nrelated to the general course of the nineteenth century. They
seem born out of time; they would have left a more lasting
impress upon English fiction had they come before--or after.
There are unquestionable qualities of realism in "Jane Eyre,"
but it is romantic to the core, sentimental, melodramatic.
Rochester is an elder St. Elmo--hardly truer as a human being;
Jane's sacrificial worship goes back to the eighteenth century;
and that famous mad-woman's shriek in the night is a moment to
be boasted of on the Bowery. And this was her most typical book,
that which gave her fame. The others, "Villette" and the rest,
are more truly representative of the realistic trend of the day,
but withal though interesting, less characteristic, less liked.
In proportion as she is romantic is she remembered. The streak
of genius in these gifted women must not blind us to the
isolation, the unrelated nature of their work to the main course
of the Novel. They are exceptions to the rule.

VII

This group then of novelists, sinking all individual
differences, marks the progress of the method of realism over
the romance. Scarcely one is conspicuous for achievement in the
latter, while almost all of them did yeoman service in the
former. In some cases--those of Disraeli and Bulwer--the
transition is seen where their earlier and later work is
contrasted; with a writer like Trollope, the newer method
completely triumphs. Even in so confirmed a romance-maker as
Wilkie Collins, to whom plot was everything and whose cunning of
hand in this is notorious, there is a concession to the new
ideal of Truth. He was touched by his time in the matter of
naturalness of dialogue, though not of event. Wildly improbable
and wooden as his themes may now seem, their manner is
realistic, realism of speech, in fact, being an element in his
effectivism. Even the author of "The Moonstone" is scotched by
the spirit of the age, and in the preface to "Armsdale" declares
for a greater freedom of theme--one of the first announcements
of that desire for an extension of the subject-matter which was
in the next generation to bring such a change.

It seems just to represent all these secondary novelists as
subsidiary to Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot. Fascinating isolated
figures like Borrow, who will always be cherished by the few,
are perforce passed by. We are trying to keep both quality and
influence in mind, with the desire to show the writers not by
themselves a