Even when he was by birth a "gentleman of coat armour" as Fielding and Smollett were, he was usually a gentleman very much out at elbows: the stories, true or false, of _Rasselas_ and Johnson's mother's funeral expenses, of the _Vicar of Wakefield_ and Goldsmith's dunning landlady, have something more than mere anecdote in them.

Mackenzie, though the paternity of his _famille deplorable_ of novels was no secret, preserved a strict nominal incognito.

Women, as having no regular professions and plenty of time at their disposal, were allowed more latitude: and this really perhaps had something to do with their early prominence in the novel; but it is certain that Scott's rigid, and for a long time successful, maintenance of the mask was by no means mere prudery, and still less merely prudent commercial speculation.

Yet he, who altered so much in the novel, altered this also.

Of the novelists noticed in the early part of this chapter, one became Prime Minister of England, another rose to cabinet rank, a baronetcy, and a peerage; a third was H.M.consul in important posts abroad; a fourth held a great position, if not in the service directly of the crown, in what was of hardly less importance, that of the East India Company; a fifth was a post-captain in the navy and Companion of the Bath.
And all this had been rendered possible partly by the genius of novel-writers, partly by the appetite of the novel-reader.