broad-based Trollope doing his so many words to the fifteen minutes.
Trollope, we know, wronged himself by the tone and manner of his
reminiscences; but that tone and manner indicated an inferiority of mind,
of nature. Dickens--though he died in the endeavour to increase (not for
himself) an already ample fortune, disastrous influence of his time and
class--wrought with an artistic ingenuousness and fervour such as
Trollope could not even conceive. Methodical, of course, he was; no long
work of prose fiction was ever brought into existence save by methodical
labour; but we know that there was no measuring of so many words to the
hour. The picture of him at work which is seen in his own letters is one
of the most bracing and inspiring in the history of literature. It has
had, and will always have, a great part in maintaining Dickens' place in
the love and reverence of those who understand.



XXIII.


As I walked to-day in the golden sunlight--this warm, still day on the
far verge of autumn--there suddenly came to me a thought which checked my
step, and for the moment half bewildered me. I said to myself: My life
is over. Surely I ought to have been aware of that simple fact;
certainly it has made part of my meditation, has often coloured my mood;
but the thing had never definitely shaped itself, ready in words for the
tongue. My life is over. I uttered the sentence once or twice, that my
ear might test its truth. Truth undeniable, however strange; undeniable
as the figure of my age last birthday.

My age? At this time of life, many a man is bracing himself for new