MR TROLLOPS ON ENGLISH NOVELISTS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1578, 9 January 1884, Page 3

MR TROLLOPS ON ENGLISH NOVELISTS.

Thackeray is placed by Mr Trollope at the head of the successful novelists of his own time. In his autobiography Mr of.human nature was supreme, and his characters. stand out as human beings, with a force and a truth which has not, I think, been within the reach of any other English novelist in any period. Attho present moment Georgo Eliot is the first of English novelists, and I am disposed to place her second to those of my time. The nature of her intellect is very far removed indeed from that which is common to the tellers of stories. Her imagination is no doubt strong, but it acts in analysing rather than in creating. Everything that comes before her is pulled to pieces so that the inside may be seen. It is, I think, the defect of George .Eliot that she struggles too hard to do work that shall be excellent. She lacks ease. There can be no doubt that the most popular novelist of my time-probably the most popular English novelist of any time-has been Charles Dickens. The primary object of a novelist is to please j and this man's novels have been.found more pleasant thanthose of any other writer, In his plots, Bulwer has generally been simple, facile, and successful. The reader nover feels with him. The story comes naturally without calling for too much attention, and is thus proof of the completednes3 of the man's intellect. His language is clear, good, intelligible English, but it is defaced by mannerism. In all that he did affectation was his fault. Lever's novels will not livo long—even if they may be said to be alivo now—becouso it is so. I venture to predict that 'Jane Eyre' will be read among English novels when many whose names are now better known shall have been forgotten, So good a-heart and so wrong a head as Charles Reade's surely no novelist had never before had combined} In Story-telling he has occasionally been almost great. Wilkio Collins seems so to construct his stories that he not only before writing plans everything on, down to tho minutest detail, from the beginning to the end, but then plots it all back again, to see that there is no piece of necessary dovetailing which does not dovetail with absolute accuracy. The construction is most minute and most wonderful. Tho glory of Disraeli has been tho glory of the pasteboard, and the wealth has been a wealth of tinsel, The wit has been tho wit of hairdressers, and the enterprise has been the enterprise of mountebanks. Through it all there is a feeling of stage properties, a smell of hair oil, an aspect of buhl, a resemblance of tailors, and that pricking of the conscience which must be the general accompaniment of paste diamonds."