Nor need we concern ourselves further with literary criticism or the history of opinion.  This was worth considering in the infancy of the movement, when Warton began to question the supremacy of Pope; when Hurd asserted the fitness for the poet’s uses of the Gothic fictions and the institution of chivalry; and when Percy ventured to hope that cultivated readers would find something deserving attention in old English minstrelsy.  It was still worth considering a half-century later, when Coleridge explained away the dramatic unities, and Byron once more took up the lost cause of Pope.  But by 1832 the literary revolution was complete.  Romance was in no further need of vindication, when all Scott’s library of prose and verse stood back of her, and

  “High-piled books in charactery
  Held, like rich garners, the full-ripened grain.”

As to Scott’s best invention, the historical romance, I shall not pursue its fortunes to the end.  The formula once constituted, its application was easy, whether the period chosen was the Middle Ages or any old period B.C. or A.D.  Here and there an individual stands forth from the class, either for its excellent conformity with the Waverley type or for its originality in deviation.  Of the former kind is Charles Reade’s “The Cloister and the Hearth” (1861); and of the latter Mr. Maurice Hewlett’s “The Forest Lovers” (1898).  The title page of Reade’s novel describes the book as “a matter-of-fact romance.”  It is as well documented as any of Scott’s, and reposes especially upon the “Colloquies” of Erasmus, the betrothal of whose parents, with their subsequent separation by the monastic vow of celibacy, is the subject of the story.  This is somewhat romanticised, but keeps a firm grip upon historical realities.  The period of the action is the fifteenth century, yet the work is as far as possible from being a chivalry tale, like the diaphanous fictions of Fouque.  “In that rude age,” writes the novelist, “body prevailing over mind, all sentiments took material forms.  Man repented with scourges, prayed by bead, bribed the saints with wax tapers, put fish into the body to sanctify the soul, sojourned in cold water for empire over the emotions, and thanked God for returning health in 1 cwt, 2 stone, 7 lbs., 3 oz., 1 dwt. of bread and cheese.”  There is no lack in “The Cloister and the Hearth” of stirring incident and bold adventure; encounters with bears and with bandits, sieges, witch trials, gallows hung with thieves, archery with long bow and arbalest—­everywhere fighting enough, as in Scott; and, also as in Scott, behind the private drama of true love, intrigue, persecution, the broad picture of society.  It is no idealised version of the Middle Ages.  The ugly, sordid side of mediaeval life is turned outwards; its dirt, discomfort, ignorance, absurdity, brutality, unreason and insecurity are rendered with crass realism.  The burgher is more in evidence than the chevalier.  Less