rose fiction, and, in fact,
could hardly be said to be anywhere present in literature outside of
drama.

To set against these not so very small merits in the present, and very
considerable seeds of promise for the future, there are, of course,
serious faults or defects--defaults which need, however, less
insistence, because they are much more generally known, much more
obvious, and have been already admitted. The charge of excessive length
need hardly be dealt with at all. It has already been said that the most
interesting point about it is the opportunity of discovering how it was,
in part, a regular, and, in fact, almost the furthest possible,
development of a characteristic which had been more or less observable
throughout the progress of romance. But it may be added that the law of
supply and demand helped; for people evidently were not in the least
bored by bulk, and that the fancy for having a book "on hand" has only
lately, if it has actually, died out.[194] Now such a "book on hand" as
the _Grand Cyrus_ exists, as far as my knowledge goes, in no Western
literature, unless you count collections of letters, which is not fair,
or such memoirs as Saint-Simon's, which do not appeal to quite the same
class of readers.

A far more serious default or defect--not exactly blameworthy, _because_
the time was not yet, but certainly to be taken account of--is the
almost utter want of character just referred to. From Cyrus and Mandane
downwards the people have qualities; but qualities, though they are
necessary to character, do not constitute it. Very faint approaches may
be discerned, by very benevolent criticism, in such a personage as
Martesie with her shrewdness, her maid-of-honour familiarity with the
ways and manners of courtly human beings, and that very pardonable,
indeed agreeable, tendency, which has been noticed or imagined, to flirt
in respectful fashion with Cyrus, while carrying on more regular
business with Feraulas. But it is little more than a suggestion, and it
has been frankly admitted that it is perhaps not even that, but an
imagination merely. And the same observation may apply to her "second
string," Doralise. No others of the women have any character at all, and
we have already spoken of the men.

Now these things, in a book very widely read and immensely admired,
could not, and did not, fail to have their effect. Nobody--we shall see
this more in detail in the next chapter--can fail to perceive that