he respected and whose good opinion she
coveted. But she remained splendidly wholesome and inspiring in
her fiction, because she clung to her faith in spiritual
self-development, tested all life by the test of duty, felt the
pathos and the preciousness of inconspicuous lives, and devoted
herself through a most exceptional career to loving service for
others. She was therefore not only a novelist of genius, but a
profoundly good woman. She had an ample practical credo for
living and will always be, for those who read with their mind
and soul as well as their eyes, anything but a depressing
writer. For them, on the contrary, she will be a tonic force, a
seer using fiction as a means to an end--and that end the
betterment of mankind.

CHAPTER XI

TROLLOPE AND OTHERS

Five or six writers of fiction, none of whom has attained a
position like that of the three great Victorians already
considered, yet all of whom loomed large in their day, have met
with unequal treatment at the hands of time: Bulwer Lytton,
Disraeli, Reade, Trollope, Kingsley. And the Brontes might well
be added to the list. The men are mentioned in the order of
their birth; yet it seems more natural to place Trollope last,
not at all because he lived to 1882, while Kingsley died seven
years earlier. Reade lived two years after Trollope, but seems
chronologically far before him as a novelist. In the same way,
Disraeli and Bulwer Lytton, as we now look back upon them,
appear to be figures of another age; though the former lived to
within a few years of Trollope, and the latter died but two
years before Kingsley. Of course, the reason that Disraeli
impresses us as antiquated where Trollope looks thoroughly
modern, is because the latter is nearest our own day in method,
temper and aim. And this is the main reason why he has best
survived the shocks of time and is seen to be the most
significant figure of an able and interesting group. Before he
is examined, something may be said of the others.

In a measure, the great reputation enjoyed by the remaining
writers was secured in divisions of literature other than
fiction; or derived from activities not literary at all. Thus
Beaconsfield was Premier, Bulwer was noted as poet and
dramatist, and eminent in diplomacy; Kingsley a leader in Church
and State. They were men with many irons in the fire: naturally,
it took some years to separate their literary importance pure
and simple from the other accompl