ficance that unites the work of his
life into something organic and rational. This is what has been done by
"Quatrevingt-treize" for the earlier romances of Victor Hugo, and,
through them, for a whole division of modern literature. We have here
the legitimate continuation of a long and living literary tradition; and
hence, so far, its explanation. When many lines diverge from each other
in direction so slightly as to confuse the eye, we know that we have
only to produce them to make the chaos plain: this is continually so in
literary history; and we shall best understand the importance of Victor
Hugo's romances if we think of them as some such prolongation of one of
the main lines of literary tendency.

When we compare the novels of Walter Scott with those of the man of
genius who preceded him, and whom he delighted to honour as a master in
the art--I mean Henry Fielding--we shall be somewhat puzzled, at the
first moment, to state the difference that there is between these two.
Fielding has as much human science; has a far firmer hold upon the
tiller of his story; has a keen sense of character, which he draws (and
Scott often does so too) in a rather abstract and academical manner; and
finally, is quite as humorous and quite as good-humoured as the great
Scotsman. With all these points of resemblance between the men, it is
astonishing that their work should be so different. The fact is, that
the English novel was looking one way and seeking one set of effects in
the hands of Fielding; and in the hands of Scott it was looking eagerly
in all ways and searching for all the effects that by any possibility it
could utilise. The difference between these two men marks a great
enfranchisement. With Scott the Romantic movement, the movement of an
extended curiosity and an enfranchised imagination, has begun. This is a
trite thing to say; but trite things are often very indefinitely
comprehended: and this enfranchisement, in as far as it regards the
technical change that came over modern prose romance, has never perhaps
been explained with any clearness.

To do so, it will be necessary roughly to compare the two sets of
conventions upon which plays and romances are respectively based. The
purposes of these two arts are so much alike, and they deal so much with
the same passions and interests, that we are apt to forget the
fundamental opposition of their methods. And yet such a fundamental
opposition exists. In the drama the ac