The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1883-01-06
TROLLOPE.

AntnOny 1rollope, the huIhOf OF many
volumes of travels and fiction, has Just
deceased at the age of 81. His death was the
result of a complication of disorders, which
were brought to a crisis some time ago by a
stroke of paralysis. His life was a text
from which Herbert Spencer might have
preached a sermon on overwork quite as
eloquent as that which he delivered to the
Americans at the banquet given him in
New York. Mr.. Trollope was constantly
occupied either in authorship or in travelling.
He made more than one tour of the world,
and many visits to different parts of it. He
was twice in Australia and New Zealand,
and several times in America, the last time
being when he was in San Francisco, some
two or three years age. He published
between forty and fifty volumes of different
kinds, but principally novels. which indi-
Gates the amount of physical and brain labor
to which he subjected himself. There can
be little doubt that overwork led to para
lysis, and that disorder to his premature
death for with an iron English constitution
such as he had there is no reason to believe
he might not easily have reached fourscore
had he husbanded his physical resources.
Dickens worked himself out by equally con-
slant effort. while Charles Reade, who has
lAbored hard. but with more caution, still
vigorously survives at the ripe age of 70.
Mr.. Trollope first obtained currency
among Americans through his mother, who
was celebrated. as we'll as himself, as a
novelist. though she is chiefly remembered
by her travels in this country when it was
new, and had its frontier not far from the
Atlantic Ocean. She came to a pioneer
region, fresh from English society, deter
mined to Judge it by London standards. She
wrote of US with a bitter the
result of which fingers in prejudices against
England which would otherwise have been
greatly softened. even if they had not been
entirely removed. The excessive bile of
the neither reappeared in the son as a
healthy critical faculty. That which he has
said of US has rarely been complained of as
bitter, or criticised as unintelligent. Amer
leans occasionally appear as characters in
his novels, and if they are not always per-
feet they may be considered, at least, as
fair-minded portrayals of a class of indivi
duals who were, of course, foreign to the
author.
His rank as a novelist has never been
fixed. He lacked genius and vivid magma
ton. He cannot be placed in the front
rank of romancers, and not without some
stretch of courtesy in the second. But if he
was not a great novelist he was at least an
able writer of fiction. He was a literary
man by instinct. His style of composition
is smooth and pleasant. He perfectly under
stood English society, from the different
classes of which his characters were chiefly
drawn. He had, therefore, all the neces-
sary materials with which to carry on the
occupation to which he had devoted his life.
IF he could not strike out his personages
with broad and striking outlines and paint
them in vivid and enduring colors, he could
at least evolve them in abundance more
obscurely, and pour out pleasant scenes and
incidents in lavish profusion. While his
plot and characters invariably please, they
never impress the fancy deeply. His cre,-
lions are not like those of Scott. Dickens,
Thackeray and George Eliot, nor even like
some of those of Bulwer. Charles Reade or
Wilkie Collins, which engrave themselves
so deeply in the memory that they can never
be effaced. Still his writings invariably
nave moral health and a good degree of
intellectual vigor, and many thous- nds of
intelligent readers will sadly learn that the
pen which has so often entertained them is