Page:Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day.djvu/128

 Trollope have laid this truth to heart. They have all of them a public, and they always take care to provide amusement for their readers. Something of theirs is always 'going on somewhere.'

This policy is sound. Fashions and tastes change, new writers may spring up, or old ones wear out. They charm while they may, while their 'copy' has a market value, and act on that most excellent proverb of making their hay while the sun shines. It is well that they should do so; and nobody's hay, old or new, is sweeter in the mouth than that of the writer whose books we have named. He is an artist who goes to nature for his materials; whose puppets are flesh and blood, not clothes-horses; and against whom the only fault we have to bring is, that he has. perhaps, too much 'to parsons given up what was meant for mankind.'