Thackeray takes sixteen years of experiment before he trusts his genius, boldly and on the great scale, to reveal itself in its own way, and in the straight way of the novel.
Yet in this time also a great advance was made, as is shown not only by the fact that Dickens and Thackeray themselves became possible, but by the various achievements of the principal writers mentioned in this chapter, of one or two who might have been, but are perhaps, on the whole, best postponed to the next, such as Lever, and of the great army of minorities who have been of necessity omitted.

In every direction and from every point of view novel is _growing_.

Although it was abused by precisians, the _gran conquesta_ of Scott had forced it into general recognition and requisition.

Even the still severe discipline of family life in the first half of the nineteenth century, instead of excluding it altogether, contented itself with prescribing that "novels should not be read in the morning." A test which may be thought vulgar by the super-fine or the superficial, but a pretty good one, is the altered status and position of the writers of novels.

In the eighteenth, especially the earlier eighteenth, century the novelist had not merely been looked down upon _as_ a novelist, but had, as a rule, resorted to novel-writing under some stress of circumstance.