An Autobiography of Anthony Trollope Part 14

It will not, I am sure, be thought that, in making my boast as to quant.i.ty, I have endeavoured to lay claim to any literary excellence.

That, in the writing of books, quant.i.ty without quality is a vice and a misfortune, has been too manifestly settled to leave a doubt on such a matter. But I do lay claim to whatever merit should be accorded to me for persevering diligence in my profession. And I make the claim, not with a view to my own glory, but for the benefit of those who may read these pages, and when young may intend to follow the same career. _Nulla dies sine linea._ Let that be their motto.

And let their work be to them as is his common work to the common labourer. No gigantic efforts will then be necessary. He need tie no wet towels round his brow, nor sit for thirty hours at his desk without moving,--as men have sat, or said that they have sat. More than nine-tenths of my literary work has been done in the last twenty years, and during twelve of those years I followed another profession. I have never been a slave to this work, giving due time, if not more than due time, to the amus.e.m.e.nts I have loved. But I have been constant,--and constancy in labour will conquer all difficulties. _Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo._

It may interest some if I state that during the last twenty years I have made by literature something near 70,000. As I have said before in these pages, I look upon the result as comfortable, but not splendid.

It will not, I trust, be supposed by any reader that I have intended in this so-called autobiography to give a record of my inner life.

No man ever did so truly,--and no man ever will. Rousseau probably attempted it, but who doubts but that Rousseau has confessed in much the thoughts and convictions rather than the facts of his life? If the rustle of a woman's petticoat has ever stirred my blood; if a cup of wine has been a joy to me; if I have thought tobacco at midnight in pleasant company to be one of the elements of an earthly paradise; if now and again I have somewhat recklessly fluttered a 5 note over a card-table;--of what matter is that to any reader? I have betrayed no woman. Wine has brought me to no sorrow. It has been the companions.h.i.+p of smoking that I have loved, rather than the habit.

I have never desired to win money, and I have lost none. To enjoy the excitement of pleasure, but to be free from its vices and ill effects,--to have the sweet, and leave the bitter untasted,--that has been my study. The preachers tell us that this is impossible. It seems to me that hitherto I have succeeded fairly well. I will not say that I have never scorched a finger,--but I carry no ugly wounds.

For what remains to me of life I trust for my happiness still chiefly to my work--hoping that when the power of work be over with me, G.o.d may be pleased to take me from a world in which, according to my view, there can be no joy; secondly, to the love of those who love me; and then to my books. That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I remember, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left,--something dim and inaccurate,--but still something sufficient to preserve the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers.

Of late years, putting aside the Latin cla.s.sics, I have found my greatest pleasure in our old English dramatists,--not from any excessive love of their work, which often irritates me by its want of truth to nature, even while it shames me by its language,--but from curiosity in searching their plots and examining their character. If I live a few years longer, I shall, I think, leave in my copies of these dramatists, down to the close of James I., written criticisms on every play. No one who has not looked closely into it knows how many there are.

Now I stretch out my hand, and from the further sh.o.r.e I bid adieu to all who have cared to read any among the many words that I have written.