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poorer compositions, when he weakly attempted the sentimental or romantic, and had lost much of his original spontaneity, the vein of humour never runs wholly dry. Of course, everybody knows that Dickens's characters are caricatures; that the world never saw, for instance, and never will see, a Micawber or a Tony Veck, a Sam Weller or a Wackford Squeers; but, on the other hand, the particular quality which each represents is to be found in human nature, and to have this quality put before us in such a shape and with so much exaggeration-the Micawberism of Micawber or the sham "umility" of Uriah Heap-that we cannot fail to see at a glance what is good or bad in it, and how far it affects ourselves, is a definite gain. Dickens's defects are easily noted; they lie on the very surface of his novels. There you may observe the pretentiousness of his pathos, the unreality of his sentiment, the bombast which he mistakes for fine writing, the loose and irregular construction of his plots, which consist, indeed, of little more than a sequence of striking scenes, intended to present in the most obvious light the eccentricities of the personages he calls into existence. It is not difficult either to perceive that he knows nothing of ladies or gentlemen, and cannot draw them; that with the subtler emotions and more delicate feelings he has no real sympathy. It is clear, too, that the higher female character lies beyond his grasp, and that his tragedy when most elaborate is always on the point of coming to grief, except, perhaps, in the "Tale of Two Cities," where the self-sacrifice of Sydney Carton seems to me the high-water mark of Dickens's pathetic work. His range of thought, moreover, is essentially narrow, and he is most bigoted often when he assumes to be most liberal. But in spite of these and other scarcely less conspicuous faults, his claim to rank among our very greatest novelists is unimpeachable; it rests on a thousand brilliantly successful conceptions; it rests on a fertility of imagination and a breadth of humour which no other writer has ever equalled.

It has been said that as Sir Walter Scott was the novelist of the upper class, aristocratic, nay, almost feudal, in his ideas and sentiments, so was Dickens the novelist of the middle class, with whom he identifies himself in his strength as well as his weakness. In like manner, perhaps, we may say of Thackeray that he appealed to cultured, scholarly, and thoughtful readers; while at all events in his earlier writings-Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton (1805-73), addressed himself to the young and imaginative. Three points call for notice in connection with this most industrious of men of letters. First, his capacity of growth. His mind was always growing; he was always open to the reception of new ideas; and his later work was incomparably superior to his earlier. In this respect he differed from almost all our great novelists, who have generally shown a marked falling-off after attaining to a certain height. But, clever as were "Pelham" and "The Disowned," no

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one will pretend that they equal in finished workmanship or elevation of tone or knowledge of mental phenomena "The Caxtons," "My Novel," or "The Parisians." Lytton was in his sixty-eighth year when he died, and he was then at his best. His "Kenelm Chillingly," published in the year of his death, seems to me superior even in those qualities of vivacity and vigour, which are generally identified with youth, to any of his earlier works. Second, reference must be made to his conscientiousness as an artist. He constructed his plots with the greatest care. Every scene, every situation, was thoroughly studied; every detail was considered in its relation to the general effect. The same elaboration was bestowed upon his characters; and if Lytton's novels fall far short of the very best, it is from no want of effort and thought on the part of the artist. He manipulated his colours skilfully; his figures were perfectly proportional, so far as he could conceive them. The scenery was always in due perspective and keeping. What was wanting, after all was finished, was exactly what no industry or intelligence or care of the artist can supply-the exquisitely subtle and delicate yet enduring touch of genius. Lytton was a man of very considerable talents and varied accomplishments; the gifts he had received from Nature he industriously and persistently cultivated, so that he was always coming close to the goal, though he never reached it. He had a real poetic taste, but not the poetic faculty he had the artist's ambition and temperament, but not the artist's power. He succeeded most when he made the least effort; his heroes and heroines are always failures, but his secondary characters are very good indeed. A few types, such as the man of fashion and the middle-class vagabond, he presented with great distinctness and with real artistic force. So, too, his historical personages are drawn with a strong, true hand. Third, we must note his versatility. He was not only poet, dramatist, essayist, orator, and novelist, but he essayed every kind of fiction. He produced fashionable novels, like "Pelham romances of crime, like "Eugene Aram" and Paul Clifford ; classical romances, like "The Last Days of Pompeii; novels of sentiment, like "The Disowned," "Ernest Maltravers," and Alice;" historical fictions, like "Rienzi" and "The Last of the Barons; " novels of manners, like "The Caxtons," "My Novel," and "What will he do with it?" novels of intrigue, like "Night and Morning" and "Lucretia ;" and psychological romances, like "Zanoni" and "A Strange Story." In "The Coming Race" he took up the Utopian style of fiction. "Kenelin Chillingly" and "The Parisians" belong to the novels of manners. I have already hinted that he always came short of the highest and best; but what he did was nevertheless very well done-as well done as talent and culture without imagination could do it. As to the versatility of the man, it cannot be questioned, any more than his ambition. I say his ambition, for he yearned to make

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THE LESSON OF A LIFE.

good his position among the great masters of fiction; and his long, laborious, and not wholly unsuccessful effort commands our sympathy. I think that, on the whole, his works (in spite of their melodramatic tone, their false sentiment, their false pathos and tawdry style, and the irritating mannerisms which group around their worship of the Ideal and the Beautiful) are worth studying. I am sure his life is; for it was a life of untiring energy, unflagging perseverance, and earnest devotion to his art, informed and stimulated by an honourable ambition.

