ll not," whereas the ability to use the two
forms adds infinite propriety as well as variety to the dialogue. You
say, "At length a most unfortunate accident aggravated (if aggravation
were possible) the unfortunate circumstances of the situation." You
address your own characters in the oratorical manner of Mr. Burke and
other great men, "Ah, Mr. Danby! if instead, etc." In short, instead of
reserving the grand manner (and a rather different grand manner) for
grand occasions, you maintain a sort of cheap machine-made kind of it
throughout. The real secret of the novel was not found out till this was
discarded. Perhaps that real secret does not lie so much anywhere else
as here.

A few words may not improperly be said about some of the circumstances
and details of novel-appearance and distribution, etc., at this palmy
day of English fiction. At what time the famous "three-decker" was
consecrated as the regular novel line-of-battle-ship I have not been
able to determine exactly to my own satisfaction. Richardson had
extended his interminable narrations to seven or eight volumes: Miss
Burney latterly had not been content with less than five. From the
specimens I have examined, I have an idea that with the "Minerva Press"
and its contemporaries and successors at the end of the eighteenth and
beginning of the nineteenth century, _four_ was a very favourite if not
the most usual number. But these volumes were usually small--not much
larger than those of the Belgian reprints of Dumas which, as one
remembers, used to run into the dozen or something like it in the case
of his longer books. Three, however, has obvious advantages; the chief
of them being the adjustment to "beginning, middle, and end," though
there is a corresponding disadvantage which soon developed itself--and
in fact, finally, I have no doubt helped to ruin the form--the
temptation to make the _second_ volume a place of mere padding. But the
actual popularity of "the old three-decker" continued for quite two
generations, if not more, and was unmistakable. Library subscriptions
were generally adjusted to it; and any circulating-library keeper would
tell you that, putting this quite aside, even subscribers to more or
fewer volumes than three would take the three-volume by preference. More
than this, still, there is a curious fact necessarily known to
comparatively few people. Although it was improper of Mr. Bludyer to
sell his novel, and dine and drink of the prof