Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

as a novel in two volumes. Now it had been sold by me as a novel

in one volume, and hence there arose a correspondence.

I found it very hard to make the purchasers understand that I had

reasonable ground for objection to the process. What was it to me?

How could it injure me if they stretched my pages by means of lead

and margin into double the number I had intended. I have heard the

same argument on other occasions. When I have pointed out that in

this way the public would have to suffer, seeing that they would

have to pay Mudie for the use of two volumes in reading that which

ought to have been given to them in one, I have been assured that

the public are pleased with literary short measure, that it is

the object of novel-readers to get through novels as fast as they

can, and that the shorter each volume is the better! Even this,

however, did not overcome me, and I stood to my guns. Sir Harry

was published in one volume, containing something over the normal

300 pages, with an average of 220 words to a page,--which I

had settled with my conscience to be the proper length of a novel

volume. I may here mention that on one occasion, and one occasion

only, a publisher got the better of me in a matter of volumes. He

had a two-volume novel of mine running through a certain magazine,

and had it printed complete in three volumes before I knew where I

was,--before I had seen a sheet of the letterpress. I stormed for

a while, but I had not the heart to make him break up the type.

The Editor's Tales was a volume republished from the St. Paul's

Magazine, and professed to give an editor's experience of his

dealings with contributors. I do not think that there is a single

incident in the book which could bring back to any one concerned

the memory of a past event. And yet there is not an incident in it

the outline of which was not presented to my mind by the remembrance

of some fact:--how an ingenious gentleman got into conversation

with me, I not knowing that he knew me to be an editor, and pressed

his little article on my notice; how I was addressed by a lady with

a becoming pseudonym and with much equally becoming audacity; how

I was appealed to by the dearest of little women whom here I have

called Mary Gresley; how in my own early days there was a struggle

over an abortive periodical which was intended to be the best

thing ever done; how terrible was the tragedy of a poor drunkard,

who with infinite learning at his command made one sad final effort

to reclaim himself, and perished while he was making it; and lastly

how a poor weak editor was driven nearly to madness by threatened

litigation from a rejected contributor. Of these stories, The Spotted

Dog, with the struggles of the drunkard scholar, is the best. I

know now, however, that when the things were good they came out

too quick one upon another to gain much attention;--and so also,

luckily, when they were bad.

The Caesar was a thing of itself. My friend John Blackwood had set

on foot a series of small volumes called Ancient Classics for English

Readers, and had placed the editing of them, and the compiling of

many of them, in the hands of William Lucas Collins, a clergyman

who, from my connection with the series, became a most intimate

friend. The Iliad and the Odyssey had already come out when I was

at Edinburgh with John Blackwood, and, on my expressing my very strong

admiration for those two little volumes,--which I here recommend

to all young ladies as the most charming tales they can read,--he

asked me whether I would not undertake one myself. Herodotus was

in the press, but, if I could get it ready, mine should be next.

Whereupon I offered to say what might be said to the readers of

English on The Commentaries of Julius Caesar.

I at once went to work, and in three months from that day the little

book had been written. I began by reading through the Commentaries

twice, which I did without any assistance either by translation

or English notes. Latin was not so familiar to me then as it has

since become,--for from that date I have almost daily spent an

hour with some Latin author, and on many days many hours. After

the reading what my author had left behind him, I fell into the

reading of what others had written about him, in Latin, in English,

and even in French,--for I went through much of that most futile

book by the late Emperor of the French. I do not know that for a

short period I ever worked harder. The amount I had to write was

nothing. Three weeks would have done it easily. But I was most

anxious, in this soaring out of my own peculiar line, not to disgrace

myself. I do not think that I did disgrace myself. Perhaps I was

anxious for something more. If so, I was disappointed.

The book I think to be a good little book. It is readable by all, old

and young, and it gives, I believe accurately, both an account of

Caesar's Commentaries,--which of course was the primary intention,--and

the chief circumstances of the great Roman's life. A well-educated

girl who had read it and remembered it would perhaps know as much

about Caesar and his writings as she need know. Beyond the consolation

of thinking as I do about it, I got very little gratification from

the work. Nobody praised it. One very old and very learned friend

to whom I sent it thanked me for my "comic Caesar," but said no

more. I do not suppose that he intended to run a dagger into me.

Of any suffering from such wounds, I think, while living, I never

showed a sign; but still I have suffered occasionally. There

was, however, probably present to my friend's mind, and to that

of others, a feeling that a man who had spent his life in writing

English novels could not be fit to write about Caesar. It was as

when an amateur gets a picture hung on the walls of the Academy.

What business had I there? Ne sutor ultra crepidam. In the press it

was most faintly damned by most faint praise. Nevertheless, having

read the book again within the last month or two, I make bold to say

that it is a good book. The series, I believe, has done very well.

I am sure that it ought to do well in years to come, for, putting

aside Caesar, the work has been done with infinite scholarship, and

very generally with a light hand. With the leave of my sententious

and sonorous friend, who had not endured that subjects which had

been grave to him should be treated irreverently, I will say that

such a work, unless it be light, cannot answer the purpose for which

it is intended. It was not exactly a schoolbook that was wanted,

but something that would carry the purposes of the schoolroom even

into the leisure hours of adult pupils. Nothing was ever better

suited for such a purpose than the Iliad and the Odyssey, as done

by Mr. Collins. The Virgil, also done by him, is very good; and so

is the Aristophanes by the same hand.

In the spring of 1871 we,--I and my wife,--had decided that we

would go to Australia to visit our shepherd son. Of course before

doing so I made a contract with a publisher for a book about the

Colonies. For such a work as this I had always been aware that

I could not fairly demand more than half the price that would be

given for the same amount of fiction; and as such books have an

indomitable tendency to stretch themselves, so that more is given