Note 74 — Chapter II · THE CONFLUENCE

If it were desirable to eliminate the thirteenth chair, it might be done in a number of ways. Peacock might be ruled out as a contemporary of the earlier generation, as Gryll Grange is all that carries him over. Butler on the other hand belongs to the later, except that Erewhon appeared in the year of Middlemarch. As a satirist, Brontë is so near the edge of the circle that her inclusion at all is questionable. Since it happens, however, that the year of her death coincides with that of Reade’s first novel, we might fancy her yielding a place to him, so that there were never more than twelve at one time.