century of origins as regards the most important kinds; it
is quite a century of capital and classical performance in them. In
"making"--prose or verse--no time leaves record of performance more
distinguished or more various.

That in one great literary kind, drama, it exhibits lamentable
deficiency, that indeed in that kind it hardly counts at all, has been
admitted; and it is not probable that in any of the serious prose kinds,
except history, it will ever rank very high when compared with others.
Its theology has, as far as literature is concerned, been a little
wanting in dignity, in finish, and even in fervour, its philosophy
either commonplace or jargonish, its exercises in science and
scholarship ever divorcing themselves further from literary ideals. But
in the quality of its miscellaneous writing, as well as in the
facilities given to such writing by its special growth--some would say
its special fungus--of the periodical, it again rises to the first
class. Hardly the period of Montaigne and Bacon, certainly not that of
Dryden, Cowley, and Temple, nor that of Addison and Steele, nor that of
Johnson and Goldsmith, can vie with the century of Charles Lamb and
William Hazlitt, of Leigh Hunt and Thomas de Quincey, of Macaulay and
Thackeray and Carlyle, of Arnold and Mr. Ruskin. Miscellaneous we have
been,--perhaps too much so,--but we should be a little saved by the
excellence of some of our miscellanists.

Pessimists would probably say that the distinguishing and not altogether
favourable notes of the century are a somewhat vagabond curiosity in
matter and a tormented unrest of style. The former concerns us little,
and is chiefly noticeable here because of the effect which it has had on
the great transformation of historical writing so often noticed; the
latter concerns us intimately. And no doubt there is hardly a single
feature--not even the growth of the novel, not even the development of
the newspaper--which will so distinctly and permanently distinguish this
century in English literary history as the great changes which have come
over style, and especially prose style. There has been less opportunity
to notice these collectively in any of the former chapters than there
has been to notice some other changes: nor was this of much importance,
for the present is the right place for gathering up the fragments.

The change of style in prose is undoubtedly as much the leading feature
of the century as is in poetry