Death removed Thackeray early and Dickens somewhat less prematurely, but after a period rather barren in direct novel work.

The others continued and were constantly reinforced: nor was it till well on in the seventies that any distinct drop from first- to second-growth quality could be observed in the general vintage of English fiction.
One is not quite driven, on this occasion, to the pusillanimous explanation that this remarkable variety and number of good novels was simply due to the simultaneous existence of an equally remarkable number of good novelists.

The fact is that, by this time, the great example of Scott and Miss Austen--the great wave of progress which exemplified itself first and most eminently in these two writers--had had time to work upon and permeate another generation of practitioners.

The novelists who have just been cited were as a rule born in the second decade of the century, just before, about, or after the time at which Scott and Miss Austen began to publish.

They had therefore--as their elders, even though they may have had time to read the pair, had not--time to assimilate thoroughly and early the results which that pair had produced or which they had first expressed.