n was
carried on, in a rather incomprehensible system of collaboration, with
James Rice, a Cambridge man like himself and a historian of the turf,
but one to whom no independent work in fiction is attributed, except an
incredibly feeble adaptation of _Mr. Verdant Green_, entitled _The
Cambridge Freshman_ and signed "Martin Legrand." During the seventies,
and for a year or two later, till Rice's death in 1882, the pair
provided along series of novels from _Ready-Money Mortiboy_ (1871) to
_The Chaplain of the Fleet_ (1881), the most popular book between being,
perhaps, _The Golden Butterfly_ (1876). These belonged, loosely, to the
school of Dickens, as that school had been carried on by Wilkie Collins
(_v. inf._), but with less grotesque than the original master, and less
"sensation" than the head pupil; with a good deal of solid knowledge
both of older and more modern life; with fairly substantial plots, good
character-drawing of the more external kind, and a sufficient supply of
interesting incident, dialogue, and description.

It was certain that people would affect to discover a "falling off" when
the partnership was dissolved by Rice's death: but as a matter of fact
there was nothing of the kind. Such books as the very good and original
_Revolt of Man_ (which certainly owed nothing to collaboration), as _All
Sorts and Conditions of Men_ (1882), the first of the kind apparently
that Besant wrote alone, as _Dorothy Forster_ (1884), and as the
powerful if not exactly delightful _Children of Gibeon_ (1886) were
perhaps more vigorous than anything earlier, and certainly not less
original. But the curse of the "machine-made" novel, which has been
already dwelt upon, did not quite spare Besant: and in these later
stories critics could point, without complete unfairness, to an
increasing obsession of the "London" subject, especially in regard to
the actual gloom and possible illumination of the East End, and on the
other to a resort to historical subjects, less as suggestions or
canvases than as giving the substance of the book. The first class of
work, however (which actually resulted in a "People's Palace" and was
supposed to have obtained his knighthood for him), is distinctly
remarkable, especially in the light of succeeding events. Most of the
unfavourable criticisms passed upon Besant's novel-work were in the main
the utterances of raw reviewers, who thought it necessary to "down"
established reputations. But it would