Mr. Trollope’s greatest value we take to be that he is so purely a novelist.  The chief requisite for writing a novel in the present age seems to be that the writer should be everything else.  It implies that the story-telling gift is very well in its way, but that the inner substance of a tale must repose on some direct professional experience.  This fashion is of very recent date.  Formerly the novelist had no personality; he was a simple chronicler; his accidental stand-point was as impertinent as the painter’s attitude before his canvas.  But now the main question lies in the pose, not of the model, but of the artist.  It will fare ill with the second-rate writer of fiction, unless he can give conclusive proof that he is well qualified in certain practical functions.  And the public is very vigilant on this point.  It has become wonderfully acute in discriminating true and false lore.  The critic’s office is gradually reduced to a search for inaccuracies.  We do not stop to weigh these truths; we merely indicate them.  But we confess, that, if Mr. Trollope is somewhat dear to us, it is because they are not true of him.  The central purpose of a work of fiction is assuredly the portrayal of human passions.  To this principle Mr. Trollope steadfastly adheres,—­how consciously, how wilfully, we know not,—­but with a constancy which is almost a proof of conviction, and a degree of success which lends great force to his example.  The interest of the work before us is emphatically a moral interest:  it is a story of feeling, the narrative of certain feelings.

Mr. Troliope’s tales give us a very sound sense of their reality.  It may seem paradoxical to attribute this to the narrowness of the author’s imagination; but we cannot help doing so.  On reflection, we shall see that it is not so much persons as events that Mr. Trollope aims at depicting, not so much characters as scenes.  His pictures are real, on the whole.  Their reality, we take it, is owing to the happy balance of the writer’s judgment and his invention.  Had his invention been a little more tinged with fancy, it is probable that he would have known certain temptations of which he appears to be ignorant.  Even should he have successfully resisted them, the struggle, the contest, the necessity of choice would have robbed his manner of that easy self-sufficiency which is one of its greatest charms.  Had he succumbed, he would often have fallen away from sober fidelity to Nature.  As the matter stands, his great felicity is that he never goes beyond his depth,—­and this, not so much from fear, as from ignorance.  His insight is anything but profound.  He has no suspicion of deeper waters.  Through the whole course of the present story, he never attempts to fathom Crosbie’s feelings, to retrace his motives, to refine upon his character.  Mr. Trollope has learned much in what is called the realist school; but he has not taken lessons in psychology.  Even while looking into Crosbie’s heart, we never