And yet when one comes to consider the books critically, either one by one, or in pairs and batches, or as a whole, it is somehow or other difficult to pronounce any one exactly a masterpiece.  There is a want of “inevitableness” which sometimes amounts to improbability, as in the case particularly of that most vivid and racy of books, Cripps the Carrier, where the central incident or situation, though by no means impossible, is almost insultingly unlikely, and forces its unlikeliness on one at almost every moment and turn.  Never, perhaps, was there a better instance of that “possible-improbable” which contrasts so fatally with the “probable-impossible.”  In not a few cases, too, there is that reproduction of similar denouements and crucial occurrences which is almost necessary in a time when men write many novels.  In almost all there is a want of central interest in the characters that should be central; in some an exaggeration of dialect; or of quaint non-dialectic but also non-catholic locutions on the author’s part.  One rather hates oneself for finding such faults—­no one of which is absolutely fatal—­in a mass of work which has given, and continues to give, so much pleasure:  but the facts remain.  One would not have the books not written on any account; but one feels that they were written rather because the author chose to do so than because he could not help it.  Now it is possible to exaggerate the necessity of “mission” and the like:  but, after all, Ich kann nicht anders must be to some extent the mood of mind of the man who is committing a masterpiece.

Something of the sort is still more noticeable in the work of other writers of the period.  We have seen that two ladies of great talent, Mrs. Oliphant and Mrs. Craik, began to write, long before Mr. Meredith published Richard Feverel and very little later than the time of Vanity Fair.  They produced, the one in Salem Chapel (1863), a book which contemporaries might be excused for thinking likely to herald a new George Eliot at least; the other, in John Halifax, Gentleman (1857), a book of more sentimentalism, but of great interest and merit.  Both were miracles of fecundity, Mrs. Craik producing, in the shorter life of the two, not much fewer than fifty novels; Mrs. Oliphant, besides a great deal of work in other departments, a tale which did not stop very far short of the hundred.  The latter, moreover, gave, at a comparatively late period of her career, evidences of being able to start new lines—­the supernatural stories of her last stages are only inferior to the Chronicles of Carlingford themselves.  Yet, once more, we look for a masterpiece in vain:  in fact in Mrs. Oliphant’s case we ask, how could any human being, on such a system of production, be expected to produce masterpieces?  Scott, I think, once wrote four or nearly four novels in a year:  and the process helped to kill him.  Mrs. Oliphant did it over and over again, besides alternating the annual dose still more frequently with twos and threes.  In her case the process only killed her novels.