the tragic; there are few things so sad as a joke that misses
fire or a jester without sense of humour.

Of the genius of a writer of fiction there is scarce any other
test so sure as this of the reality of his characters. Few are
the authors that have created for us figures of fiction that are
more alive to us than the historic shadows of the past, whose
dead bones historians do not seem to be able to clothe with flesh
and blood. Trollope hovers on the border line between genius and
great talent, or rather it would be more fair to say that with
regard to him opinions may justly differ. For our own part we
hold that his was not talent streaked with genius, but rather a
jog-trot genius alloyed with mediocrity. He lacked the supreme
unconsciousness of supreme genius, for of genius as of talent
there are degrees. There are characters in _The Three Clerks_
that live; those who have read the tale must now and again when
passing Norfolk Street, Strand, regret that it would be waste of
time to turn down that rebuilt thoroughfare in search of 'The Pig
and Whistle', which was 'one of these small tranquil shrines of
Bacchus in which the god is worshipped with as constant a
devotion, though with less noisy demonstration of zeal than in
his larger and more public temples'. Alas; lovers of Victorian London
must lament that such shrines grow fewer day by day; the great
thoroughfares know them no more; they hide nervously in old-world
corners, and in them you will meet old-world characters, who not
seldom seem to have lost themselves on their way to the pages
of Charles Dickens.

Despite the advent of electric tramways, Hampton would still be
recognized by the three clerks, 'the little village of Hampton,