d mere sport. Such early books as Egan's _Tom and Jerry_
(1821) can hardly be called novels: but as the love of sport extended
and the term itself ceased to designate merely on the one side the
pleasures of country squires, and on the other the amusements (sometimes
rather blackguard in character) of men about town, the general subject
made a lodgment in fiction. One of its most characteristic practitioners
was Robert Smith Surtees, who, before Dickens and perhaps acting as
suggester of the original plan of _Pickwick_ (_not_ that which Dickens
substituted), excogitated (between 1831 and 1838) the remarkable
fictitious personage of "Mr. Jorrocks," grocer and sportsman, whose
adventures, and those of other rather hybrid characters of the same
kind, he pursued through a number of books for some thirty years. These
(though in strict character, and in part of their manners, deficient as
above noticed) were nearly always readable--and sometimes very
amusing--even to those who are not exactly Nimrods: and they were
greatly commended to others still by the admirable illustrations of
Leech. There is not a little sound sport in Kingsley and afterwards in
Anthony Trollope: while the novels of Frank Smedley, _Frank Fairlegh_
(1850), _Lewis Arundel_ (1852), and _Harry Coverdale's Courtship_
(1855), mix a good deal more of it with some good fun and some rather
rococo romance. The subject became, indeed, very popular in the fifties,
and entered largely into, though it by no means exclusively occupied,
the novels of George John Whyte-Melville, a Fifeshire gentleman, an
Etonian, and a guardsman, who, after retiring from the army, served
again in the Crimean War, and, after writing a large number of novels,
was killed in the hunting field. Some of Whyte-Melville's books, such as
_Market Harborough_ (1861), are hunting novels pure and simple, so much
so that it has been said (rashly) that none but hunting men and women
can read them. Others, such as _Kate Coventry_ (1856), a very lively and
agreeable book, mix sport with general character and manners-painting.
Others, such as _Holmby House_ (1860), _The Queen's Maries_ (1862),
etc., attempt the historical style. But perhaps this mixed novel of
sport, society, and a good deal of love-making reached its most curious
development in the novels of George Alfred Lawrence, from the once
famous _Guy Livingstone_ (1857) onwards--a series almost typical, which
was developed further, with touches of o