know
nothing about it. But it chanced that as a young man I had been
charged with the duty of escorting a certain young lady to a "meet" of
fox-hounds in Essex. A fox was found; but what happened I hardly
remember; save this, that, in the middle of a hot burst, I found myself
alongside of Anthony Trollope, who was shouting and roaring out
"What!--what are you doing here?" And he was never tired of holding me
up to the scorn of the "Universe" club as a deserter from the
principles of Professor Freeman and John Morley. I had taken no part
in the controversy, but it gave him huge delight to have detected such
backsliding in one of the school he detested. Like other sporting men
who imagine that their love of "sport" is a love of nature, when it is
merely a pleasure in physical exercise, Trollope cared little for the
poetic aspect of nature. His books, like Thackeray's, hardly contain a
single fine picture of the country, of the sea, of mountains, or of
rivers. Compared with Fielding, Scott, Charlotte Bronte, Dickens,
George Eliot, he is a man blind to the loveliness of nature. To him,
as to other fox-hunters, the country was good or bad as it promised or
did not promise a good "run." Though Trollope was a great traveller,
he rarely uses his experiences in a novel, whereas Scott, Thackeray,
Dickens, Bulwer, George Eliot fill their pages with foreign adventures
and scenes of travel. His hard riding as an overgrown heavy-weight,
his systematic whist playing, his loud talk, his burly ubiquity and
irrepressible energy in everything--formed one of the marvels of the
last generation. And that such a colossus of blood and bone should
spend his mornings, before we were out of bed, in analysing the
hypersensitive conscience of an archdeacon, the secret confidences
whispered between a prudent mamma and a love-lorn young lady, or the
subtle meanderings of Marie Goesler's heart--this was a real
psychologic problem.

There can be no doubt that this constitutional vehemence of his, this
hypertrophy of blood and muscle, injured his work and dimmed his
reputation. Much of his work he ought to have burnt. His classical
studies are worthless, his _Life of Thackeray_ and his _Travels_ are
mere book-making. His novels, even the best, are revised and printed
with scandalous haste. He speaks of a "_toga virile_" and of "_the
husband of his bosom_," for wife; and there are misprints in every
paragraph. When, in his _Autobiograph