Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope
my life. Though the book might be charming, the work was very much
the reverse. It came to have a terrible aspect to me, as did that
proposition that I should sit out all the May meetings of a season.
According to my plan of such a history it would be necessary
to read an infinity of novels, and not only to read them, but so
to read them as to point out the excellences of those which are
most excellent, and to explain the defects of those which, though
defective, had still reached sufficient reputation to make them
worthy of notice. I did read many after this fashion,--and here
and there I have the criticisms which I wrote. In regard to many,
they were written on some blank page within the book; I have not,
however, even a list of the books so criticised. I think that the
Arcadia was the first, and Ivanhoe the last. My plan, as I settled
it at last, had been to begin with Robinson Crusoe, which is the
earliest really popular novel which we have in our language, and
to continue the review so as to include the works of all English
novelists of reputation, except those who might still be living
when my task should be completed. But when Dickens and Bulwer died,
my spirit flagged, and that which I had already found to be very
difficult had become almost impossible to me at my then period of
life.
I began my own studies on the subject with works much earlier than
Robinson Crusoe, and made my way through a variety of novels which
were necessary for my purpose, but which in the reading gave me no
pleasure whatever. I never worked harder than at the Arcadia, or
read more detestable trash than the stories written by Mrs. Aphra
Behn; but these two were necessary to my purpose, which was not only
to give an estimate of the novels as I found them, but to describe
how it had come to pass that the English novels of the present
day have become what they are, to point out the effects which they
have produced, and to inquire whether their great popularity has on
the whole done good or evil to the people who read them. I still
think that the book is one well worthy to be written.
I intended to write that book to vindicate my own profession as
a novelist, and also to vindicate that public taste in literature
which has created and nourished the profession which I follow.
And I was stirred up to make such an attempt by a conviction that
there still exists among us Englishmen a prejudice in respect
to novels which might, perhaps, be lessened by such a work. This
prejudice is not against the reading of novels, as is proved by their
general acceptance among us. But it exists strongly in reference
to the appreciation in which they are professed to be held; and it
robs them of much of that high character which they may claim to
have earned by their grace, their honesty, and good teaching.
No man can work long at any trade without being brought to consider
much, whether that which he is daily doing tends to evil or to
good. I have written many novels, and have known many writers of
novels, and I can assert that such thoughts have been strong with
them and with myself. But in acknowledging that these writers have
received from the public a full measure of credit for such genius,
ingenuity, or perseverance as each may have displayed, I feel that
there is still wanting to them a just appreciation of the excellence
of their calling, and a general understanding of the high nature
of the work which they perform.
By the common consent of all mankind who have read, poetry takes
the highest place in literature. That nobility of expression, and
all but divine grace of words, which she is bound to attain before
she can make her footing good, is not compatible with prose. Indeed
it is that which turns prose into poetry. When that has been in
truth achieved, the reader knows that the writer has soared above
the earth, and can teach his lessons somewhat as a god might teach.
He who sits down to write his tale in prose makes no such attempt,
nor does he dream that the poet's honour is within his reach;--but
his teaching is of the same nature, and his lessons all tend to
the same end. By either, false sentiments may be fostered; false
notions of humanity may be engendered; false honour, false love,
false worship may be created; by either, vice instead of virtue
may be taught. But by each, equally, may true honour, true love;
true worship, and true humanity be inculcated; and that will be
the greatest teacher who will spread such truth the widest. But
at present, much as novels, as novels, are bought and read, there
exists still an idea, a feeling which is very prevalent, that novels
at their best are but innocent. Young men and women,--and old men
and women too,--read more of them than of poetry, because such reading
is easier than the reading of poetry; but they read them,--as men
eat pastry after dinner,--not without some inward conviction that
the taste is vain if not vicious. I take upon myself to say that
it is neither vicious nor vain.
