A dollop of Trollope: 'The most dangerous man in the world'

Over the summer,
taking a break from military history after three years of reading pretty much
nothing but, I read the first of Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels, Can You Forgive Her? (Short answer:
Yes, you can. But it takes him about 800 pages to explain how.)

Trollope strikes
me as a male version of Jane Austen. He is just as cynical, and still concerned
with manners and marriage, and with how people make their way in through the
cold world. But he also has a lively interest in the public worlds of finance
and politics.

One of the best
lines in the book, with some contemporary resonance: "I dare say he's not very
bright, but I don't know that we want brightness. A bright financier is the
most dangerous man in the world. We've had enough of that already."  (Vol. 1, p. 348)

Another good
observation: "in politics, I would a deal sooner trust to instinct than to
calculation." (Vol. 2, p. 194)

And this, on one
kind of marriage: "She despised her husband because he had no vices." (Vol . 2,
p. 297)

And, this being
the Best Defense blog, we should mention Trollope's reference to Iraqi affairs:
"I want Plantagenet to take us to see the Kurds, but he won't." (Vol. 2, p.
273)

Then I started
the next of the Palliser novels, Phineas
Finn, but gave up because it felt so similar. Almost the same characters
but with new names, like the handsome rotter and the noble but plodding good
guy.