Men like Theodore Hook and Mahony were however merely the free lances of fiction, and it was Scott who moulded the legitimate novel. It is strange that his great success did not more speedily produce a crop of imitations. A few appeared during the twenties, but Scott's life was near its close before any writers came forward of calibre sufficient to be called his successors. Of those who had begun to write before 1830, the chief were Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli and Marryat. Two others, worthy of mention though inferior to these, were the prolific but commonplace G. P. R. James and Harrison Ainsworth. All of these men were stimulated by Scott, but the greater ones were more than mere imitators. [Sidenote: Lord Lytton (1803-1873).] The first Lord Lytton was by baptism Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer. On succeeding to his mother's estate of Knebworth he became Bulwer Lytton; and in 1866 he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Lytton. The union of politics with fiction is one of the points of contact between him and Disraeli; but while in the case of Disraeli the politician is first and the man of letters second, the order of importance is reversed in the case of Lytton. In politics, Lytton was at the start a Whig, but afterwards attached himself to the Conservative party, and became, under Lord Derby, Colonial Secretary. Lytton's literary career began in boyhood with _Ismail and other Poems_ (1820), and it ended only with his death. Perhaps fluency and versatility were his most remarkable characteristics. He distinguished himself as a novelist and as a dramatist, achieved a certain success as a lyric poet, believed that his greatest work was an epic, and attempted criticism and history. He had however the good sense and good taste to leave his historical work, _Athens, its Rise and Fall_, unfinished on the appearance of the histories of Thirlwall and Grote. It is only as a novelist and dramatist that he demands serious consideration; and in these departments he is the more worthy of attention because he is perhaps the best literary weather-gauge of his time.