By W. W. GIST.

A peep into a literary workshop is always interesting. There is always some curiosity to know how a man of letters does his work. This fascinating autobiography gives us a clear insight into Anthony Trollope’s manner of study, and states many other facts that are intensely interesting.

Anthony Trollope’s parents were both of a literary turn of mind. His father had no business capacity, and everything he attempted went wrong. His mother and brother came to America and opened a bazar at Cincinnati, hoping to amass a fortune. This proved a failure, and upon returning to England, Mrs. Trollope wrote a book on America, which brought a fair compensation. For years she supported the family by her pen. There is indeed something heroic in her watching by the bedside of her dying husband and son, and writing her books during the intervals that the sick did not demand her attention. Her first book was written when she was fifty years of age. She wrote in all one hundred and fourteen volumes.

Anthony Trollope’s school advantages were poor, and the trials of his childhood were greater than those of the average youth. In 1834, at the age of nineteen, he entered the postal service and continued in it for thirty-three years, effecting many valuable reforms and proving himself an efficient government officer.

His literary work was done in such a manner as not to interfere in the least with his duties as inspector of postoffices. Few men have the power of will to hold themselves to the rigid, exacting plan of study that he imposed upon himself. He hired a man to call him at 5:30 each morning, and his literary work was done between that hour and 8:30, before he dressed for breakfast. He did not, however, spend the whole of the three hours in writing. During the first half hour he read aloud what he had written the day before, so that his ear could detect any lack of harmony in expression, and that he might catch the spirit of his last day’s work. Can anything be more systematic than his method of writing a book, as told in his own language:

“When I commenced a new book I always prepared a diary, divided into weeks, and carried it on for the period which I allowed myself for the completion of the work. In this I have entered, day by day, the number of pages I have written, so that if at any time I have slipped into idleness for a day or two, the record of that idleness has been there staring me in the face and demanding of me increased labor, so that the deficiency might be supplied.… I have allotted myself so many pages a week. The average number has been about forty. It has been placed as low as twenty, and has risen to one hundred and twelve. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been made to contain two hundred and fifty words; and as words, if not watched, will have a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I went. In the bargains I have made with publishers, I have—not, of course, with their knowledge, but in my own mind—undertaken always to supply them with so many words, and I have never put a book out of hand short of the number by a single word. I may also say that the excess has been very small. I have prided myself on completing my work exactly within the proposed dimensions. But I have prided myself especially in completing it within the proposed time—and I have always done so. There has ever been the record before me, and a week passed with an insufficient number of pages has been a blister to my eye, and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart.”

He was not satisfied to hold himself rigidly to specified hours. Much of the time he wrote with his watch open before him, and his task was to complete a page every fifteen minutes. “I have found that the two hundred and fifty words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch went.” He seems to feel that the one only who has acquired a facile style can expect to produce a given quantity in a given time. “His language must come from him as music comes from the rapid touch of the great performer’s fingers; as words come from the mouth of the indignant orator; as letters fly from the fingers of the trained compositor; as the syllables tinkled out by little bells form themselves to the ear of the telegrapher.”

In comparing himself with the authors who follow no systematic method of work, he says: “They have failed to write their best because they have seldom written at ease. I have done double their work—though burdened with another profession—and have done it almost without an effort. I have not once, through all my literary career, felt myself even in danger of being late with my task. I have known no anxiety as to copy.”

In another connection he speaks of having three unpublished novels in his desk, and adds: “One of these has been six years finished, and has never seen the light since it was first tied up in the wrapper which now contains it. I look forward with some grim pleasantry to its publication after another period of six years, and to the declaration of the critics that it has been the work of a period of life at which the power of writing novels had passed from me.”

His method in writing enabled him to produce books quite rapidly, and this accounts in part for the unpublished works on hand. Only once did he permit a story to appear as a serial. In all other cases the story was completed before the printer saw any part of it.

He defends his habit of work as follows: “I have been told that such appliances are beneath the notice of a man of genius. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius, but had I been so I think I might well have subjected myself to these trammels. Nothing, surely, is so potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force of the water-drop that hollows the stone. A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules.”

His duties as a government officer required him to travel a great deal, and he soon learned to do much of his literary work while on his journeys. He wrote on a tablet while riding in the cars; one story was written while traveling on three different continents; “Lady Anna” was written while making a voyage from Liverpool to Australia.

Anthony Trollope had very positive views on the subject of criticism. Early in his literary career he reached this conclusion: “I made up my mind then that, should I continue this trade of authorship, I would have no dealings with any critic on my own behalf. I would neither ask for nor deplore criticism, nor would I ever thank a critic for praise, or quarrel with him, even in my heart, for censure.” A critic of the Times once commended his books very highly. The critic afterward ventured to inform Mr. Trollope that he was the author of the criticism. The blunt reply was to the effect that he was under no obligations for the complimentary notice.

He once censured a professional critic for accepting a handsome present from an author whose works the critic had commended. His idea was that the man who has received a present for praising a book will not feel free to criticise adversely the next book by the same author. He states his views at length on this point: “I think it may be laid down as a golden rule in literature that there should be no intercourse at all between an author and his critic. The critic, as critic, should not know his author, nor the author, as author, his critic.… Praise let the author try to obtain by wholesome effort; censure let him avoid, if possible, by care and industry. But when they come, let him take them as coming from some source which he cannot influence, and with which he should not meddle.”

