The novel is perhaps the most elastic and adaptable form that the literary artist has discovered. The eighteenth century had invented it, but its possibilities, so far from being exhausted by the eighteenth century writers, were barely explored by them.

Scott, with enormous success, made the novel a vehicle of the Romantic spirit. James Austen showed its possibilities in the way of the quietest realism. And the Victorian novelists followed her example in treating contemporary life and manners.

While allowing the author to elaborate his characters and incidents in detail, the novel requires elaborate dramatic construction. It gives the humorist his opportunity, whether his humor lies mainly in the perception and creation of oddities of character, as with Dickens, or in his style, as with Thackeray.

The variety of treatment it permits gives the writer scope for fullest self- expression; and the variety of subjects it can treat is so great that the works of, for example, Dickens and Thackeray, give us a more complete picture of the London of their time than we could have got in any other way. The Victorian novel gives us a panoramic view of the life of the time; it is a social document of great value and significance.