nfluences; the chief
differences should have been already pointed out. But the important
thing to notice is that, with a few actual gaps, and several patches
which have been more fully worked over and occupied than others,
practically the whole of French history from the fourteenth century to,
and including, the Revolution was "novelised" by the wand of this second
magician.[338]

That the danger of the historical variety was entirely avoided by these
its French practitioners cannot indeed be said. Even Scott had not
wholly got the better of it in his less perfect pieces, such, for
instance, as those already glanced-at parts of _The Monastery_, where
historical _recit_ now and then supplies the place of vigorous
novel-action and talk. Dumas' co-operative habits (which are as little
to be denied as they are to be exaggerated) lent themselves to it much
more freely. But, notwithstanding this, the total accession of pleasure
to the novel-reader was immense, and the further possibility of such
accession practically unlimited. And accordingly the kind, though
sometimes belittled by foolish criticism, and sometimes going out of
favour by the vicissitudes of mere fashion, has constantly renewed
itself, and is likely to do so. Its special advantages and its special
warnings are of some interest to discuss briefly. Among the first may be
ranked something which the foolish belittlers above mentioned entirely
fail to appreciate, and indeed positively dislike. The danger of the
novel of ordinary and contemporary life (which accompanied this and
which is to be considered shortly as such) is that there may be so much
_mere_ ordinariness and contemporariness that the result may be
distasteful, if not sickening, to future ages. This has (to take one
example out of many) happened with the novels of so clever a person as
Theodore Hook in England, even with comparatively elect judges; with the
vulgar it is said to have happened even with such consummate things as
those of Miss Austen. With a large number of another sort of vulgar it
is said to happen with "Victorian" novels generally, while even the
elect sometimes find it difficult to prevent its happening with
Edwardian and Fifth Georgian. Now the historical novelist has before him
the entire range of the most interesting fashions, manners, incidents,
characters, literary styles of recorded time. He has but to select from
this inexhaustible store of general material, and to charge it wi