aluable as an early example of that great danger
of modern literature--the influence of the "printed book" itself: and in
a less degree of that forging ahead of the novel generally in public
favour which we are chronicling. If the kind had not been popular, and
if Fielding had not been its great prophet, one may be pretty sure that
_Henry_ would never have existed. The causes are important: the effect
not quite so.

There was, however, at this time a novel-school, and not such a very
small one, which had more legitimate reasons for existence, inasmuch as
it really served as mouthpiece to the thoughts and opinions of the time,
whether these thoughts and opinions were good or bad. This may be called
the "revolutionary school," and its three most distinguished scholars
were Bage, Holcroft, and Godwin, with Mrs. Inchbald perhaps to be added.
The first began considerably before the outbreak of the actual French
Revolution and shows the influence of its causes: the others were
directly influenced by itself.

One of the most remarkable of English novel-writers who are not absolute
successes, and one who, though less completely obscured by Fortune than
some, has never had quite his due, is Robert Bage. It was unfortunate
for him that he fell in with the crude generation contemporary in their
manhood with the French Revolution, and so manifested the crudity in
full. Bage, in fact, except for a certain strength of humour, is almost
more French than English. He has been put in the school of Richardson,
but it is certain that Richardson would have been shocked at the
supposed scholar: and it is not certain that Bage would or need have
felt complimented by the assignment of the master. He has the special
laxity of the time in point of "morality," or at least of decency; its
affectations of rather childish perfectibilism and anti-theism; and the
tendency of at least a part of it to an odd Calibanic jesting. Bage is
good-tempered enough as it is: but he rather suggests possible
Carrier-and-Fouche developments in a favourable and fostering
atmosphere. One does not quite know why Scott, who included in the
Ballantyne Novels three of Bage's, _Mount Henneth_ (1781), _Barham
Downs_ (1784), and _James Wallace_ (1788), did not also include, if not
_The Fair Syrian_ (1787), two others, _Man as He is_ (1792) and the
still later _Hermsprong_, or _Man as He is Not_ (1796). This last has
sometimes been regarded as Bage's masterpiece: but it does