It is not likely that Trollope’s novels will have any vogue in the immediate future; every page brings its own flavor of unreality. [Italics mine.]
And in referring to Plantagenet Palliser, who figures largely in so many of his novels, the author says:—
Some nicknames are engaging; “Planty Pall” is not one of these. The man is really not worth writing about.
“Is He Popenjoy?” is perhaps the most readable of all Mr. Trollope’s works. It is shorter than many.
Finally, when it is grudgingly admitted that he did some good work, the answer to the question, “Why is such work neglected?” is, “Because the world in which Trollope lived has passed away.” It would seem that absurdity could go no further.
American judgment is in general of a different tenor, although Professor Phelps, of Yale, in his recent volume, “The Advance of the English Novel,” dismisses Trollope with a single paragraph, in which is embedded the remark, “No one would dare call Trollope a genius.” Short, sharp and decisive work this; but Professor Phelps is clearing the decks for Meredith, to whom he devotes twenty or more pages. I respect the opinion of college professors as much as Charles Lamb respected the equator; nevertheless, I maintain that, if Trollope was not a genius, he was a very great writer; and I am not alone.
Only a few days ago a cultivated man of affairs, referring to an interesting contemporary caricature of Dickens and Thackeray which bore the legend, “Two Great Victorians,” remarked, “They were great Victorians, indeed, but I have come to wonder in these later years whether Anthony Trollope will not outlive them both.” And while the mere book-collector should be careful how he challenges the opinion of “one who makes his living by reading books and then writing about them,”—the phrase is Professor Phelps’s,—nevertheless, when one’s opinion is supported, as mine is, by the authority of such a novelist as our own Howells, he may perhaps be forgiven for speaking up.
