Chapter IX

I have been speaking, however, to-day of one whose measure in any light has never to my thinking been accurately taken. The crew of Odysseus were Greeks. They beached their ship (says Homer) on the isle of the Laestrygonians: and there came down to them the Queen of the Laestrygonians, “a woman as tall as a mountain,” _and they hated her_. The Victorian Age lent itself to excess; and its excessive figures are our statues for some to deface or bedaub. But I, who have purposely compared Elizabeth Gaskell with her most ornate contemporary, dare to prophesy that when criticism has sifted all out, she will come to her own, as a woman of genius, sweetly proportioned as a statue, yet breathing; one of these writers we call by that vain word--so vain, so pathetic even when used of the greatest poet--“immortal.”

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

THE BARSETSHIRE NOVELS