Although, as was shown in the first chapter, the amount of novel writing in the last decades of the eighteenth century was very considerable, and the talent displayed by at least some of the practitioners of the form distinctly great, it can hardly have been possible for any careful observer of it, either during the last ten years of the old age or the first fifteen of the new, to be satisfied with it on the whole, or to think that it had reached a settled or even a promising condition. Miss Burney (now Madame d'Arblay), whose brilliant debut with _Evelina_ was made just before the date at which this book begins, had just after that date produced _Cecilia_, in which partial and contemporary judges professed to see no falling off. But though she was still living and writing,--though she lived and wrote till the present century was nearly half over,--_Camilla_ (1796) was acknowledged as a doubtful success, and _The Wanderer_ (1814) as a disastrous failure; nor after this did she attempt the style again. The unpopularity of Jacobinism and the growing distaste for the philosophy of the eighteenth century prevented much attempt being made to follow up the half political, half philosophical novel of Godwin, Holcroft, and Bage. No such causes, however, were in operation as concerning the "Tale of Terror," the second founder of which, Monk Lewis, was indeed no inconsiderable figure during the earlier part of the great age of 1810-30, while Charles Robert Maturin improved considerably upon Lewis himself. Maturin was born in Ireland (where he principally lived) in 1782, and died there in 1824. He took orders, but was too eccentric for success in his profession, and his whole heart was set on literature and the drama. Befriended by Scott and Byron, though very severely criticised by Coleridge, he succeeded in getting his tragedy of _Bertram_ acted at Drury Lane with success; but his later theatrical ventures (_Manuel_, _Fredolpho_) were less fortunate. He also published sermons; but he lives in literature only by his novels, and not very securely by these. He produced three of them--_The Fatal Vengeance: or, The Family of Montorio_, _The Wild Irish Boy_, and the _Milesian Chief_--under a pseudonym before he was thirty; while after the success of _Bertram_ he avowed _Women_ (1818), _Melmoth the Wanderer_ (1820), and _The Albigenses_ (1824), the last in a sort of cross style between his earlier patterns and Scott. But his fame had best be allowed to rest wholly on _Melmoth_, a remarkable book dealing with the supposed selling of a soul to the devil in return for prolonged life; the bargain, however, being terminable if the seller can induce some one else to take it off his hands. Although far too long, marvellously involved with tales within tales, and disfigured in parts by the rant and the gush of its class, _Melmoth_ is really a powerful book, which gave something more than a passing shudder to its own