Magazine,' was coming out under the editorship of Thackeray, and was in want of a leading serial story-the editor himself having, as Mr Trollope supposes, intended to supply one, and finding himself unable to 66 come up to time." The proprietors at once offered Trollope £1000 for a three-volume novel, to come out in monthly portions; and, for the first and last time in his literary career, he sold a novel which had yet to be written. As a rule, he had always one, and latterly two or three, in manuscript lying in his desk ready for publication. This Cornhill story was Framley Parsonage.' The reading public were delighted to meet there again their old friends Archdeacon Grantley and Mrs Proudie; and the character of Lucy Robarts is one of the sweetest, as the author himself felt, that he ever drew. The series of what we may call the Barchester Novels was not completed until seven years later, by the publication of 'The Last Chronicle of Barset.' For this he received

£3000, and considers it the best of all his stories, though the public, he thinks, preferred Orley Farm.' He had grown very fond of his imaginary county and its society, and realised to himself the personages of his drama just as the true actor throws himself for the time into the character he represents.

"As I wrote "Framley Parsonage' I became more closely than ever acquainted with the new shire I had added to the English counties. I had it all in my mind,-its roads and railroads, its towns and parishes, its members of Parliament, and the different hunts which rode over it. I knew all the great lords and their castles, the squires and their parks, the rectors and their churches. This was the fourth novel of which I placed the scene in Barsetshire, and as I wrote it I made a map of the dear county. Throughout these stories there has

been no name given to a fictitious site which does not represent to me a spot of which I knew all the accessories, as though I had lived and wandered there."

And he says again :

"I have been able to imbue myself thoroughly with the characters I have had in hand. I have wandered alone among the rocks and woods, crying at their grief, laughing at their absurdities, and thoroughly enjoying their joy. I have been impregnated with my own creations till it has been my only excitement to sit with the pen in my hand, and drive my team before me at as quick a pace as I could make them travel."

"It is so that I have lived with my characters, and thence has come whatever success I have obtained. There is a gallery of them, and of all in that gallery I may say that I know the tone of the voice, and the colour of the hair, every flame of the eye, and the very clothes they wear. Of each man I could assert whether he would have said these or the other words; of every woman, whether she would then have smiled or so have frowned." He was very careful also to mark the "progression in character," the changes in his men and women which would naturally take place in the course of years.

How it came to pass that, for a very different reason from the jealousy which led Addison to extinguish the life of Sir Roger de Coverley, the author determined suddenly to "kill Mrs Proudie," is a story often told by him in his lifetime, which has been already told in the pages of Maga,' and for which we may refer the reader to the work itself. But his parting tribute to the memory of that awful lady is a good illustration of how thoroughly the characters of his creation became to his mind living realities :

"I have sometimes regretted the deed, so great was my delight in writing about Mrs Proudie, so thorough

was my knowledge of all the little shades in her character. It was not only that she was a tyrant, a bully, a would-be priestess, a very vulgar woman, and one who would send headlong to the nethermost pit all who disagreed with her; but that at the same time she was conscientious, by no means a hypocrite, really believing in the brimstone which she threatened, and anxious to save the souls around her from its horrors. And as her tyranny increased, so did the bitterness of the moments of her repentance increase, in that she knew herself to be a tyrant,-till that bitterness killed her."

We have traced this literary career with some minuteness to its culmination, because it is a striking record not only of indomitable perseverance, arising in Trollope's case from the consciousness of strength, but of the slow and hesitating steps by which the reading public forms its tastes, and the unquestioning faith with which it abandons itself to the favourite it has once adopted. He had always "felt this to be an injustice in literary affairs," and he was induced to test this by ascertaining how far he could succeed in obtaining a second reputation for himself by publishing anonymously. He wrote for the Magazine two stories-Nina Balatka' and 'Linda Tressel.' The secret of the authorship was well kept for some time; but the stories, though good in themselves, and fairly well received, were not appreciated by the public generally as they would have been had they been signed with his name.

It is not necessary here to enter into the details of the novelist's later successes. The highest rate of pay he ever received was, he tells us, for 'The Claverings,' which came out in the 'Cornhill' in 1866, 1867-£2800. Larger sums were realised by other stories: 'Can You Forgive Her?' brought £3525, and

others as much as £3000 each, but these were of an unusual length. As a rule, from the time that his popularity was established, he for some years maintained the price of £600 for a volume of the ordinary novel measure, though latterly he had to submit to a reduction in these terms.

It is time to say something of his private life. His residence in Ireland had given him no opportunities of mixing in literary society; but in 1859 he was appointed to the charge of the Eastern District of England, and took a lease of a pretty old-fashioned brick house at Waltham Cross, which he afterwards bought and considerably imIt was the same year in proved. which he became connected with the Cornhill Magazine,' and he found it very convenient for his frequent journeys to London. And now he began rapidly to make those literary and other friends who added so much to his keen A dinner at enjoyment of life. the publisher's was his first introduction to Thackeray, whom he regarded as "the greatest master of fiction in this age," and "one of the most tender-hearted of human beings he ever knew." Millais, G. H. Lewes, "Jacob Omnium" (Higgins), Robert Bell, Fitzjames Stephen, Dallas, Sala,-for each and all of these he has a word of hearty appreciation. Of the late Sir Charles Taylor, the "king of the Garrick Club" in his day, he speaks thus:

"A man rough of tongue, brusque in his manners, odious to those who dislike him, he is the prince of friends, honest as the sun, and as open-hearted as charity itself."

