nd-sister-novelists, but she set them to loose
ends, to ends too high for her, to ends not worth achieving: end thus
produced (again as it seems to me) flawed and unsatisfactory work. She
"means" well in Herbert's sense of the word: but what is meant is not
quite done.

To mention special books and special writers is not the first object of
this survey, though it would be very easy to double and redouble its
size by doing this, even within the time-limits of this, the last, and
the next chapters. It may, however, be added that in this remarkable
central period, and in the most central part of it from 1840 to 1860,
there appeared the first remarkable novel of Mr. George Meredith, _The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel_ (1859), first of a brilliant series that was
to illustrate the whole remaining years of the century; and the isolated
masterpiece of _Phantastes_, which another prolific writer, George
Macdonald, was never to repeat; while Mrs. Oliphant and Mrs. Craik, both
of whom will also reappear in the next chapter, began as early as 1849.
In 1851 appeared the first of two remarkable books, _Lavengro_ and _The
Romany Rye_, in which George Borrow, if he did not exactly create,
brought to perfection from some points of view what may be called the
autobiographic novel.

Indeed the memory of the aged and the industry of the young could recall
or rediscover dozens and scores of noteworthy books, some of which have
not lost actual or traditional reputation, such as the _Paul Ferroll_
(1855) of Mrs. Archer Clive, a well-restrained crime-novel, the story of
which is indicated in the title of its sequel, _Why Paul Ferroll killed
his Wife_. Henry Kingsley, George Alfred Lawrence, Wilkie Collins, and
others began their careers at this time. The best book ever written
about school, _Tom Brown's School Days_ (1857), and the best book in
lighter vein ever written about Oxford, _Mr. Verdant Green_ (1853-1856),
both appeared in the fifties.

Although, indeed, the intenser and more individual genius of the great
novelists of this time went rather higher than the specialist novel, it
was, in certain directions, well cultivated during this period. Men
likely to write naval novels of merit were dying out, and though Lever
took up the military tale, at second hand, with brilliant results, the
same historical causes were in operation there. But a comparatively new
kind--the "sporting" novel--developed itself largely and in some cases
went beyon