ral. But the point for us
is their example of the way in which the novel--once a light and almost
frivolous thing--had come to be taken with the utmost seriousness--had
in fact ceased to be light literature at all, and begun to require
rigorous and elaborate training and preparation in the writer, perhaps
even something of the athlete's processes in the reader. Its state may
or may not have advanced in grace _pari passu_ with the advance in
effort and in dignity: but this later advance is at least there.
Fielding himself took novel-writing by no means lightly, and Richardson
still less so: but imagine either, imagine Scott or even Miss Austen,
going through the preliminary processes which seemed necessary, in
different ways, to Charles Reade and to Mary Ann Evans!

In a certain sense, however, the last of the three, though he may give
less impression of genius than the other two (or even the other four
whom we have specially noticed), is the most interesting of all: and
qualms may sometimes arise as to whether genius is justly denied to him.
Anthony Trollope, after a youth, not exactly _orageuse_, but apparently
characterised by the rather squalid yet mild dissipation which he has
described in _The Three Clerks_ (1858) and _The Small House at
Allington_ (1864), attained a considerable position in the Post Office
which he held during great part of his career as a novelist. For some
time that career did not look as if it were going to be a successful
one, though his early (chiefly Irish) efforts are better than is
sometimes thought. But he made his mark first with _The Warden_ (1855),
and then, much more directly and triumphantly, with its sequel
_Barchester Towers_ (1857). When the first of these was published
Dickens had been a successful novelist for nearly twenty years and
Thackeray had "come to his own" for nearly ten. _The Warden_ might have
been described at the time (I do not know whether it was, but English
reviewing was only beginning to be clever again) as a partial attempt at
the matter of Dickens in a partial following of the manner of Thackeray.
An "abuse"--the distribution in supposed unjust proportion of the funds
of an endowed hospital for aged men--is its main avowed subject. But
Trollope indulged in no tirades and no fantastic-grotesque
caricature--in fact he actually drew a humorous sketch of a novel _a la
Dickens_ on the matter. His real object was evidently to sketch
faithfully, but again not without