Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

than in creating. Everything that comes before her is pulled

to pieces so that the inside of it shall be seen, and be seen if

possible by her readers as clearly as by herself. This searching

analysis is carried so far that, in studying her latter writings,

one feels oneself to be in company with some philosopher rather

than with a novelist. I doubt whether any young person can read

with pleasure either Felix Holt, Middlemarch, or Daniel Deronda.

I know that they are very difficult to many that are not young.

Her personifications of character have been singularly terse and

graphic, and from them has come her great hold on the public,--though

by no means the greatest effect which she has produced. The lessons

which she teaches remain, though it is not for the sake of the

lessons that her pages are read. Seth Bede, Adam Bede, Maggie and

Tom Tulliver, old Silas Marner, and, much above all, Tito, in Romola,

are characters which, when once known, can never be forgotten. I

cannot say quite so much for any of those in her later works, because

in them the philosopher so greatly overtops the portrait-painter,

that, in the dissection of the mind, the outward signs seem to

have been forgotten. In her, as yet, there is no symptom whatever

of that weariness of mind which, when felt by the reader, induces

him to declare that the author has written himself out. It is not

from decadence that we do not have another Mrs. Poyser, but because

the author soars to things which seem to her to be higher than Mrs.

Poyser.

It is, I think, the defect of George Eliot that she struggles too

hard to do work that shall be excellent. She lacks ease. Latterly

the signs of this have been conspicuous in her style, which has always

been and is singularly correct, but which has become occasionally

obscure from her too great desire to be pungent. It is impossible

not to feel the struggle, and that feeling begets a flavour

of affectation. In Daniel Deronda, of which at this moment only a

portion has been published, there are sentences which I have found

myself compelled to read three times before I have been able to

take home to myself all that the writer has intended. Perhaps I

may be permitted here to say, that this gifted woman was among my

dearest and most intimate friends. As I am speaking here of novelists,

I will not attempt to speak of George Eliot's merit as a poet.

There can be no doubt that the most popular novelist of my

time--probably the most popular English novelist of any time--has

been Charles Dickens. He has now been dead nearly six years, and the

sale of his books goes on as it did during his life. The certainty

with which his novels are found in every house--the familiarity of

his name in all English-speaking countries--the popularity of such

characters as Mrs. Gamp, Micawber, and Pecksniff, and many others

whose names have entered into the English language and become

well-known words--the grief of the country at his death, and the

honours paid to him at his funeral,--all testify to his popularity.

Since the last book he wrote himself, I doubt whether any book

has been so popular as his biography by John Forster. There is

no withstanding such testimony as this. Such evidence of popular

appreciation should go for very much, almost for everything,

in criticism on the work of a novelist. The primary object of a

novelist is to please; and this man's novels have been found more

pleasant than those of any other writer. It might of course be

objected to this, that though the books have pleased they have been

injurious, that their tendency has been immoral and their teaching

vicious; but it is almost needless to say that no such charge has

ever been made against Dickens. His teaching has ever been good.

From all which, there arises to the critic a question whether, with

such evidence against him as to the excellence of this writer, he

should not subordinate his own opinion to the collected opinion of

the world of readers. To me it almost seems that I must be wrong

to place Dickens after Thackeray and George Eliot, knowing as I do

that so great a majority put him above those authors.

My own peculiar idiosyncrasy in the matter forbids me to do so. I

do acknowledge that Mrs. Gamp, Micawber, Pecksniff, and others have

become household words in every house, as though they were human

beings; but to my judgment they are not human beings, nor are any

of the characters human which Dickens has portrayed. It has been

the peculiarity and the marvel of this man's power, that he has

invested, his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense

with human nature. There is a drollery about them, in my estimation,

very much below the humour of Thackeray, but which has reached the

intellect of all; while Thackeray's humour has escaped the intellect

of many. Nor is the pathos of Dickens human. It is stagey and

melodramatic. But it is so expressed that it touches every heart

a little. There is no real life in Smike. His misery, his idiotcy,

his devotion for Nicholas, his love for Kate, are all overdone and

incompatible with each other. But still the reader sheds a tear.

Every reader can find a tear for Smike. Dickens's novels are like

Boucicault's plays. He has known how to draw his lines broadly, so

that all should see the colour.

He, too, in his best days, always lived with his characters;--and

he, too, as he gradually ceased to have the power of doing so,

ceased to charm. Though they are not human beings, we all remember

Mrs. Gamp and Pickwick. The Boffins and Veneerings do not, I think,

dwell in the minds of so many.

