in present and past
times so fresh, so vivid, so natural, so charming, and so true, and all
with such inimitable humor, that he still reigns without a peer in his
peculiar domain. He is as rich in humor as Fielding, without his
coarseness; as inventive as Swift, without his bitterness; as moral as
Richardson, without his tediousness. He did not aim to teach ethics or
political economy directly, although he did not disguise his opinions.
His chief end was to please and instruct at the same time, stimulating
the mind through the imagination rather than the reason; so healthful
that fastidious parents made an exception of his novels among all others
that had ever been written, and encouraged the young to read them. Sir
Walter Scott took off the ban which religious people had imposed on
novel-reading.

Then came Dickens, amazingly popular, with his grotesque descriptions of
life, his exaggerations, his impossible characters and improbable
incidents: yet so genial in sympathies, so rich in humor, so indignant
at wrongs, so broad in his humanity, that everybody loved to read him,
although his learning was small and his culture superficial.

Greatly superior to him as an artist and a thinker was Thackeray, whose
fame has been steadily increasing,--the greatest master of satire in
English literature, and one of the truest painters of social life that
any age has produced; not so much admired by women as by men; accurate
in his delineation of character, though sometimes bitter and fierce;
felicitous in plot, teaching lessons in morality, unveiling shams and
hypocrisy, contemptuous of all fools and quacks, yet sad in his
reflections on human life.

In the brilliant constellation of which Dickens and Thackeray were the
greater lights was Bulwer Lytton,--versatile; subjective in genius;
sentimental, and yet not sensational; reflective, yet not always sound
in morals; learned in general literature, but a charlatan in scientific
knowledge; worldly in his spirit, but not a pagan; an inquisitive
student, seeking to penetrate the mysteries of Nature as well as to
paint characters and events in other times; and leaving a higher moral
impression when he was old than when he was young.

Among the lesser lights, yet real stars, that have blazed in this
generation are Reade, Kingsley, Black, James, Trollope, Cooper, Howells,
Wallace, and a multitude of others, in France and Germany as well as
England and America, to say nothing of the t