In at least one other way the influence of the novel must have been partly evil. The gains of literature have been to an altogether disproportionate extent showered upon novelists; and the ordinary laws of human action force us to believe that some talent must have been thus diverted to fiction which would have been better employed otherwise. Theologians like Newman and historians like Froude are tempted from their own domain into the field of fiction. Yet on the other hand it must be said that the greater writers have been on the whole remarkably faithful to their true vocation. The leading novelists are those whose talents find freest scope in fiction. Historians, philosophers, novelists, poets, the great men everywhere remain what nature intended them to be. Still, the evil, though not as great as it might have been expected to be, is real. Matthew Arnold, it is said, ceased to write verse because he could not afford it. But for the absorption of the mass of readers in fiction he probably could have afforded it. [Sidenote: William Maginn (1793-1842).] In the year 1830 literature in general, but especially fiction and the more fugitive forms both of verse and prose, received a notable stimulus from the establishment of _Fraser's Magazine_. The idea of the magazine originated with William Maginn and a Bohemian acquaintance of his, Hugh Fraser, from whom, and not from the publisher James Fraser, it received its name. Maginn had been a contributor to _Blackwood_, and partly through his connexions with its staff he soon drew around him a band as brilliant as that of _Blackwood_ itself. Coleridge, Carlyle, Lockhart, Thackeray and Southey were among the early contributors. Theodore Hook, famous for his somewhat coarse but copious and ready wit, also wrote for it. He was at that time one of the most popular of the novelists; but though he could tell a story well he could not draw a character, and it is for impromptu jests and for the clever fun of his articles that he is now remembered. Maginn himself was no mean contributor. He was never the editor of the magazine, but he was one of the most energetic and effective of its staff. Thackeray has immortalised him in Captain Shandon; but if he had the weaknesses of that well-known character he had certainly all his cleverness and more than all his accomplishments. For Maginn's more serious articles show no inconsiderable learning; while his best humorous articles are simply excellent. _Bob Burke's Duel with Ensign Brady_ is a model of what the Irish story ought to be. Maginn was helped by others in giving an Irish flavour to the early _Fraser_. Crofton Croker, author of the _Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland_, was one of his colleagues; and the witty Francis Mahony was another. The famous _Reliques of Father Prout_ first appeared in _Fraser_.