culty in showing that every form of novel-writing which
we have been surveying in this book--that the work of every one of those
distinguished or undistinguished writers who have been, with or without
regret, declined--is still essentially Romantic. It is Romantic in its
inflexible resolution to choose subjects for itself and not according to
rule; Romantic in its wise or unwise individuality of treatment;
Romantic in its preferential appeal to emotion rather than to pure
intelligence; above all, Romantic in its quest--often no doubt
ill-guided and unsuccessful, but always more or less present--for that
element of strangeness which, though invisible to many who live, is a
pervading character of Life itself, and the presence of which it is the
glory of Romance itself, from its earliest to its latest manifestations,
to have recognised and to some extent fixed, in artistic representation.
And so, I hope, that what has been discovered in this volume--in the way
of pageant and procession even more than that of examination, though
with something of that also--may have shown further progress
towards--nay, actual attainment of, the goal which I ventured to mark
out in the earlier volume as that of the novelist by the words, "Here is
the whole of human life before you. Copy it or, better, re-create
it--with variation and decoration _ad libitum_--as faithfully, but as
fully, as you can."

Thesis-writing, however, is but dismal reading, unless (as Mrs. Scott
told Jeffrey she hoped he was for the _Marmion_ review) "you are very
well paid for it." Nor do I, as I have previously explained, consider it
a necessary part of history, though common honesty may require that the
presence of a doctrine, behind the delivery of an account, should be
confessed. I think the account itself should be sufficient to make good
my point; others may differ. But even if they do, some of them at least
will, I hope, have found in that account some modicum of the amazing
supply of rest and refreshment contained in the mass of literature we
have been surveying.

On the two volumes together there may be a little more to say. I have
touched, I hope not too frequently, on the curious pleasure which I
myself have felt in reading again books sometimes unopened for more than
half a century, sometimes read at different times during that period,
sometimes positively familiar; and on the contrasted enjoyment of
reading others written long ago in all but a few cases