Stress and dwelling have been purposely given, to some minor books of this period, for this very reason.
But at the same time the limitations, outside the greatest, are certainly peculiar.

It seems wonderful that a man like Cumberland, for instance, who had not a little literary talent, should not have been able to make _Henry_ into a story of real interest that might hold the reader as even second-class Trollope--say a book like _Orley Farm_--does.

We have ungraciously recognised that some of our lady novelists, who wrote by forties and by fifties, did not always sustain the interest of their novels.

Miss Burney wrote four in all, and could hardly keep up the interest of hers right through the second.

Above all, there is the difficulty of their failure with conversation and, in fact, with any diction proper for conversation.