their remains were interred. Were one asked to suggest a suitable inscription for Godwin's tomb it might be

HOW NOT TO DO IT.

In the ever-delightful "Angler," speaking of the operation of baiting a hook with a live frog, Walton finally completes his general instructions with the specific advice to "use him as though you loved him." In baiting my hook with a dead philosopher I have been unable to accomplish this. I do not love him; few did; he was a cold, hard, self-centred man who did good to none and harm to many. As a husband, father, friend, he was a complete failure. His search for truth was as unavailing as his search for "gratification and happiness." He is all but forgotten. It is his fate to be remembered chiefly as the husband of the first suffragette.

What has become of the

Wonderful things he was going to do
All complete in a minute or two?

Where are now his novel philosophies and theories?
To ask the question is to answer it.

Constant striving for the unobtainable frequently results in neglect of important matters close at hand -such things as bread and cheese and children are neglected. Some happiness comes from the successful effort to make both ends meet habitually and lap over occasionally. My philosophy of life may be called smug, but it can hardly be called ridiculous.

IX

A GREAT VICTORIAN

FOR a time after the death of any author, the world, if it has greatly admired that author, begins to feel that it has been imposed upon, becomes a little ashamed of its former enthusiasm and ends by neglecting him altogether. This would seem to have been Anthony Trollope's case, to judge from the occasional comment of English critics, who, if they refer to him at all, do so in some such phrase as, “About this time Trollope also enjoyed a popularity which we can no longer understand." From one brief paper purporting to be an estimate of his present status, these nuggets of criticism are extracted:

Mr. Trollope was not an artist.

Trollope had something of the angry impatience of the middle-class mind with all points of view not his own.

"Tancred" is as far beyond anything that Trollope wrote as "Orley Farm" is superior to a Chancery pleading. We have only to lay "Alroy" on the same table with "The Prime Minister" to see where Anthony Trollope stands.

It is not likely that Trollope's novels will have any vogue in the immediate future; every page brings its own flavor of unreality. [Italics mine.]

And in referring to Plantagenet Palliser, who figures largely in so many of his novels, the author says:

Some nicknames are engaging; "Planty Pall" is not one of these. The man is really not worth writing about.

"Is He Popenjoy?" is perhaps the most readable of all Mr. Trollope's works. It is shorter than many.

Finally, when it is grudgingly admitted that he did some good work, the answer to the question, "Why is such work neglected?" is, "Because the world in which Trollope lived has passed away." It would seem that absurdity could go no further.

American judgment is in general of a different tenor, although Professor Phelps, of Yale, in his recent volume, "The Advance of the English Novel," dismisses Trollope with a single paragraph, in which is embedded the remark, “No one would dare call Trollope a genius." Short, sharp and decisive work this: but Professor Phelps is clearing the decks for Meredith, to whom he devotes twenty or more pages. I respect the opinion of college professors as much as Charles Lamb respected the equator; nevertheless, I maintain that, if Trollope was not a genius, he was a very great writer; and I am not alone.

Only a few days ago a cultivated man of affairs, referring to an interesting contemporary caricature of Dickens and Thackeray which bore the legend, "Two Great Victorians," remarked, "They were great Victorians, indeed, but I have come to wonder in these later years whether Anthony Trollope will not outlive them both." And while the mere book-collector should be careful how he challenges the opinion of "one who makes his living by reading books and