To pronounce him, as was once done by an acute and amiable judge, "the _hum_miest of _bugs_" was excessive in life, and would be preposterous in literature.

But there undoubtedly was, with rare exceptions, a suspicion of what is called in slang "faking" about his work.

The wine is not "neat" but doctored; the composition is _pastiche_; a dozen other metaphors--of stucco, veneer, glueing-up--suggest themselves.

And then there suggests itself, in turn, a sort of shame at such imputations on the author of such a mass of work, so various, so interesting, so important as accomplishment, symptom, and pattern at once.

And perhaps one may end by pronouncing Bulwer one of the very greatest of English novelists who are not of the very greatest.
It is difficult to say whether the usual attitude of criticism to Captain Marryat (1792-1848) is more uncritical than ungrateful or more ungrateful than uncritical.