Among the minor writers a few, typical of different classes, may be briefly mentioned. James Grant wrote some historical works as well as many novels well spiced with adventure. His best book is perhaps _The Romance of War_ (1845). It follows the fortunes of a regiment through the Peninsula; but while the plan gives it a good groundwork of reality and an abundance of stirring scenes, it is inartistic. George John Whyte-Melville was similarly fond of adventure, but, though he was a soldier who had seen service in the Crimea, he is specially identified with sporting rather than with military novels. His best work is descriptive of fox-hunting, a sport to which he was passionately devoted. He also wrote historical novels, of which the best known is _The Gladiators_. Both of these writers relied for their effect upon the feeling of interest produced by the situations in which they placed their characters. So, but in a totally different way, did Wilkie Collins. He was a master of sensational narrative. He excelled in the skilful construction and the skilful unravelling of plot, and in his own domain he is among the best of recent writers. His best known book is _The Woman in White_, while perhaps that which best deserves to be known is _The Moonstone_. In neither is there a single character worth remembering; the story is everything. The novel of society, again, is represented by George Alfred Lawrence, the author of _Guy Livingstone_, who repeats many of the faults of Bulwer Lytton, and has not the genius which in Lytton's case partly redeems the faults. [Sidenote: Charles Reade (1814-1884).] There remains one man of genius, Charles Reade, who towers over all these men of talent. Reade was mature in years before he began his literary career with a group of dramas, of which _Gold_, acted with moderate success in 1853, was the best. His easy circumstances as the son of an Oxfordshire squire, and fellow of Magdalen College, exempted him from the necessity of pushing his way in the world. In literature he had one great ambition and one great gift, and unfortunately the two diverged. His talent lay in prose fiction, while his ambition drew him towards the stage. It was the advice of an actress that caused him to turn _Masks and Faces_, a drama written in collaboration with Tom Taylor, into the prose story of _Peg Woffington_ (1853), and so to find his true vocation. But he remained unsatisfied, and through his whole career he continued to make experiments in the drama, never with much success except in the case of _Drink_ (1879), founded on Zola's _L'Assommoir_. So strong was his predilection, that he desired that in the inscription on his tombstone the word 'dramatist' should be put first in the specification of his pursuits.