MRS. TROLLOPE. 341 although a stout man, difficult to mount, he rode after the hounds three times a week during the hunting season. His readers do not need to be told that he utilized his hunting experience in working out his novels. His knowledge of horse-flesh was something like Sam Weller's knowledge of London, " both extensive and peculiar," for he was obliged to look sharply to the points of a horse destined to gallop and leap under more than two hundred pounds' weight. A reader cannot go far in his pages without being reminded that he was a horseman and a hunter. All this increases the wonder excited by the mere number of his printed works. How did he execute them ? and above all, when did he execute them ? He was often in this country, mingling freely with lit- erary men, and he more than once in New York described his daily routine. He rose so early in the morning as to sit down to write at five o'clock, and he wrote steadily on until eight. He had such complete command of his powers that he could depend upon producing a certain number of pages every morning. He rarely failed to do his stint. It made little difference whether the scene under his hand was of a tranquil or a thrilling nature, whether he was writing the critical chapter of his work or one of its most commonplace portions. He wrote his daily number of pages before people in general had sat down to breakfast, and having done so, he laid his manu- script aside, and thought no more of it till the next morning. He told the late Mr. George Ripley that he could pro- duce in this way two long novels per annum, for which he received (if 1 remember rightly) three thousand guineas each, or fifteen thousand dollars each. This was certainly doing very well, and deprives him of any excuse for over- working. One of his friends writes in the London Times :
