A True-Born Englishman
SIR WALTER RALEIGH in his recently published fragments decanted a little vinegary comment on critics—called them para- sites, and added that until they meet with a live author they cannot get to work, or have in default to prey on themselves. But what of that author who once was alive, but is for no fault of his own now, in the estimation of some, dead ? May the critic not acquire first-hand merit by bringing him back to life if he can show good reason for doing so, and is he not entitled to our gratitude if he does ?
This is what Mr. Michael Sadleir has done for Anthony Trollope : he has decisively re-established him in his proper rank in the hierarchy of letters. Very modestly the author calls his book a Commentary. It is very much more than that : not only does it give a vivid outline of the life of Anthony's mother, that gallant woman from whom in addition to his literary facility the novelist derived his courage, his energy, his lack of self-consciousness and of vanity ; but it also washes in with broad strokes of colour an impressionist sketch of that " Victorianism " (vague and foolish word) in which Trollope moved and of which Trollope wrote.
That task admirably accomplished, Mr. Sadleir next invites us to contemplate anew the life of that pugnacious but modest, commonsensical but emotional, gruff but kindly, dyed-in-the- wool Englishman, "a strong walker, a good eater, a con- noisseur of wine, and an insatiable disputant," one withal who was an astonishingly -vigorous though not very docile Govern- ment official—that man whom his own Autobiography did so much to depreciate in the eyes of the elegantly aesthetic generation which immediately succeeded him. The Autobio- graphy was Trollope's worst enemy for intimacies, but from his life as now presented we gain a much juster idea of the inner man, particularly from a series of letters now published for the first time from Trollope to Kate Field, which "than, down that barrier of shyness that walled in a very upright but very human man" Biography apart, the main theme of the book is the con. sideration of Trollope as a craftsman in letters, and it is here that Mr. Sadleir's delicate and sane judgment shines coo. spicuous. There are still perhaps a few people who regad Trollope as an incarnate platitude or as the exponent only el the (alleged) frumpish rectitude of the Victorian 'fifties, jug as there are others who find Jane Austen useful as a bed-book, and see nothing in Conrad but so much wind blowing over a yeasty sea. Such people will probably continue to doh Trollope monotonous and devoid of charm and imagination. But differing views of the greatest Victorian realist are now beginning to prevail, and it is the Trollopian faith of wind Mr Sadleir now produces the justificatory gospel. "Power of characterization is the superlative quality of Trollope a novelist. And as revealed by him, it i not a power of observation nor of imagination nor a power of know. ledge nor of intuition, but a compound of all four, will a something added of the author's personality, giving to the whole a peculiar but elusive flavour." Add to this that he possessed the power of dramatizing the undramatic, of investing it with a breathless interest "without the help either of sudden incident or of striking misadventure." To us, too, of the present day, stunned somewhat with recent memories of war, part of Trollope's appeal "lies surely in his acceptance and his profound understanding of ordinary daily life." It is this quality which has perhaps furnished ground for levelling at him the charge of monotony ; but then so much of life is monotonous, and all of life was deeply interesting to this tolerant spectator who watched it all and described it all with a slightly cynical twinkle in his eye, not greatly caring which side won the game, "provided that the match was keen and clean, and that no vain-glory went with the victory." Last of all, Trollope was a horseman, a had one, but he had " hands " ; so also in his work, often diffuse, sometimes clumsy and wanting in finish, yet when it came to portraying character, "it shows a sort of second sense," which we can call "hands."
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