In so short a book on so vast, complex and living a subject, it is
impossible to drop even into the second rank of good authors, whose name
is legion; but it is impossible to leave that considerable female force
in fiction which has so largely made the very nature of the modern
novel, without mentioning two names which almost brought that second
rank up to the first rank. They were at utterly opposite poles. The one
succeeded by being a much mellower and more Christian George Eliot; the
other succeeded by being a much more mad and unchristian Emily Brontë.
But Mrs. Oliphant and the author calling herself "Ouida" both forced
themselves well within the frontier of fine literature. _The Beleaguered
City_ is literature in its highest sense; the other works of its author
tend to fall into fiction in its best working sense. Mrs. Oliphant was
infinitely saner in that city of ghosts than the cosmopolitan Ouida ever
was in any of the cities of men. Mrs. Oliphant would never have dared to
discover, either in heaven or hell, such a thing as a hairbrush with its
back encrusted with diamonds. But though Ouida was violent and weak
where Mrs. Oliphant might have been mild and strong, her own triumphs
were her own. She had a real power of expressing the senses through her
style; of conveying the very heat of blue skies or the bursting of
palpable pomegranates. And just as Mrs. Oliphant transfused her more
timid Victorian tales with a true and intense faith in the Christian
mystery--so Ouida, with infinite fury and infinite confusion of
thought, did fill her books with Byron and the remains of the French
Revolution. In the track of such genius there has been quite an
accumulation of true talent as in the children's tales of Mrs. Ewing,
the historical tales of Miss Yonge, the tales of Mrs. Molesworth, and so
on. On a general review I do not think I have been wrong in taking the
female novelists first. I think they gave its special shape, its
temporary twist, to the Victorian novel.