of Mrs. Shelley, are examples. But
even these, and much more other things not so good as they, compose in
regard to the scheme of such a book as this the _numerus_, the crowd,
which, out of no disrespect, but for obvious and imperative reasons,
must be not so much neglected as omitted. All classes of literature
contribute to this, but, with the exception of mere compilations and
books in science or art which are outgrown, none so much as prose
fiction. The safest of life (except poetry) of all literary kinds when
it is first rate, it is the most certain of death when it is not; and it
pays for the popularity which it often receives to-day by the oblivion
of an unending morrow.

CHAPTER IV

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERIODICALS

Perhaps there is no single feature of the English literary history of
the nineteenth century, not even the enormous popularisation and
multiplication of the novel, which is so distinctive and characteristic
as the development in it of periodical literature. For this did not, as
the extension of novel writing did, concern a single department only.
The periodical--it may almost for shortness' sake be said the
newspaper--not only became infinitely multiplied, but it gradually
absorbed almost every department, or a share of almost every department,
into itself. Very large numbers of the best as well as of the worst
novels themselves have originally appeared in periodicals; not a very
small proportion of the most noteworthy nineteenth century poetry has
had the same origin; it may almost be said that all the best work in
essay, whether critical, meditative, or miscellaneous, has thus been
ushered into the world. Even the severer and more academic divisions of
history, philosophy, theology, and their sisters, have condescended to
avail themselves of this means of obtaining a public audience; and
though there is still a certain conventional decency in apologising for
reprints from periodicals, it is quite certain that, had such reprints
not taken place, more than half the most valuable books of the age in
some departments, and a considerable minority of the most valuable in
others, would never have appeared as books at all.

The first division of our time, the last twenty years of the eighteenth
century, though it witnessed a very great development of the mere
newspaper, with which we have little to do, did not see very much of
this actual "development of periodical literature" which concerns us.