founded the modern school of English novelists, by giving us what
is in one sense a servile imitation of genuine narrative, but which is
redeemed from prose by the unique force of the situation. De Foe
painting mere everyday pots and pans is as dull as a modern blue-book;
but when his pots and pans are the resource by which a human being
struggles out of the most appalling conceivable 'slough of despond,'
they become more poetical than the vessels from which the gods drink
nectar in epic poems. Since he wrote, novelists have made many voyages
of discovery, with varying success, though they have seldom had the
fortune to touch upon so marvellous an island as that still sacred to
the immortal Crusoe. They have ventured far into cloud-land, and,
returning to _terra firma_, they have plunged into the trackless and
savage-haunted regions which are girdled by the Metropolitan Railway.
They have watched the magic coruscations of some strange 'Aurora
Borealis' of dim romance, or been content with the domestic gaslight of
London streets. Amongst the most celebrated of all such adventurers were
the band which obeyed the impulse of Sir Walter Scott. For a time it
seemed that we had reached a genuine Eldorado of novelists, where solid
gold was to be had for the asking, and visions of more than earthly
beauty rewarded the labours of the explorer. Now, alas! our opinion is a
good deal changed; the fairy treasures which Scott brought back from his
voyages have turned into dead leaves according to custom; and the
curiosities, upon which he set so extravagant a price, savour more of
Wardour Street than of the genuine mediaeval artists. Nay, there are
scoffers, though I am not of them, who think that the tittle-tattle
which Miss Austen gathered at the country-houses of our grandfathers is
worth more than the showy but rather flimsy eloquence of the 'Ariosto of
the North.' Scott endeavoured at least, if with indifferent success, to
invest his scenes with something of

The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the poet's dream.

If he too often indulged in mere theatrical devices, and mistook the
glare of the footlights for the sacred glow of the imagination, he
professed, at least, to introduce us to an ideal world. Later novelists
have generally abandoned the attempt, and are content to reflect our
work-a-day life with almost servile fidelity. They are not to be blamed;
and doubtless the very greatest writer