Confessions and Criticisms by Julian Hawthorne
page 93 of 156 (59%)
page 93 of 156 (59%)
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No one disputes, however, that you may hear the tapping of the cobbler's
hammer at any time. To the view of the present writer, how much good soever Mr. Trollope may have done as a preacher and moralist, he has done great harm to English fictitious literature by his novels; and it need only be added, in this connection, that his methods and results in novel-writing seem best to be explained by that peculiar mixture of separateness and commonplaceness which we began by remarking in him. The separateness has given him the standpoint whence he has been able to observe and describe the commonplaceness with which (in spite of his separateness) he is in vital sympathy. But Trollope the man is the abundant and consoling compensation for Trollope the novelist; and one wishes that his books might have died, and he lived on indefinitely. It is charming to read of his life in London after his success in the _Cornhill Magazine_. "Up to that time I had lived very little among men. It was a festival to me to dine at the 'Garrick.' I think I became popular among those with whom I associated. I have ever wished to be liked by those around me--a wish that during the first half of my life was never gratified." And, again, in summing up his life, he says: "I have betrayed no woman. Wine has brought to me no sorrow. It has been the companionship, rather than the habit of smoking that I loved. I have never desired to win money, and I have lost none. To enjoy the excitement of pleasure, but to be free from its vices and ill-effects--to have the sweet, and to leave the bitter untasted--that has been my study. I will not say that I have never scorched a finger; but I carry no ugly wounds." A man who, at the end of his career, could make such a profession as this |
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