A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales | Page 5

due appreciation. Who, among those of us with any knowledge of such works, would dream of recommending them to a youthful reader fresh from the perusal of Miss Yonge's "Little Duke," or Captain Marryatt's "Children of the New Forest"?
Naturally in a list of this kind there is bound to be very great inequality; certain periods have been wholly ignored by writers of the first rank, while in others we have something like an embarras de richesse. Consequently, I have been compelled, here and there, to insert authors of only mediocre merit. In other cases, again, I have not hesitated to omit works by writers of acknowledged position when these have seemed below the author's usual standard, and where no gap had to be filled. I would instance the James II.- William III. period. Here Stanley Weyman and "Edna Lyall" might have been represented, but, there being no dearth of good novels dealing with both the above reigns, I did not deem it advisable to call in these popular writers at the point which has been very generally considered their lowest. I mention this to show that omissions do not necessarily mean ignorance, though, in covering such an immense ground, I cannot doubt that romances worthy of a place in my list have been overlooked.
I think many will be surprised to find how large a proportion of our best writers (English and American) have entered the domain of Historical or Semi-Historical Romance. Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, George Meredith, R. L. Stevenson, Hawthorne, Peacock, Charles Kingsley, Henry Kingsley, Charles Reade, Anthony Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell, Walter Besant, Lytton, Disraeli, J. H. Newman, J. A. Froude, and Walter Pater--these are a few of the names which appear in the following pages; while Tolstoy, Dumas, Balzac, George Sand, Victor Hugo, De Vigny, Prosper Merimee, Flaubert, Theophile Gautier, Freytag, Scheffel, Hauff, Auerbach, Manzoni, Perez Galdos, Merejkowski, Topelius, Sienkiewicz, and Jokai are, perhaps, the chief amongst those representing Literatures other than our own.
"The Last Days of Pompeii," "The Gladiators," "Hypatia," "Harold," "Ivanhoe," "The Talisman," "Maid Marian," "The Last of the Barons," "Quentin Durward," "Romola," "The Cloister and the Hearth," "The Palace of the King," "Westward Ho!", "Kenilworth," "The Chaplet of Pearls," "A Gentleman of France," "John Inglesant," "The Three Musketeers," "Twenty Years After," "Woodstock," "Peveril of the Peak," "Old Mortality," " The Betrothed Lovers" ("I Promessi Sposi"), "Lorna Doone," "The Refugees," "In the Golden Days," "The Courtship of Morice Buckler," "Dorothy Forster," "The Men of the Moss Hags," "Esmond," "The Virginians," "Heart of Midlothian," "Waverley," "The Master of Ballantrae," "Kidnapped," "Catriona," "The Chaplain of the Fleet," "The Seats of the Mighty," "Barnaby Rudge," "A Tale of Two Cities," "War and Peace"--what visions do these mere titles arouse within many of us! And, though most of the books given in my list cannot be described in the same glowing terms as the masterpieces just named, yet many "nests of pleasant thoughts" may be formed through their companionship.
Hitherto allusion has been mainly in the direction of modern authors, and I would now say a word or two in regard to those of an earlier period who are also represented. Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, Goldsmith, Smollett, Frances Burney, Samuel Lover, John Galt, Maria Edgeworth, Susan Ferrier, William Godwin, Mary Shelley, Fennimore Cooper, J. G. Lockhart, Leigh Hunt, Thos. Moore, Harriet Martineau, J. L. Motley, Horace Smith, Charles Lever, Meadows Taylor, and Wm. Carleton,--these (in greater or less degree) notable names were bound to have a place; and, coming to less distinguished writers, I may mention the brothers Banim, Gerald Griffin, Mrs. S. C. Hall, Lady Morgan, the sisters Porter, W. G. Simms, George Croly, Albert Smith, G. R. Gleig, W. H. Maxwell, Sir Arthur Helps, Eliot Warburton, Lewis Wingfield, Thomas Miller, C. Macfarlane, Grace Aguilar, Anne Manning, and Emma Robinson (author of "Whitefriars"). To G. P. R. James, Harrison Ainsworth, and James Grant I have previously alluded. It has been my endeavour to choose the best examples of all the above-named novelists--a task rendered specially difficult in some cases by the fact of immense literary output. Doubtless not a few of the works so chosen are open to criticism, but they will at least serve to illustrate certain stages in the growth of Historical Romance. With the exclusion of Mrs. Radcliffe, Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Gore, Lady Blessington, Lady Fullerton, Mrs. Bray, and Mrs. Child, few will, I imagine, find fault; but writers like Miss Tucker (A. L. O. E.) and Miss Emily Holt still find so many readers in juvenile quarters, that it has required a certain amount of courage to place them also on my Index Expurgatorius! Turning once again to writers of the sterner sex, I have ruled out C. R. Maturin, G. W. M. Reynolds, and Pierce Egan, Junr.; and (quitting the "sensational" for the