is earlier work that his chief virtue is to be found.
It is especially in its first division,--the stories of _Vivian Grey_,
_The Young Duke_, _Contarini Fleming_, _Alroy_, _Venetia_, and
_Henrietta Temple_,--published between 1827 and 1837. They are more like
Bulwer's than like anybody else's work, but _Vivian Grey_ appeared
in the same year with _Falkland_ and before _Pelham_. Later
novels--_Coningsby_ (1844), _Sybil_ (1845), and _Tancred_ (1847)--are
more directly political; while certain smaller and chiefly early
tales--_Ixion_, _The Infernal Marriage_, _Popanilla_, etc.--are pure
fantasy pieces with a satirical intent, and the first of them is, with
perhaps Bedford's _Vathek_ as a companion, the most brilliant thing of
its kind in English. In these more particularly, but in all more or
less, a strong Voltairian influence is perceptible; but on the whole the
set of books may be said to be like nothing else. They have grave
faults, being sometimes tawdry in phrase and imagery, sometimes too
personal, frequently a little unreal, and scarcely ever finally and
completely adjusted to the language in which and the people of whom they
are written. Yet the attraction of them is singular; and good judges,
differing very widely in political and literary tastes, have found
themselves at one as to the strange way in which the reader comes back
to them as he advances in life, and as to the marvellous cleverness
which they display. Let it be added that _Henrietta Temple_, a mere and
sheer love story written in a dangerous style of sentimentalism, is one
of the most effective things of its kind in English, and holds its
ground despite all drawbacks of fashion in speech and manners, which
never tell more heavily than in the case of a book of the kind; while in
_Venetia_ the story of Byron is handled with remarkable closeness, and
yet in good taste.

Two other novelists belonging to the first half of the century, and
standing even further out of the general current than did Disraeli, both
of them also possessing greater purely literary genius than his, must
also be mentioned here. Thomas Love Peacock, the elder of them, born a
long way within the eighteenth century (in 1785), passed a studious
though irregularly educated youth and an idle early manhood, but at a
little more than thirty (1817) produced, after some verse, the curious
little satirical romance of _Headlong Hall_. This he followed up with
others--_Melincourt_, _Nightmare