Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/216

 The poor parson, Mr. Crawley, is at once the most lifelike and (in his sense) the most improbable of his characters. He is the embodiment of Trollope's own 'doggedness.' One fancies that Trollope's memory of his sufferings under the 'three hundred tyrants' of his school-days, and of his father's flounderings in money matters, entered into sympathy with his hero. Anyhow, the man with his strange wrong-headed conscientiousness, his honourable independence, blended with bitter resentment against the more successful, and the strong domestic affections, which yet make him a despot in his family, is a real triumph of which more ambitious novelists might be proud. Such men, he might have observed, though exceptional, are far more real than the average persons with whom he is generally content. Another triumph, of which he speaks with justifiable complacency, is the famous Mrs. Proudie. He knew, he declares, 'all the little shades of her character.' She was bigoted, bullying, and vulgar, but really conscientious, no hypocrite, and at last dies in bitter regret for the consequences of her misrule. He killed her because he heard two clergymen in the Athenæum complaining of her too frequent reappearances. But he thoroughly enjoyed her, and