But, like all good artists (and like hardly anybody who has not the artistic quality in him), he taught himself by his failure, even though he sometimes relapsed.

Of actual construction he was never a master.

_The King's Own_, with its overdose of history at the beginning and of melodrama at the end, is an example.

But his two masterpieces, _Peter Simple_ (1834) and _Mr.
Midshipman Easy_ (1836), are capital instances of what may be called "particularist" fiction--the fiction that derives its special zest from the "colours" of some form of life unfamiliar to those who have not actually lived it.

Even _Peter Simple_ is unduly weighted at the end by the machinations of Peter's uncle against him and, at intervals during the book, by the proceedings connected therewith.