the all-pervading motto _Vanitas
Vanitatum_ almost necessitates) in all the books, but here reaches a
transcendence not elsewhere attained. The brooding spirit of
_Ecclesiastes_ here covers, as it were, with the shadow of one of its
wings the joys and sorrows, the failures and successes of a private family
and their friends, with the other the fates of England and Europe; the
fortunes of Marlborough and of Swift on their way from dictatorship, in
each case, to dotage and death; the big wars and the notable literary
triumphs as well as the hopeless passions or acquiescent losses. It is
thus an instance--and the greatest--of that revival of the historical novel
which was taking place, and in which the novel of Scott(1)--simpler, though
not so very simple as is sometimes thought--is being dashed with a far
heavier dose of the novel-element as opposed to the romance, yet without
abandonment of the romance-quality proper. Of these novel-romance scenes,
as they may be called, the famous mock-duel at the end is of course the
greatest. But that where the Duke of Hamilton has to acknowledge the
Marquis of Esmond, and where Beatrix gives the kiss of Beatrix, is almost
as great: and there are many others. It is possible that this very
transcendence accounts to some extent for the somewhat lukewarm admiration
which it has received. The usual devotee of the novel of analysis dislikes
the historic, and has taught himself to consider it childish; the common
lover of romance (not the better kind) feels himself hampered by the
character-study, as Emile de Girardin's subscribers felt themselves
hampered by Gautier's style. All the happier those who can make the best
of both dispensations!

Nothing, however, has yet been said of one of the most salient
characteristics of _Esmond_--one, perhaps, which has had as much to do with
the love of its lovers and the qualified esteem of those who do not quite
love it, as anything else. This is, of course, the attempt, certainly a
very audacious one, at once to give the very form and pressure of the time
of the story--sometimes in actual diction--and yet to suffuse it with a
modern thought and colour which most certainly were _not_ of the time. The
boldness and the peril of this attempt are both quite indisputable; and
the peril itself is, in a way, double. There is the malcontent who will
say "This may be all very fine: but I don't like it. It bothers and teases
me. I do not want to be talked to in