Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

and that is the name of the present Prime Minister of England. Mr.

Disraeli has written so many novels, and has been so popular as a

novelist that, whether for good or for ill, I feel myself compelled

to speak of him. He began his career as an author early in life,

publishing Vivian Grey when he was twenty-three years old. He was

very young for such work, though hardly young enough to justify the

excuse that he makes in his own preface, that it is a book written

by a boy. Dickens was, I think, younger when he wrote his Sketches

by Boz, and as young when he was writing the Pickwick Papers. It

was hardly longer ago than the other day when Mr. Disraeli brought

out Lothair, and between the two there were eight or ten others.

To me they have all had the same flavour of paint and unreality.

In whatever he has written he has affected something which has been

intended to strike his readers as uncommon and therefore grand.

Because he has been bright and a man of genius, he has carried his

object as regards the young. He has struck them with astonishment

and aroused in their imagination ideas of a world more glorious,

more rich, more witty, more enterprising, than their own. But the

glory has been the glory of pasteboard, and the wealth has been

a wealth of tinsel. The wit has been the wit of hairdressers, and

the enterprise has been the enterprise of mountebanks. An audacious

conjurer has generally been his hero,--some youth who, by wonderful

cleverness, can obtain success by every intrigue that comes to

his hand. Through it all there is a feeling of stage properties,

a smell of hair-oil, an aspect of buhl, a remembrance of tailors,

and that pricking of the conscience which must be the general

accompaniment of paste diamonds. I can understand that Mr. Disraeli

should by his novels have instigated many a young man and many a

young woman on their way in life, but I cannot understand that he

should have instigated any one to good. Vivian Grey has had probably

as many followers as Jack Sheppard, and has led his followers in

the same direction.

Lothair, which is as yet Mr. Disraeli's last work, and, I think,

undoubtedly his worst, has been defended on a plea somewhat similar

to that by which he has defended Vivian Grey. As that was written

when he was too young, so was the other when he was too old,--too

old for work of that nature, though not too old to be Prime Minister.

If his mind were so occupied with greater things as to allow him to

write such a work, yet his judgment should have sufficed to induce

him to destroy it when written. Here that flavour of hair-oil,

that flavour of false jewels, that remembrance of tailors, comes

out stronger than in all the others. Lothair is falser even than

Vivian Grey, and Lady Corisande, the daughter of the Duchess, more

inane and unwomanlike than Venetia or Henrietta Temple. It is the

very bathos of story-telling. I have often lamented, and have as

often excused to myself, that lack of public judgment which enables

readers to put up with bad work because it comes from good or from

lofty hands. I never felt the feeling so strongly, or was so little

able to excuse it, as when a portion of the reading public received

Lothair with satisfaction.

Literary criticism in the present day has become a profession,--but

it has ceased to be an art. Its object is no longer that of proving

that certain literary work is good and other literary work is

bad, in accordance with rules which the critic is able to define.

English criticism at present rarely even pretends to go so far as

this. It attempts, in the first place, to tell the public whether

a book be or be not worth public attention; and, in the second

place, so to describe the purport of the work as to enable those

who have not time or inclination for reading it to feel that by a

short cut they can become acquainted with its contents. Both these

objects, if fairly well carried out, are salutary. Though the

critic may not be a profound judge himself; though not unfrequently

he be a young man making his first literary attempts, with tastes

and judgment still unfixed, yet he probably has a conscience in the

matter, and would not have been selected for that work had he not

shown some aptitude for it. Though he may be not the best possible

guide to the undiscerning, he will be better than no guide at all.

Real substantial criticism must, from its nature, be costly, and

that which the public wants should at any rate be cheap. Advice is

given to many thousands, which, though it may not be the best advice

possible, is better than no advice at all. Then that description

of the work criticised, that compressing of the much into very

little,--which is the work of many modern critics or reviewers,--does

enable many to know something of what is being said, who without

it would know nothing.

I do not think it is incumbent on me at present to name periodicals

in which this work is well done, and to make complaints of others

by which it is scamped. I should give offence, and might probably

be unjust. But I think I may certainly say that as some of these

periodicals are certainly entitled to great praise for the manner

in which the work is done generally, so are others open to very

severe censure,--and that the praise and that the censure are

chiefly due on behalf of one virtue and its opposite vice. It is

not critical ability that we have a right to demand, or its absence

that we are bound to deplore. Critical ability for the price we

pay is not attainable. It is a faculty not peculiar to Englishmen,

and when displayed is very frequently not appreciated. But that

critics should be honest we have a right to demand, and critical

dishonesty we are bound to expose. If the writer will tell us what

he thinks, though his thoughts be absolutely vague and useless,

we can forgive him; but when he tells us what he does not think,

actuated either by friendship or by animosity, then there should

be no pardon for him. This is the sin in modern English criticism

of which there is most reason to complain.

It is a lamentable fact that men and women lend themselves to this

practice who are neither vindictive nor ordinarily dishonest. It

has become "the custom of the trade," under the veil of which excuse

so many tradesmen justify their malpractices! When a struggling

author learns that so much has been done for A by the Barsetshire

Gazette, so much for B by the Dillsborough Herald, and, again, so

much for C by that powerful metropolitan organ the Evening Pulpit,

and is told also that A and B and C have been favoured through personal

interest, he also goes to work among the editors, or the editors'

wives,--or perhaps, if he cannot reach their wives, with their

wives' first or second cousins. When once the feeling has come upon

an editor or a critic that he may allow himself to be influenced

by other considerations than the duty h owes to the public, all

sense of critical or of editorial honesty falls from him at once.

Facilis descensus Averni. In a very short time that editorial

honesty becomes ridiculous to himself. It is for other purpose that

he wields the power; and when he is told what is his duty, and what

should be his conduct, the preacher of such doctrine seems to him

to be quixotic. "Where have you lived, my friend, for the last