their direction, their crossing,
and their other phenomena, as clearly as possible to the reader. For
only so can we complete the picture of the course of fiction throughout
English literature--with the sole exclusion of living writers, whose
work can never be satisfactorily treated in such a book as this--first,
because they are living and, secondly, because it is not done.

CHAPTER VII

THE MID-VICTORIAN NOVEL

At about the very middle of the nineteenth century--say from 1845 to
1855 in each direction, but almost increasingly towards the actual
dividing line of 1850--there came upon the English novel a very
remarkable wind of refreshment and new endeavour. Thackeray and Dickens
themselves are examples of it, with Lever and others, before this
dividing line: many others yet come to join them. A list of books
written out just as they occur to the memory, and without any attempt to
marshal them in strict chronological order, would show this beyond all
reasonable possibility of gainsaying. Thackeray's own best accomplished
work from _Vanity Fair_ (1846) itself through _Pendennis_ (1849) and
_Esmond_ (1852) to _The Newcomes_ (1854); the brilliant centre of
Dickens's work in _David Copperfield_ (1850)--stand at the head and have
been already noticed by anticipation or implication, while Lever had
almost completed the first division of his work, which began with _Harry
Lorrequer_ as early as the year of _Pickwick_. But such books as _Yeast_
(1848), _Westward Ho!_ (1855); as _The Warden_ (1855); as _Jane Eyre_
(1847) and its too few successors; as _Scenes of Clerical Life_ (1857);
as _Mary Barton_ (1848) and the novels which followed it, with others
which it is perhaps almost unfair to leave out even in this allusive
summary by sample, betokened a stirring of the waters, a rattling among
the bones, such as is not common in literature. Death removed Thackeray
early and Dickens somewhat less prematurely, but after a period rather
barren in direct novel work. The others continued and were constantly
reinforced: nor was it till well on in the seventies that any distinct
drop from first- to second-growth quality could be observed in the
general vintage of English fiction.

One is not quite driven, on this occasion, to the pusillanimous
explanation that this remarkable variety and number of good novels was
simply due to the simultaneous existence of an equally remarkable number
of good novelists. The fact is that, by t