of the Eighteenth Century, following this up in 1855 with the Four Georges, first delivered in America.  Meanwhile Esmond, perhaps his masterpiece, and probably the greatest novel of its kind in existence, had appeared in 1852, and The Newcomes (1853), The Virginians, a sequel to Esmond, which, though containing much fine work, is generally considered to show a falling off as compared with its two immediate predecessors, came out in 1857-59.  In 1860 the Cornhill Magazine was started with T. for its ed., and to it he contributed Lovell the Widower (1860), The Adventures of Philip (1861-62), The Roundabout Papers, a series of charming essays, and Denis Duval, left a mere fragment by his sudden death, but which gave promise of a return to his highest level of performance.  In addition to the works mentioned, T. for some years produced Christmas books and burlesques, of which the best were The Rose and the Ring and The Kickleburys on the Rhine.  He also wrote graceful verses, some of which, like Bouillabaisse, are in a strain of humour shot through with pathos, while others are the purest rollicking fun.  For some years T. suffered from spasms of the heart, and he d. suddenly during the night of December 23, 1863, in his 53rd year.  He was a man of the tenderest heart, and had an intense enjoyment of domestic happiness; and the interruption of this, caused by the permanent breakdown of his wife’s health, was a heavy calamity.  This, along with his own latterly broken health, and a sensitiveness which made him keenly alive to criticism, doubtless fostered the tendency to what was often superficially called his cynical view of life.  He possessed an inimitable irony and a power of sarcasm which could scorch like lightning, but the latter is almost invariably directed against what is base and hateful.  To human weakness he is lenient and often tender, and even when weakness passes into wickedness, he is just and compassionate.  He saw human nature “steadily and saw it whole,” and paints it with a light but sure hand.  He was master of a style of great distinction and individuality, and ranks as one of the very greatest of English novelists.

SUMMARY.—­B. 1811, ed. at Charterhouse and Camb., after trying law turned to journalism, in which he lost his fortune, studied art at Paris and Rome, wrote for Fraser’s Magazine and Punch, Barry Lyndon, Book of Snobs, and Jeames’s Diary, pub. Vanity Fair 1847-8, Pendennis (1848-50), lectured on Humourists 1851, and on Four Georges in America 1855, pub. Esmond 1852, Newcomes 1853, Virginians 1857-59, ed. Cornhill Magazine 1860, his last great work, Denis Duval, left unfinished, d. 1863.

Lives by Merivale and Marzials (Great Writers), A. Trollope (English Men of Letters), Whibley (Modern English Writers).  Article in Dictionary of National Biography by Leslie Stephen.