But all writers of fiction who have desired to think well of their
own work, will probably have had doubts on their minds before they
have arrived at this conclusion. Thinking much of my own daily
labour and of its nature, I felt myself at first to be much afflicted
and then to be deeply grieved by the opinion expressed by wise and
thinking men as to the work done by novelists. But when, by degrees,
I dared to examine and sift the sayings of such men, I found them
to be sometimes silly and often arrogant. I began to inquire what
had been the nature of English novels since they first became common
in our own language, and to be desirous of ascertaining whether they
had done harm or good. I could well remember that, in my own young
days, they had not taken that undisputed possession of drawing-rooms
which they now hold. Fifty years ago, when George IV. was king, they
were not indeed treated as Lydia had been forced to treat them in
the preceding reign, when, on the approach of elders, Peregrine
Pickle was hidden beneath the bolster, and Lord Ainsworth put away
under the sofa. But the families in which an unrestricted permission
was given for the reading of novels were very few, and from many
they were altogether banished. The high poetic genius and correct
morality of Walter Scott had not altogether succeeded in making men
and women understand that lessons which were good in poetry could
not be bad in prose. I remember that in those days an embargo was
laid upon novel-reading as a pursuit, which was to the novelist
a much heavier tax than that want of full appreciation of which I
now complain.
There is, we all know, no such embargo now. May we not say that
people of an age to read have got too much power into their own
hands to endure any very complete embargo? Novels are read right
and left, above stairs and below, in town houses and in country
parsonages, by young countesses and by farmers' daughters, by old
lawyers and by young students. It has not only come to pass that
a special provision of them has to be made for the godly, but that
the provision so made must now include books which a few years since
the godly would have thought to be profane. It was this necessity
which, a few years since, induced the editor of Good Words to apply
to me for a novel,--which, indeed, when supplied was rejected, but
which now, probably, owing to further change in the same direction,
would have been accepted.
If such be the case--if the extension of novel-reading be so wide
as I have described it--then very much good or harm must be done
by novels. The amusement of the time can hardly be the only result
of any book that is read, and certainly not so with a novel, which
appeals especially to the imagination, and solicits the sympathy of
the young. A vast proportion of the teaching of the day,--greater
probably than many of us have acknowledged to ourselves,--comes
from these books, which are in the hands of all readers. It is from
them that girls learn what is expected from them, and what they
are to expect when lovers come; and also from them that young men
unconsciously learn what are, or should be, or may be, the charms
of love,--though I fancy that few young men will think so little
of their natural instincts and powers as to believe that I am right
in saying so. Many other lessons also are taught. In these times,
when the desire to be honest is pressed so hard, is so violently
assaulted by the ambition to be great; in which riches are the
easiest road to greatness; when the temptations to which men are
subjected dull their eyes to the perfected iniquities of others;
when it is so hard for a man to decide vigorously that the pitch,
which so many are handling, will defile him if it be touched;--men's
conduct will be actuated much by that which is from day to day
depicted to them as leading to glorious or inglorious results. The
woman who is described as having obtained all that the world holds
to be precious, by lavishing her charms and her caresses unworthily
and heartlessly, will induce other women to do the same with
theirs,--as will she who is made interesting by exhibitions of
bold passion teach others to be spuriously passionate. The young
man who in a novel becomes a hero, perhaps a Member of Parliament,
and almost a Prime Minister, by trickery, falsehood, and flash
cleverness, will have many followers, whose attempts to rise in
the world ought to lie heavily on the conscience of the novelists
who create fictitious Cagliostros. There are Jack Sheppards other
than those who break into houses and out of prisons,--Macheaths,
who deserve the gallows more than Gay's hero.
Thinking of all this, as a novelist surely must do,--as I certainly
have done through my whole career,--it becomes to him a matter of
deep conscience how he shall handle those characters by whose words
and doings he hopes to interest his readers. It will very frequently
be the case that he will be tempted to sacrifice something for
effect, to say a word or two here, or to draw a picture there,
for which he feels that he has the power, and which when spoken or
drawn would be alluring. The regions of absolute vice are foul and
odious. The savour of them, till custom has hardened the palate and
the nose, is disgusting. In these he will hardly tread. But there
