But the employment here, by genius, of such subjects for substantial _parts_ of a novel was a success pure and unmixed.

So, in the earlier book, the same author had shown how the most humdrum incident and the minutest painting of ordinary character could be combined with historic tragedy like that furnished by Waterloo, with domestic _drame_ of the most exciting kind like the discovery of Lord Steyne's relations with Becky, or the at least suggested later crime of that ingenious and rather hardly treated little person.
Most of the writers mentioned and glanced at above took--not of course always, often, or perhaps ever in conscious following of Thackeray, but in consequence of the same "skiey influences" which worked on him--to this mixed domestic-dramatic line.

And what is still more interesting, men who had already made their mark for years, in styles quite different, turned to it and adopted it.

We have seen this of Bulwer, and the evidences of the change in him which are given by the "Caxton" novels.

We have not yet directly dealt with another instance of almost as great interest and distinction, Charles Lever, though we have named him and glanced at his work.
Lever, who was born as early as 1806, had, it has been said, begun to write novels as early as his junior, Dickens, and had at once developed, in _Harry Lorrequer_, a pretty distinct style of his own.