Like the three which have been excepted for praise, each is in a manner _sui generis_, while the whole group stands, in a manner also, apart from others and by itself.

There is astonishing cleverness everywhere, in regard to almost every point of novel-composition, though with special regard to epigrammatic phrase.

But the whole is _inorganic_ somehow, and more than somehow unreal; without (save in the cases mentioned) attaining that obviously unreal but persuasive phantasmagoria which some great writers of fiction have managed to put in existence and motion.

How far this is due to the fact that most of the novels are political is a question rather to be hinted than to be discussed.

But the present writer has never read a political novel, whether on his own side or on others, that seemed to him to be wholly satisfactory.
Bulwer--for it is perhaps here not impolite or improper still to call the first Lord Lytton by the name under which he wrote for forty years, and solidly niched himself in the novel-front of the minster of English Literature--had not a few points of resemblance to his rival and future chief.