Now there are several things which might be said about this judgment--I do not say "in arrest" of it, because it is of itself inoperative: as it happens you cannot put critical opinions in the melting pot.

At least, they won't melt: and they come out again like the diabolic rat that Mr.Chips tried to pitch-boil.

In the first place, there is the question whether the greater part by far of the imaginative and other literature of _any_ time does not itself "go into the melting pot," and whether it much matters what sends it there.

In the second, if this seems too cynical, there is the very large and grave question whether a still larger proportion of the novel of manners, in England, France, and all other countries during the same time, has not been as bad as, or worse than, the romantic division, historical or other.

But the worst faults of the judgment remain.