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HUMANITIES 123 'picture' of art with all its vital iridescence must never be permitted to lapse into a mere shallow 'diagram: Moreover, the fundamental images of the picturesque itself, as critics from Nikolaus Pevsner to Martin Price have pointed out, are those of free natural growth - of the tree, the garden, and, by moral extension, of human imagination and culture. Ross's reliance on a programmatic metaphor to explain the continuity of the picturesque ironically leads hlm into a position exactly the opposite of the mode he champions. My major reservations about the value of this study are, however, that it contributes very little new understanding either to the novelists considered or to thls issue of the particular subgenre under discussion - and seems almost entirely unaware of any literary theory of the last decade dealing with the problems of literary tradition and influence. Finally, some of the contradictions into which Ross's argument falls - particularly in its unresolved handling of the antagonism between aesthetic and moral sensibility in George Eliot and Dickens (clearly at odds with hls ostensible thesis that the picturesque was the dominant mode in their fiction) - could have been avoided by a consideration of Keith Thomas's extensive treatment of the picturesque in hls landmark socia-historical study, Man and the Natural World (Allen Lane 1983), a study whlch appeared as early as other works referred to in Ross's highly selective bibliography.To expand critical perspectives in this way would obviously be to write a different and somewhat longer book than the present one; but to do otherwise is to ignore the necessary implications ofan important topic at the present stage of literary and cultural studies. (ILA GOODY) R.D. McMaster. Trollopeand the Law Macmillan Studies in Victorian Literature. Macmillan. xii, 179. $62.50 It was not so very long ago that anyone writing serious literary criticism about Trollope's novels would find it necessary to begin with an apology designed to rehabilitate his reputation among serious scholars. That time has long since passed, and Trollope's reputation in the academy is now secure. Not only are hls novels reprinted in inexpensive and easily available editions, but also his career and his texts are treated with the same careful critical attention given to other major artists of the period. As the title of his book indicates, Professor McMaster has given that careful attention to the hlstory and background of Trollope's treatment of lawyers and the law. McMaster explains carefully, especially carefully as he says for the benefit of his American readers, the ins and outs of the practice of nineteenth-century English lawyers, the differences between barristers and solicitors, those between courts of equity and courts of common law, 124 LEITERS IN CANADA 1986 and so on. Moreover in so doing he is able to make clear how Trollope's interest in lawyers and the law is central to the construction of certain of his texts and how that interest reflects wider ethical concerns central to all his texts. McMaster suggests that Trollope throughout his life 'took a hostile view of advocacy: Nevertheless he sees that for Trollope the law of property was another thing altogether: 'Trollope agrees with Burke in seeing a spiritual congruity between the descent of entailed property, the life of the nation, and the idea of society' (p 76). In his discussion of such novels as Ralph the Heir, The Way We Live Now and, especially, Mr. Scarborough's Family, McMaster is very clear about Trollope's notion that responsibility to the land itself and to its tenants and resources is tied to his sense of what makes an English gentleman. To this end McMaster quotes the solicitor Bideawhile from The Way We Live Now as he informs the financier Melmotte: 'You must be aware, Mr. Melmotte, ... that the sale of property is not like an ordinary mercantile transaction: Later he cites Trollope's view in Lady Anna that wealth in money is much less acceptable to 'the general English aristocrat than that which comes direct from the land: Moreover, his analysis of Mr. Scarborough's Family is most sophisticated and detailed in exposing Trollope's consciousness of the subtle nature...

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