified. But the Peacocks (would
the plural were more justified!) save us from it by their own
unconquerable individuality in the first place and, in the second, by
the fact that even the best in this kind is "caviare to the general,"
while anything that is not the best has no attraction either for the
general or the elect. They are, as it were, the salt of the novel-feast,
in more senses than one: and it is cause for thankfulness that, in this
respect as in the physical, England has been well off for salt-pits.

Besides these individual names--which in most literatures would be
great, and even in English literature are not small--the second quarter
of the century added to the history of the novel an infinity of others
who can hardly appear here even on the representative or selective
system. All the suns of the novel hitherto mentioned had moons and stars
around them; all the _cadres_ of the various kinds were