Assuredly, no son
of hers need apprehend the reproach--"_Tydides melior matre_"; though
Anthony, and his brother Thomas Adolphus, must, together, have run her
pretty hard. The former remarks, with that terrible complacency in an
awful fact which is one of his most noticeable and astounding traits, that
the three of them "wrote more books than were probably ever before
produced by a single family." The existence of a few more such families
could be consistent only with a generous enlargement of the British
Museum.
The elder Trollope was a scholar, and to make scholars of his sons was one
of his ruling ideas. Poor little Anthony endured no less than twelve
mortal years of schooling--from the time he was seven until he was
nineteen--and declares that, in all that time, he does not remember that
he ever knew a lesson. "I have been flogged," he says, "oftener than any
other human being." Nay, his troubles began before his school-days; for
his father used to make him recite his infantile tasks to him while he was
shaving, and obliged him to sit with his head inclined in such a manner
"that he could pull my hair without stopping his razor or dropping his
shaving-brush.
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