Trollope’s third visit to America--That of 1868 about the Postal Treaty and Copyright Commission--Mr. and Mrs. Trollope’s Australian visit (1871) to their sheep-farming son--Family or personal features and influences in the colonial novels suggested by this journey--Trollope as colonial novelist compared with Charles Reade and Henry Kingsley--Why the colonial novels were preceded by _The Eustace Diamonds_--Rival South African travellers--Trollope follows Froude to the Cape--What he thought about the country’s present and future--How he found out Dr. Jameson and Miss Schreiner--John Blackwood, Trollope’s particular friend among publishers--Trollope, Blackwood’s pattern writer--_Julius Cæsar_--Anthony’s birthday present to John--The South African book--What the critics said--Well-timed and sells accordingly.
So far, it has been practicable to follow Trollope’s productions almost exactly in the order in which they came from his pen. The political novels, as has been seen, constitute a series whose successive parts are even more closely connected than the various instalments of the Barchester novels. Thus, _Phineas Finn_ and _Phineas Redux_ form a single story; _The Prime Minister_ and _The Duke’s Children_ contain the underplots or afterplots of what has gone before. The Beverley adventure and its reflection in _Ralph the Heir_, three years afterwards (1871), formed the biographical prelude to the little group of stories in which _Phineas Finn_ came first. The examination of these in the preceding chapter, once begun, had to be completed, or their unity would have been lost. Hence, some unavoidable little interruption of strict chronological sequence and the momentary neglect, now to be repaired, of Trollope’s other doings in the Beverley year. The value set by the Government on Trollope’s Post Office work was shown immediately after he had resigned his post at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. Nothing could be more complimentary than the request that he would make a third journey to the United States for the conclusion of a new postal treaty at Washington.[28] That task occupied exactly three months and three weeks; it was begun April 8th and ended July 27th. Then he brought back to England a success more complete than, from the uncongenial variety of the American representatives with whom he had to deal, he had at times feared might prove possible.