"Is it . . . that to be widely popular, to gain the ear of multitudes, to shake the hearts of men, poetry should deal more than at present it usually does, with general wants, ordinary feelings, the obvious rather than the rare facts of human nature? . . . The modern novel is preferred to the modern poem, because we do here feel an attempt to include these indispensable latest addenda - those phenomena which, if we forget on Sunday, we must remember on Monday - those positive matters of fact, which people, who are not verse-writers, are obliged to have to do with . . . The novelist does try to build us a real house to be lived in; and this common builder, with no notion of the orders, is more to our purpose than the student of ancient art who proposes to lodge us under an Ionic portico."
Victorian Scrutinies: Reviews of Poetry 1830-1870, ed. Isobel Armstrong (Athlone Press, 1972), pp. 154-6. Quoted in The Novel in the Victorian Age: A Modern Introduction. Robin Gilmour. London: Edward Arnold, 1986. pp. 1-2.