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Confessions and Criticisms by Julian Hawthorne
page 93 of 156 (59%)
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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