ield Park_. No one will compare little
Jane's delicate palfrey with Anthony's big-boned hunter; nor would any
one commit the bad taste of treating these quadrupeds as if they were
entered for a race; but a narrow stage and familiar incidents are not
necessarily fatal to true art. If Trollope had done nothing more than
paint ordinary English society with photographic accuracy of detail, it
would not be a great performance. But he has done more than this. In
the Barsetshire series, at any rate, he has risen to a point of drawing
characters with a very subtle insight and delicate intuition. The
warden, the bishop, Mrs. Proudie, Dr. Thorne, Mary Thorne, Lily Dale,
Lady Arabella, and, above all, Mr. Crawley, are characters definitely
conceived, profoundly mastered, and truly portrayed. Trollope
evidently judged Crawley to be his greatest creation, and the _Last
Chronicle of Barset_ to be his principal achievement. In this he was
doubtless right. There are real characters also in the two _Phineas
Finn_ tales. Chiltern, Finn, Glencora Palliser, Laura Kennedy, and
Marie Goesler, are subtly conceived and truly worked out. This is
enough to make a decent reputation, however flat be the interminable
pot-boilers that precede and follow them.

The list of Trollope's real successes is not very long. The six tales
of the Barsetshire cycle, _The Warden_, _Barchester Towers_, _Doctor
Thorne_, _Framley Parsonage_, _The Small House at Allington_, _The Last
Chronicle of Barset_, are unquestionably his main achievements; and of
these either _Doctor Thorne_ or _The Last Chronicle_ is the best. The
Crawley story is undoubtedly the finest thing Trollope ever did; but
for myself, I enjoy the unity, completeness, and masterly scheme of
_Doctor Thorne_, and I like Mary Thorne better than any of Trollope's
women. If, to the six Barset tales, we add _Orley Farm_, _The
Claverings_, the two _Phineas Finns_, and the _Eustace Diamonds_, we
shall include, perhaps, more than posterity will ever trouble itself
about, and almost exactly one-fifth of the novels he left behind. The
ten or twelve of Trollope's best will continue to be read, and will, in
a future generation, no doubt, regain not a little of their early
vogue. This will be due, in part, to their own inherent merit as
graceful, truthful, subtle observation of contemporary types, clothed
in a style of transparent ease. Partly, it will be due to this: that
these tales will reproduc