To sum it all up: For most of us Disraeli has become hard reading. This is not to say that he cannot still be read with profit as one who gives us insight concerning his day; but his gorgeous pictures and personages have faded woefully, where Trollope's are as bright as ever; and the latter is right when he said that Lord Beaconsfield's creatures "have a flavor of paint and unreality."
II
Bulwer Lytton has likewise lost ground greatly: but read to-day he has much more to offer. In him, too, may be seen an imperfectly blent mixture of by-gone sentimentality and modern truth: yet whether in the romance of historic setting, "The Last Days of Pompeii," or in the satiric study of realism, like "My Novel," Bulwer is much nearer to us, and holds out vital literature for our appreciation. It is easy to name faults both in romance and realism of his making: but the important thing to acknowledge is that he still appeals, can be read with a certain pleasure. His most mature work, moreover, bears testimony to the coming creed of fiction, as Disraeli's never does. There are moments with Bulwer when he almost seems a fellow of Meredith's. I recall with amusement the classroom remark of a college professor to the effect that "My Novel" was the greatest fiction in English literature. While the freshmen to whom this was addressed did not appreciate the generous erraticism of the judgment, even now one of them sees that, coming as it did from a clergyman of genial culture, a true lover of literature and one to inspire that love in others—even in freshmen!—it could hardly have been spoken concerning a mere man-milliner of letters. Bulwer produced too much and in too many kinds to do his best in all—or in any one. But most of us sooner or later have been in thrall to "Kenelm Chillingly" or thrilled to that masterly horror story, "The House and the Brain." There is pinchbeck with the gold, but the shining true metal is there.
III
To pass to Kingsley, is like turning from the world to the kingdom of God: all is religious fervor, humanitarian purpose. Here again the activity is multiple but the dominant spirit is that of militant Christianity. Outside of the Novel, Kingsley has left in "Water Babies" a book deserving the name of modern classic, unless the phrase be a contradiction in terms. "Alton Locke," read to-day, is felt to be too much the tract to bear favorable comparison with Eliot's "Felix Holt"; but it has literary power and noble sincerity. Kingsley is one of the first to feel the ground-swell of social democracy which was to sweep later fiction on its mighty tide. "Westward Ho!" is a sterling historical romance, one of the more successful books in a select list which embraces "The Cloister and the Hearth," "Lorna Doone," and "John Inglesant." "Hypatia," examined dispassionately, may be described as an historical romance with elements of greatness rather than a great historical romance. But it shed its glamour over our youth and there is affectionate dread in the thought of a more critical re-reading.
In truth, Kingsley, viewed in all his literary work, stands out as an athlete of the intellect and the emotions, doing much and doing it remarkably well—a power for righteousness in his day and generation, but for this very reason less a professional novelist of assured standing. His gifted, erratic brother Henry, in the striking series of stories dealing prevailingly with the Australian life he so well knew, makes a stronger impression of singleness of power and may last longer, one suspects, than the better-known, more successful Charles, whose significance for the later generation is, as we have hinted, in his sensitiveness to the new spirit of social revolt,—an isolated voice where there is now full chorus.
IV
An even more virile figure and one to whom the attribution of genius need not be grudged, is the strong, pugnacious, eminently picturesque Charles Reade. It is a temptation to say that but for his use of a method and a technique hopelessly old-fashioned, he might claim close fellowship for gift and influence with Dickens. But he lacked art as it is now understood: balance, restraint, the impersonal view were not his. He is a glorious but imperfect phenomenon, back there in the middle century. He worked in a way deserving of the descriptive phrase once applied to Macaulay—"a steam engine in breeches;" he put enough belief and heart into his fiction to float any literary vessel upon the treacherous waters of fame. He had, of the more specific qualities of a novelist, racy idiom, power in creating character and a remarkable gift for plot and dramatic scene. His frankly melodramatic novels like "A Terrible Temptation" are among the best of their kind, and in "The Cloister and the Hearth" he performed the major literary feat of reconstructing, with the large imagination and humanity which obliterate any effect of archeology and worked-up background, a period long past. And what reader of English fiction does not harbor more than kindly sentiments for those very different yet equally lovable women, Christie Johnstone and Peg Woffington? To run over his contributions thus is to feel the heart grow warm towards the sturdy story-teller. Reade also played a part, as did Kingsley, in the movement for recognition of the socially unfit and those unfairly treated. "Put Yourself in His Place," with its early word on the readjustment of labor troubles, is typical of much that he strove to do. Superb partisan that he was, it is probable that had he cared less for polemics and more for his art, he would have secured a safer position in the annals of fiction. He can always be taken up and enjoyed for his earnest conviction or his story for the story's sake, even if on more critical evaluations he comes out not so well as men of lesser caliber.
V
The writer of the group who has consistently gained ground and has come to be generally recognized as a great artist, a force in English fiction both for influence and pleasure-giving power, is Anthony Trollope. He is vital to-day and strengthening his hold upon the readers of fiction. The quiet, cultivated folk in whose good opinion lies the destiny of really worthy literature, are, as a rule, friendly to Trollope; not seldom they are devoted to him. Such people peruse him in an enjoyably ruminative way at their meals, or read him in the neglige of retirement. He is that cosy, enviable thing, a bedside author. He is above all a story-teller for the middle-aged and it is his good fortune to be able to sit and wait for us at that half-way house,—since we all arrive. Of course, to say this is to acknowledge his limitations. He does not appeal strongly to the young, though he never forgets to tell a love story; but he is too placid, matter-of-fact, unromantic for them. But if he do not shake us with lyric passion, he is always interesting and he wears uncommonly well. That his popularity is extending is testified to by new editions and publishers' hullabaloo over his work.