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CHAPTER VI.

TRAVEL AND DISCOVERY: A COURSE OF READING.

HE strain of adventure which runs in our English blood, inherited doubtless from those restless forefathers who, in dragon-prowed galleys, swarmed out of the creeks and fiords of the North, and sought "fresh woods and pastures new" across the rolling sea, has always made popular with us the literature of travel and discovery. In this department, indeed, we English are rich beyond any other people, as might be expected of a nation which has sent its sons far and wide over the world, and planted its laws, language, and polity in the American continent as in Australia, in South Africa as in the islands of Polynesia. It is no matter of wonder, therefore, that the first complete book in English was a book of travel, namely, "The Voyage and Travaile which treateth of the Way to the Hierusalem, and of the Marvayles of Inde, with other Islands and Countries," written in 1356 by Sir John Mandeville, a native of St. Albans, who travelled in Oriental countries for upwards of thirty-four years, writing down on his return all he saw and all he heard, so as to produce an amusing combination of truth and falsehood. His book was one of the earliest issues from the Italian press (1480). A century later the English press was busy with the publication of records of travel. Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the world found a chronicler in the author of the "World Encompassed;" Raleigh's adventures on the American mainland were described in the "Discovery of Guiana." To this period belong the "Voyage of Sir H. Middleton to the Malacca Islands," and Fletcher and Korny's "Russia in the Sixteenth Century." With indefatigable industry, stimulated by an ardent love of geographical knowledge, Richard Hakluyt, in 1598, collected and preserved "The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over Land, to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth, within the Compass of these 1500 Years." It would be impossible, I think, to overestimate the influence of this great work upon the maritime spirit of the English people. Similar in purpose, and scarcely inferior in influence, is the "Pilgrimes, or Relations of the World

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and the Religions observed in all Ages and Places discovered from the Creation to the Present," by Samuel Purchas, published in 1613. There are five volumes in all, and Purchas professes to have consulted in compiling them upwards of twelve hundred authors. "The accuracy of this useful compiler," says Hallam,1 “has been denied by those who have had better means of knowledge, and probably is inferior to that of Hakluyt; but his labour was far more comprehensive. The 'Pilgrims' was at all events a great source of knowledge to the contemporaries of Purchas." And they have been the delight of adventurous youth for successive generations, besides suggesting to poets, dramatists, and romancists many a pleasant and picturesque fancy.

In 1595 John Davis published a curious little volume, "The World's Hydrographical Description," which was one of the earliest pleas for the feasibility of a North-West Passage (ie., by the north of America) to "far Cathay." In this he describes his own gallant voyages to the North, in one of which he "alone, without farther comfort or company," in a small bark of thirty tons, having reached latitude 66°, came to "a strait," which he followed for eighty leagues, until he came among many islands. Then, finding small hope of passing that way, he returned to the open sea, coasted the shore towards the south, and in so doing "found another great inlet, near forty leagues broad, where the water entered in with violent swiftness." All which he relates with the utmost simplicity, and by no means in the tone of a man who is conscious of having accomplished any unusual action; yet in a bark of thirty tons to venture among the Polar ice was surely a heroic deed! About twenty years after Davis, a Scotchman named William Lithgow published the "Total Discourse" of his nineteen years' wanderings and painful peregrinations in Europe, Asia, and America, in the course of which he professed to have surveyed "fortyeight kingdoms, ancient and modern, twenty-one republics, ten absolute principalities, with two hundred islands.” He writes in crabbed Scotch, but with the flavour of quaintness which is as inseparable from old authors as the aroma is from old wine.

The naturalist, John Ray, travelled in 1663 through the Netherlands, Germany, Holland, and France, and on his return duly published his " Observations," as so many tourists through the same countries have since done. Ray's, however, are those of an acute and intelligent mind. A far higher merit attaches to the "Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, or Letters of James Howell" (1594-1666), describing his Continental travels, which, extended over three years, enabled him to accumulate a mass of interesting and valuable particulars. The letters are written in a very graphic style, and the comments on men and manners and places are very fresh and entertaining. That loyal cavalier, Sir Thomas Herbert, Hallam, "Literature of Europe," iii. 450.

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