I have, too, a personal reason for including him in the series.  I knew him well, knew his subjects, and his stage.  I have seen him at work at the “Megatherium Club,” chatted with him at the “Universe,” dined with him at George Eliot’s, and even met him in the hunting-field.  I was familiar with the political personages and crises which he describes; and much of the local colouring in which his romances were framed was for years the local colouring that I daily saw around me.  Most of the famous writers of whom I have been speaking in this series (with the exception of Charlotte Bronte) I have often seen and heard speak in public and in private, but I cannot be said to have known them as friends.  But Anthony Trollope I knew well.  I knew the world in which he lived, I saw the scenes, the characters, the life he paints, day by day in the same clubs, in the same rooms, and under the same conditions as he saw them.  To re-read some of his best stories, as I have just done, is to me like looking through a photographic album of my acquaintances, companions, and familiar reminiscences of some thirty years ago.  I can hear the loud voice, the honest laugh, see the keen eyes of our old friend as I turn to the admirable vignette portrait in his posthumous Autobiography, and I can almost hear him tell the anecdotes recounted in that pleasant book.

Does the present generation know that frank and amusing book—­one of the most brisk and manly autobiographies in our language?  Of course it is garrulous, egoistical, self-complacent in a way.  When a famous writer, at the close of a long career of varied activity, takes up his pen to tell us how he has lived, and how his books were written, and what he has loved, seen, suffered, and striven for—­it is his business to be garrulous; we want him to talk about himself, and to give us such peeps into his own heart and brain as he chooses to unlock.  That is what an “autobiography” means.  And never did man do this in a more hearty, manly, good-tempered spirit, with more good sense, with more modest bonhomie, with a more genial egoism.  He has been an enormous worker; he is proud of his industry.  He has fought his way under cruel hardships to wealth and fame:  and he is well satisfied with his success.  He has had millions of readers; he has been well paid; he has had good friends; he has enjoyed life.  He is happy in telling us how he did it.  He does not overrate himself.  He believes some of his work is good:  at least it is honest, pure, sound work which has pleased millions of readers.  Much of his work he knows to be poor stuff, and he says so at once.  He makes no pretence to genius; he does not claim to be a hero; he has no rare qualities—­or none but industry and courage—­and he has met with no peculiar sufferings and no cruel and undeserved rebuffs.  He has his own ideas about literary work—­you may think them commonplace, mechanical, mercenary ideas—­but that is a true picture of Anthony Trollope; of his strong, manly, pure mind, of his clear head, of his average moral sense:  a good fellow, a warm friend, a brave soul, a genial companion.