Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/184

 perhaps it would be well if readers would sometimes make a little effort to blunt their critical faculty. May not an author beg to be judged by his peers? 'I know that I am stupid and commonplace,' I am often disposed to say; 'but if you would condescend to be a little less clever for once, you might still find something in me.' Nobody will listen to such an appeal; and yet if we could learn the art of enjoying dull books, it is startling to think what vast fields of innocent enjoyment would be thrown open to us. Macaulay, we are told, found pleasure in reading and re-reading the most vapid and rubbishy novels. Trollope's novels are far above that level; and though the rising generation is so brilliant that it can hardly enjoy them without a certain condescension, the condescension might be repaid.

If any one is disposed to cultivate the frame of mind appropriate for Trollope he should begin by reading the Autobiography. That will put his mind in the proper key. Trollope indeed gives fair notice that he does not mean to give us a 'record of his inner life.' He is not about to turn himself inside out in the manner of Rousseau. He must, no doubt, like all of us, have had an 'inner life,' though one can hardly suppose that it pre-