He once made an earnest plea that the critic’s name should be appended to his article, believing that this would make the writer more careful both of his censure and praise, and that the reader could determine the value of the criticism. On the subject of critical dishonesty he says: “If the writer will tell us what he thinks, though his thoughts be absolutely vague and useless, we can forgive him; but when he tells us what he does not think, actuated either by friendship or animosity, then there should be no pardon for him. This is the sin in modern English criticism of which there is most reason to complain.”

Anthony Trollope thinks that it is wrong that a literary name should carry so much favor with it. He says: “I, indeed, had never reached a height to which praise was awarded as a matter of course; but there were others who sat on higher seats, to whom the critics brought unmeasured incense and adulation, even when they wrote, as they sometimes did write, trash which from a beginner would not have been thought worthy of the slightest notice. I hope no one will think that in saying this I am actuated by jealousy of others. Though I never reached that height, still I had so far progressed that that which I wrote was received with too much favor. The injustice which struck me did not consist in that which was withheld from me, but in that which was given to me. I felt that aspirants coming up below me might do work as good as mine, and probably much better work, and yet fail to have it appreciated.”

Mr. Trollope is undoubtedly right in his general statement. While as a rule literary productions stand on their merits, the name of Tennyson or some other writer of equal fame will insure the sale of an article which, if written by an unknown writer, would be promptly rejected. Young writers need not complain of this. Distinguished names render articles marketable, and give them a commercial value that publishers can not ignore. To test the correctness of his theory, Mr. Trollope wrote two novels anonymously, which were not received with favor.

Mr. Trollope’s success in a pecuniary point of view was very slow. During the first ten years of his literary career he did not receive compensation enough to buy the pens, ink and paper he used. Twelve years passed before he received any appreciable increase of salary from his books. From that time his compensation was good. His books brought him in all something like $350,000.

The chapter that he devotes to the English novelists of his day is very interesting. He places Thackeray first, George Eliot second, and Dickens third. Most readers would perhaps reverse this order. Of Thackeray’s great work he says: “I myself regard ‘Esmond’ as the greatest novel in the English language, basing that judgment upon the excellence of its language, on the clear individuality of the characters, on the truth of its delineations in regard to the time selected, and on its great pathos.” He pays a high tribute to Charlotte Bronte, and then adds: “‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Esmond,’ and ‘Adam Bede,’ will be in the hands of our grandchildren, when ‘Pickwick’ and ‘Pelham’ and ‘Harry Lorrequer’ are forgotten; because the men and women depicted are human in their aspirations, human in their sympathies, and human in their actions.” He commends Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade quite highly, but thinks the latter has no clear conception of literary honesty.

Mr. Trollope relates an amusing incident concerning one of his favorite characters. He was seated in a club room, when two clergymen entered and commenced to criticise his works. “The gravamen of their complaint lay in the fact that I introduced the same characters so often. ‘Here,’ said one, ‘is the archdeacon whom we have had in every novel he has ever written.’ ‘And here,’ said the other, ‘is the old duke whom he has talked about till everybody is tired of him. If I could not invent new characters, I would not write novels at all.’ Then one of them fell foul of Mrs. Proudie. It was impossible for me not to hear their words, and almost impossible to hear them and be quiet. I got up, and standing between them, I acknowledged myself to be the culprit. ‘As to Mrs. Proudie,’ I said, ‘I will go home and kill her before the week is over.’ And so I did. The two gentlemen were utterly confounded, and one of them begged me to forget his frivolous observations. I have sometimes regretted the deed, so great was my delight in writing about Mrs. Proudie, … and I still live much in company with her ghost.”

Mr. Trollope made a number of visits to the United States, and was in Washington at the time of the Mason and Slidell controversy. Mr. Sumner was opposed to giving up the men. Mr. Seward’s counsel prevailed with President Lincoln, and the men were released. He says that this “was the severest danger that the Northern cause encountered during the war.” He describes a visit to Brigham Young as follows:

“I called upon him, sending to him my card, apologizing for doing so without an introduction, and excusing myself by saying that I did not like to pass through the territory without seeing a man of whom I had heard so much. He received me in his doorway, not asking me to enter, and inquired whether I were not a miner. When I told him that I was not a miner, he asked me whether I earned my bread. I told him I did. ‘I guess you’re a miner,’ said he. I again assured him that I was not. ‘Then how do you earn your bread?’ I told him that I did so by writing books. ‘I’m sure you’re a miner,’ said he. Then he turned upon his heel, went back into the house, and closed the door. I was properly punished, as I was vain enough to conceive that he would have heard my name.”

This autobiography is a delightful book. The candor with which the writer speaks of his own books, pointing out their defects and calling attention to their merits, the freedom with which he speaks of his early struggles, his method of work, and his success, the spirit of fairness with which he criticises his contemporaries—all these reveal a mind healthy in tone, and call forth our hearty admiration.