It is somewhat curious that there is, so far as I know, no complete handling in English of the subject of this volume, popular and important though that subject has been.

Dunlop's _History of Fiction_, an excellent book, dealt with a much wider matter, and perforce ceased its dealing just at the beginning of the most abundant and brilliant development of the English division.

Sir Walter Raleigh's _English Novel_, a book of the highest value for acute criticism and grace of style, stops short at Miss Austen, and only glances, by a sort of anticipation, at Scott.

The late Mr.Sidney Lanier's _English Novel and the Principle of its Development_ is really nothing but a laudatory study of "George Eliot," with glances at other writers, including violent denunciations of the great eighteenth-century men.

There are numerous monographs on parts of the subject: but nothing else that I know even attempting the whole.