omic deviations chiefly, as in the hands
of Theodore Hook; how Bulwer attempted a sort of cross between the two;
how about the middle of the century the historical novel either ceased
or changed, to revive later after a middle period illustrated by the
brilliant romances of Kingsley; how about the same time the strictly
modern novel of manners came into being in the hands of Thackeray, Miss
Bronte, George Eliot, and Anthony Trollope, Dickens overlapping both
periods in a fantastic and nondescript style of his own; and how more
recently still both romance and novel have spread out and ramified into
endless subdivisions.

There is, however, this broad line of demarcation between poetry and the
novel, that they are written for different ends and from different
motives. It is natural to man to write poetry; it does not appear to be
by any means so certainly or unvaryingly necessary to him to read it.
Except at rare periods and for short times, poetry has never offered the
slightest chance of livelihood to any considerable number of persons;
and it is tolerably certain that if the aggregate number of poets since
the foundation of the world had had nothing to live on but their
aggregate gains as poets, starvation would have been the commonplace
rule, instead of the dramatic exception, among the sons of Apollo.

On the other hand, it is no doubt also natural to man to tell prose
stories, and it seems, though it was a late-discovered aptitude, that it
is not unnatural to him to read them; but the writing of them does not
seem to be at all an innate or widely disseminated need. Until some
hundred or two hundred years ago very few were written at all; the
instances of persons who do but write novels because they must are
exceedingly rare, and it is as certain as anything can be that of the
enormous production of the last three-quarters of a century not 5,
perhaps not 1 per cent would have been produced if the producing had not
led, during the whole of that time, in most cases but those of hopeless
incompetence to some sort of a livelihood, in many to very comfortable
income, and in some to positive wealth and fame. In other words, poetry
is the creation of supply and novel-writing of demand; poetry can hardly
ever be a trade and in very rare cases a profession, while novel-writing
is commonly a very respectable profession, and unfortunately sometimes a
rather disreputable trade.

Like other professions, however, it enlists geni