Again, few English novelists
seem to possess so sane a comprehension of the modes of life and thought
of the British aristocracy as Trollope. He has not only made a study of
them from the observer's point of view, but he has reasoned them out
intellectually. The figures are not vividly defined; the realism is
applied to events rather than to personages: we have the scene described
for us but we do not look upon it. We should not recognize his characters
if we saw them; but if we were told who they were, we should know, from
their author's testimony, what were their characteristic traits and how
they would act under given circumstances. The logical sequence of events
is carefully maintained; nothing happens, either for good or for evil,
other than might befall under the dispensations of a Providence no more
unjust, and no more far-sighted, than Trollope himself. There is a good
deal of the _a priori_ principle in his method; he has made up his mind as
to certain fundamental data, and thence develops or explains whatever
complication comes up for settlement. But to range about unhampered by any
theories, concerned only to examine all phenomena, and to report
thereupon, careless of any considerations save those of artistic
propriety, would have been vanity and striving after wind to Trollope, and
derivatively so, doubtless, to his readers.
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