The comparison, backwards and forwards, of this great company of novels is of endless interest; perhaps one of many aspects of that interest may be touched on specially, because it connects itself with much else that has been said.  If we read, together or in near sequence, three such books as, say, Emilia Wyndbam, Pendennis, and Yeast, all of which appeared close together, between 1846 and 1849, the differences, in quality and volume of individual genius, will of course strike every one forcibly.  But some will also be struck by something else—­the difference between the first and the other two in style or (as that word is almost hopelessly ambiguous) let us perhaps say diction.  Both Thackeray and Kingsley are almost perfectly modern in this.  We may not speak so well to-day, and we may have added more slang and jargon to our speech, but there is no real difference, except in these respects, between a speech of Pen’s (when not talking book) or one of Colonel Bracebridge’s, and the speech of any gentleman who is a barrister or a guardsman at this hour.  The excellent Mrs. Marsh had not arrived at that point; what some people call the “stilted” forms and phrases of fifty or almost a hundred years earlier clung to her still.  The resulting lingo is far better than that part of the lingo of to-day where literary and linguistic good manners have been forgotten altogether:  but it is distinctly deficient in ease.  There are endless flourishes and periphrases—­the colloquialisms which Swift and others had denounced (and quite properly) in their ugliest and vulgarest forms are not even permitted entrance in improved and warranted varieties.  You must never say “won’t” but always “will not,” whereas the ability to use the two forms adds infinite propriety as well as variety to the dialogue.  You say, “At length a most unfortunate accident aggravated (if aggravation were possible) the unfortunate circumstances of the situation.”  You address your own characters in the oratorical manner of Mr. Burke and other great men, “Ah, Mr. Danby! if instead, etc.”  In short, instead of reserving the grand manner (and a rather different grand manner) for grand occasions, you maintain a sort of cheap machine-made kind of it throughout.  The real secret of the novel was not found out till this was discarded.  Perhaps that real secret does not lie so much anywhere else as here.

A few words may not improperly be said about some of the circumstances and details of novel-appearance and distribution, etc., at this palmy day of English fiction.  At what time the famous “three-decker” was consecrated as the regular novel line-of-battle-ship I have not been able to determine exactly to my own satisfaction.  Richardson had extended his interminable narrations to seven or eight volumes:  Miss Burney latterly had not been content with less than five.  From the specimens I have examined, I have an idea that with the “Minerva Press” and its