Of Dickens's style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky,

ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules--almost

as completely as that created by Carlyle. To readers who have taught

themselves to regard language, it must therefore be unpleasant. But

the critic is driven to feel the weakness of his criticism, when

he acknowledges to himself--as he is compelled in all honesty to

do--that with the language, such as it is, the writer has satisfied

the great mass of the readers of his country. Both these great

writers have satisfied the readers of their own pages; but both

have done infinite harm by creating a school of imitators. No young

novelist should ever dare to imitate the style of Dickens. If such

a one wants a model for his language, let him take Thackeray.

Bulwer, or Lord Lytton,--but I think that he is still better known

by his earlier name,--was a man of very great parts. Better educated

than either of those I have named before him, he was always able to

use his erudition, and he thus produced novels from which very much

not only may be but must be learned by his readers. He thoroughly

understood the political status of his own country, a subject

on which, I think, Dickens was marvellously ignorant, and which

Thackeray had never studied. He had read extensively, and was always

apt to give his readers the benefit of what he knew. The result

has been that very much more than amusement may be obtained from

Bulwer's novels. There is also a brightness about them--the result

rather of thought than of imagination, of study and of care, than

of mere intellect--which has made many of them excellent in their

way. It is perhaps improper to class all his novels together, as

he wrote in varied manners, making in his earlier works, such as

Pelham and Ernest Maltravers, pictures of a fictitious life, and

afterwards pictures of life as he believed it to be, as in My Novel

and The Caxtons. But from all of them there comes the same flavour

of an effort to produce effect. The effects are produced, but it

would have been better if the flavour had not been there.

I cannot say of Bulwer as I have of the other novelists whom I have

named that he lived with his characters. He lived with his work,

with the doctrines which at the time he wished to preach, thinking

always of the effects which he wished to produce; but I do not

think he ever knew his own personages,--and therefore neither do

we know them. Even Pelham and Eugene Aram are not human beings to

us, as are Pickwick, and Colonel Newcombe, and Mrs. Poyser.

In his plots Bulwer has generally been simple, facile, and successful.

The reader never feels with him, as he does with Wilkie Collins,

that it is all plot, or, as with George Eliot, that there is no plot.

The story comes naturally without calling for too much attention,

and is thus proof of the completeness of the man's intellect. His

language is clear, good, intelligible English, but it is defaced

by mannerism. In all that he did, affectation was his fault.

How shall I speak of my dear old friend Charles Lever, and

his rattling, jolly, joyous, swearing Irishmen. Surely never did

a sense of vitality come so constantly from a man's pen, nor from

man's voice, as from his! I knew him well for many years, and

whether in sickness or in health, I have never come across him

without finding him to be running over with wit and fun. Of all the

men I have encountered, he was the surest fund of drollery. I have

known many witty men, many who could say good things, many who

would sometimes be ready to say them when wanted, though they would

sometimes fail;--but he never failed. Rouse him in the middle of

the night, and wit would come from him before he was half awake.

And yet he never monopolised the talk, was never a bore. He would

take no more than his own share of the words spoken, and would yet

seem to brighten all that was said during the night. His earlier

novels--the later I have not read--are just like his conversation.

The fun never flags, and to me, when I read them, they were never

tedious. As to character he can hardly be said to have produced

it. Corney Delaney, the old manservant, may perhaps be named as an

exception.

Lever's novels will not live long,--even if they may be said to

be alive now,--because it is so. What was his manner of working I

do not know, but I should think it must have been very quick, and

that he never troubled himself on the subject, except when he was

seated with a pen in his hand.

Charlotte Bronte was surely a marvellous woman. If it could be

right to judge the work of a novelist from one small portion of

one novel, and to say of an author that he is to be accounted as

strong as he shows himself to be in his strongest morsel of work,

I should be inclined to put Miss Bronte very high indeed. I know

no interest more thrilling than that which she has been able to

throw into the characters of Rochester and the governess, in the

second volume of Jane Eyre. She lived with those characters, and

felt every fibre of the heart, the longings of the one and the

sufferings of the other. And therefore, though the end of the book

is weak, and the beginning not very good, I venture to predict that

Jane Eyre will be read among English novels when many whose names

are now better known shall have been forgotten. Jane Eyre, and

Esmond, and Adam Bede will be in the hands of our grandchildren,