he most conspicuous place, and his claim to the most popular one in
the literature of fiction was by common consent admitted. He obtained
this rank by the sheer force of his genius, unhelped in any way, and he
held it without dispute. As he began he closed. After he had written for
only four months, and after he had written incessantly for four and
thirty years, he was of all living writers the most widely read. It is
of course quite possible that such popularity might imply rather
littleness in his contemporaries than greatness in him: but his books
are the test to judge by. Each thus far, as it appeared, has had notice
in these pages for its illustration of his life, or of his method of
work, or of the variety and versatility in the manifestations of his
power. But his latest books remain still for notice, and will properly
suggest what is farther to be said of his general place in literature.

His leading quality was Humour. It has no mention in either of the
criticisms cited, but it was his highest faculty; and it accounts for
his magnificent successes, as well as for his not infrequent failures,
in characteristic delineation. He was conscious of this himself. Five
years before he died, a great and generous brother artist, Lord Lytton,
amid much ungrudging praise of a work he was then publishing, asked him
to consider, as to one part of it, if the modesties of art were not a
little overpassed. "I cannot tell you," he replied, "how highly I prize
your letter, or with what pride and pleasure it inspires me. Nor do I
for a moment question its criticism (if objection so generous and easy
may be called by that hard name) otherwise than on this ground--that I
work slowly and with great care, and never give way to my invention
recklessly, but constantly restrain it; and that I think it is my
infirmity to fancy or perceive relations in things which are not
apparent generally. Also, I have such an inexpressible enjoyment of what
I see in a droll light, that I dare say I pet it as if it were a spoilt
child. This is all I have to offer in arrest of judgment." To perceive
relations in things which are not apparent generally, is one of those
exquisite properties of humour by which are discovered the affinities
between the high and the low, the attractive and the repulsive, the
rarest things and things of every day, which bring us all upon the level
of a common humanity. It is this which gives humour an immortal touch
that does no