Ainsworth and James perhaps deserve to be taken next, not so much in point of merit as because both, though continuing (especially Ainsworth) very late, began pretty early.  Indeed, a book in which Ainsworth had a hand, though it is said to be not wholly his, Sir John Chiverton, was with Horace Smith’s Brambletye House (1826), the actual subject of Scott’s criticism above quoted.  Both Ainsworth and James are unconcealed followers of Scott himself:  and they show the dangers to which the historical romance is exposed when it gets out of the hands of genius.  Of the two, James had the greater scholarship, the better command of English, and perhaps a nearer approach to command also of character:  Ainsworth more “fire in his interior,” more variety, somewhat more humour (though neither was strong in this respect), and a certain not useless or despicable faculty of splashy scene-painting and rough but not ineffective stage-management.  But of Scott’s combination of poetry, humour, knowledge of life, reading, grasp of character, and command of effective dialogue and description, both were utterly destitute:  and both fell into the mistake (which even Dumas did not wholly avoid) of attempting to give the historical effect by thrusting in lardings of pure history, by overloading descriptions of dress, etc., and, in short, by plastering the historic colour on, instead of suffusing it, as Scott had managed to do.  Popular as they were, not merely with youthful readers, they undoubtedly brought the historical novel into some discredit a little before the middle of the century.[20]

[20] Here and in a good many cases to come it is impossible to particularise criticism.  It matters the less that, from Ainsworth’s Rookwood (1834) and James’ Richelieu (1829) onwards, the work of both was very much par sibi in merit and defect alike.

With Bulwer and Disraeli we get into a different sphere of literature—­whether into the same in both cases, and whether, if so, into one of the highest, are questions on which no general agreement has yet been reached—­on which, perhaps, no general agreement is even possible.

With regard to the second, it must be remembered that to him, whether as Mr. Disraeli or as Lord Beaconsfield, novel-writing was always a “by-work”—­partly a means to his real end of politics, partly a relaxation from the work necessary to that end.  He called himself a “gentleman of the press”—­with that mixture of sincerity, purpose, and ironical simulation which brought on him, from unintelligent or not very honest opponents, and even from others, the charge of affectation, if not of hypocrisy.  And, undoubtedly, he did a good deal of work for the press, and very remarkable work too—­almost wholly in the kind of novel-writing, from Vivian Grey (1826) to Endymion (1880).  Yet it may be permitted—­in the face of some more than respectable opinion on the other side—­to doubt whether, except