Few of Trollope’s experiences, painful though they might he at the time, went unrecorded in one or another of his novels. As a young man he was frequently in trouble over small debts and his pictures of moneylenders could not have been drawn with such skill had it been otherwise.

He knew John and Tom Tozer, and had quaked in his boots when they followed him to the Post Office with their bills. Jabesh M’Ruen, who hounded Charley Tudor, was of the same ilk. And yet, mean and dirty as many of them were, Trollope’s genius makes them reasonable. One feels that they believed in themselves, and sympathizes with them when they are bested, as Sexty Parker certainly was by George Vavasor, and Mr. Tyrrwhit by Mr. Scarborough.