But if we had not these direct testimonies, no one of any critical faculty could mistake the presence of consciously perceived principles in the books themselves.

A man does not suddenly, and by mere blind instinct, avoid such a pitfall as that of incongruous speech and manners, which has been noticed above.

It is not mere happy-go-lucky blundering which makes him invariably decline another into which people still fall--the selection of historical personages of the first importance, and elaborately known, for the _central_ figures of his novels.

Not to believe in luck is a mark of perhaps greater folly than to over-believe in it: but luck will not always keep a man clear of such perils as that unskilful wedging of great blocks of mere history into his story, which the lesser historical novelists always commit, or that preponderance of mere narrative itself as compared with action and conversation from which even Dumas, even Thackeray, is not free.
That he knew what he was doing and what he had to do is thus certain; that he did it to an astounding extent is still more certain; but it would not skill much to deny that he did not always give himself time to do it perfectly in every respect, though it is perhaps not mere paradox or mere partisanship to suggest that if he had given himself more time, he would hardly have done better, and might have done worse.

The accusation of superficiality has been _already_ glanced at: and it is pretty certain that it argues more superficiality, of a much more hopeless kind, in those who make it.