ABSTRACT
We have put these two books ‘over against’ each other, to use one of Mr. Thackeray’s favourite Queen Anne-isms, because they have no kind of family resemblance. They are, indeed, as unlike each other as any two books can be. They constitute a kind of literary antithesis. Both have very striking merit-but their merits are of an adverse and conflicting character. There is the same difference between them as between a picture by Hogarth and a picture by Fuseli. We had well nigh named in the place of the former one of the great painters, whose names are borne by the author of Basil But in truth the writer of that work ought to have been called Mr. Salvator Fuseli. There is nothing either of Wilkie or Collins about it.