Had he any sort of consciousness how very nearly he was drawing a portrait of himself?

He was now in a position to satisfy that "craving for love,"

which he almost apologises for as "a weakness in his character." It was a craving never gratified, as he pathetically complains, in the early years of his life. At the Garrick Club he at once became very popular. He was soon afterwards elected to the Athenæum; and, when in town, generally made one at those midnight meetings at the Cosmopolitan, which no man more thoroughly enjoyed, and which were so enjoyable. At Waltham House, too, where he was very happy, though in different fashion from his London life, amongst his cows, and roses, and strawberries, he delighted to welcome at his quiet dinner-table some half-dozen of intimate friends. Those who were occasional guests there remember how, in the warm summer evenings, the party would adjourn after dinner to the lawn, where wines and fruit were laid out under the fine old cedar-tree, and many a good story was told while the tobacco-smoke went curling up into the soft twilight.

In 1861 he succeeded in getting from his official chief a nine-months' holiday, in order to pay a visit to America, for the avowed purpose of writing a book. It was during the Secession War, and his sympathies were strongly with the North; but the book when written, though fairly well received, was, as he here candidly admits, not a "good book." In truth, his vocation was to tell in admirable fashion a tale of modern English life; and whenever he was tempted by literary ambition to step off this familiar ground, he lost his secure foothold.

Six years afterwards he resigned his place in the Post Office, without waiting for a pension, to which a few more years' service would have entitled him. More than one motive seems to have led him

to this determination. He found the double work becoming a burden to him; he had lately applied unsuccessfully for the vacant office of under-secretary, and he had undertaken a task which he very soon relinquished the editorship of the new St Paul's Magazine.'

6

Very early in the days of his clerkship, he had amused a cynical old uncle who once asked him what profession he would like best, by replying, that he should like to be a member of Parliament. In his maturer mind he had always retained the idea that "to sit in the British Parliament should be the highest object of ambition to every educated Englishman." He had, he confesses, "almost an insane desire to sit there." Accordingly, he was hardly freed from official trammels when he began to look out for a seat. At first his name was suggested for one of the divisions of the county of Essex; but he withdrew at once, with the unselfish chivalry of his nature, in favour of a candidate who seemed to have higher claims. Finally, he stood for Beverley. He did not get in. How should he? No one was less calculated to win the "most sweet voices" of borough electors. To him the time spent in canvassing was "the most wretched fortnight of his manhood." His account of it is a caution to candidates. He was a "Liberal," as the term is, in politics; a "Conservative-Liberal " he termed himself. On some theoretical points his Liberalism was of the most advanced type. So far as Liberalism advocated "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," free trade, purity of election, and other imposing theories, he was a very good Liberal indeed. But the man who could speak of the Beverley Liberal caucus as bitter tyranny from grinding vulgar tyrants," who could say of the

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tleness of a woman; and only those who knew him well were aware how much of this there was in his nature underlying a somewhat rough outside. One friend who, in temporary ill-health, was thrown upon the doubtful cookery of London lodgings, well remembers how he would look in continually, on his way to his club, for a few minutes' pleasant chat, carrying in his hand a pheasant, or some such little delicacy as might tempt an invalid's appetite. But such instances of thoughtful kindness live in the memories of many, and this is not the place to dwell upon them. The same love of Latin literature which produced the 'Cæsar' led him to publish, in 1880, a 'Life of Cicero,' for whom he had an enthusiastic admiration. The book is pleasantly written; but it must be again said that when he was tempted to desert fiction for his tory, he did not show himself at his best.

This autobiographical record was finished (we are told in the preface) in April 1876: but the list of his published works given by himself in the last chapter includes 'John Caldigate,' published in 1879. The following year he gave up his London residence, and retired to a pretty house, built in somewhat rambling fashion by a French emigrant in 1760, just outside the village of Harting in Sussex. He no longer enjoyed his old robust health, and the demands of London society had become somewhat too severe for him.

It had

vary his London life by a few weeks' ramble in the Black Forest, or in Switzerland; but in the spring of 1881 he made a short tour in Italy with Mrs Trollope and some friends, paying a visit to his brother at Rome.

In

Though at times his old buoyant spirits made a stout fight against bodily infirmity, he was then far from well, and knew and confessed it. He had also entered into business relations-not necessary here to particularise—which worried and disgusted him: for such matters he had, as he confesses, neither taste nor aptitude. deed it was remarkable that one who knew the world so thoroughly -who could write such a book as The Way we Live now,' which he admits to be over-coloured, and which is to us the least agreeable of all his novels-should have been himself the most trustful and unsuspicious of men. The fact was this,-taking the world as a whole, he knew that meanness, and baseness, and greed of all kinds were rampant in it; but in the case of a private friend, one might almost say in any individual case with which he had to deal,--he could not believe that the man would be guilty of such things. His loyalty to his friends was so perfect that it tended sometimes, in his energetic nature, to make him prejudiced and unjust. A slight to himself he could readily forgive; but a slight to a relative or near friend was in his eyes the unpardonable sin.

are