long after the
appearance of _Vanity Fair_ to apologise for the apparent extravagance
of the praise which he had given to his friend Theodore Hook by
observing that, except Dickens, there was no novelist of the first class
between the death of Scott and the rise of Thackeray himself. But about
the time of that rise, and for a good many years after it, what may be
called the third generation of the novelists of the century began to
make its appearance, and, as has been partly observed above, to devote
itself to a somewhat different description of work, which will be
noticed in a future chapter.

The historical novel, though some of its very best representatives were
still to make their appearance, ceased to occupy the first place in
popular esteem; and the later varieties of the novel of more or less
humorous adventure, whether in the rather commonplace form of Hook or in
the highly individual and eccentric form of Dickens, also ceased to be
much cultivated, save by Dickens himself and his direct imitators. The
vogue set in for a novel of more or less ordinary life of the upper
middle class, and this vogue lasted during the whole of the third
quarter, if not of the second half, of the century, though about 1870
the historical novel revived, and, after some years of uncertain popular
taste, seems in the last decade to have acquired almost as great
popularity (with its companion study of purely fantastic adventure) as
ever. Yet we must, before passing to other departments, and interrupting
the account of fiction, notice not a few other writers of the time
previous to 1850.

The descent, in purely literary merit, from Dickens and Thackeray, and
perhaps from Bulwer, to some of those who must now be mentioned, is
great. Yet the chief naval and the chief military novelist of England
need surely not appear by allowance; and if affection and frequent
reading count for anything, it is not certain that some technically much
greater names might not shine with lesser lustre than those of Marryat
and Lever. Frederick Marryat, the elder of the pair, was born in 1792,
early enough to see a good deal of service in the later years of the
Great War, partly under the brilliant if eccentric leadership of Lord
Cochrane. His promotion was fairly rapid: he became a commander in 1815,
and afterwards distinguished himself as a post captain in the Burmese
War, being made a C.B. in 1825. But the increasing dearth of active
service was not suita