[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
LATEST GEORGIAN AND VICTORIAN NOVELISTS.
Scott's example and success naturally attracted many writers towards the novel. Byron, Shelley, Mrs. Shelley, and Claire Clairmont, with Polidori, Byron's physician, all amused themselves with writing romances in the "truly horrid" style during a period of rainy weather on the Lake of Geneva. Byron's first chapters of a romance of a vampire, with the opening scene, in the desert near Ephesus, are admirable and tantalizing. Completed as heaven pleased by Polidori, the story was popular on the Continent, was made the theme of more than one opera, and was dramatized by Charles Nodier. Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein," highly praised by Scott, really is very satisfactorily horrid; her later novels are forgotten.
So far, and also in the three Scottish novels of Miss Susan Ferrier (1782-1854) there was no imitation of Scott, indeed her tale "Marriage" (1818) was published four years after "Waverley". This work, with "Inheritance," and "Destiny," contained humorous studies of Scottish character—of these Miss Pratt is the best remembered.
John Galt (1779-1839) was a man of affairs and a prolific general writer, an acquaintance of Byron. The best of his books, "The Annals of the Parish," is very good indeed: the old innocent minister records the humours and sorrows of his flock from year to year, throughout the commercial "awakening of Scotland". Except for the fact that the book deals with Scottish life it is not an imitation of Sir Walter; nor is "The Provost," or "The Ayrshire Legatees," who travel south as Humphry Clinker travelled north of Tweed, and, like Humphry's company, narrate their adventures and record their reflections. Galt's best books are still well worth reading; they, not Scott's romances, are the ancestors of the modern "Kailyard School," as it was called in its day.
Beginning with an imitation of Scott, William Harrison Ainsworth (born 1805) became a literary man very young, published for the first time in "A Christmas Box," Scott's "Bonny Dundee," and, as editor, advertised himself colossally (he was a strikingly handsome person), and poured out historical novels, "The Tower," "Rookwood," "Jack Sheppard," and many others. He "crammed" for the historical details, of which he was too lavish, and, aided by Cruikshank's designs, attained a wide popularity, which has vanished. He continued to write almost till his death in 1882.
G. P. R. James (1799-1860) is only remembered for his famous two horsemen in his opening scenes; long before his death his vogue had passed.
His contemporary, Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881), for a man so active in politics, wrote a great mass of fiction, from the "Vivian Grey" of his boyhood, to more mature works in which many of the characters were easily recognized by contemporaries. The political novels, such as "Coningsby" abound in satire, "Sybil" in reflections on society; all are full of a fantasy rather Oriental, and "Lothair," in 1870, was as personal in its allusions as "Coningsby". "Ixion" and "The Infernal Marriage" are brief apologues, full of mocking mirth; everywhere there is brilliance; but substance in the way of human character and of "convincing" narrative is rare. The author was amusing himself and his world between the innings of a greater game. Thackeray's burlesque "Codlingsby" may survive "Coningsby".