Trollope sabotaged his own reputation with his disclosure of his writing habits, and it may never recover. The very idea that anyone could approach writing without appealing to the muse, just getting up every morning and doing it--two hours every morning, with a self-imposed quota of words to write! The muse was not amused, and her devotees have been unforgiving. If this confession had been well known during his years in service, I suspect that his advancement would have been significantly curtailed. The public requires its geniuses to be seized by the spirit. It's not as if just anybody could do it. An inspired author must rise from a dinner table full of guests when gripped by his muse, as did Charles Dickens, and, as if in a trance, transcribe the words dictated by the spirit. Any respectable agent, if Trollope had had one, would surely have warned him about the risks of overexposure. Even the great and prolific Dickens wrote only about a dozen novels. Jane Austen wrote six. George Eliot and the Brontes only wrote a few. A prodigious writer must necessarily have a little tool box, deploying and mixing different plot devices, assumptions about society, views on current issues, and references to the way they lived then--which was different in many ways from our own world, and similar in others. One of his favorite tools was the Serious Interview, and few writers have used it to such advantage as did Trollope. He introduces this device in a chapter entitled "The Serious Interview" in _Barchester Towers_, one of his early novels, in which Archdeacon Grantly makes the strategic error of engaging his sister-in-law Eleanor Bold about his suspicion that she is about to accept a marriage proposal from the sly and scheming Rev. Slope. The components of the Serious Interview are present in this prototype: The _prologue_, in which Trollope explains to the reader that there are some who delight in offering advice or administering rebuke, and that the archdeacon is among these. _The entry of the combatants._ In this instance Eleanor's usually mild demeanor was absent, and the archdeacon "almost wished he had taken his wife's advice," i.e., not to speak to her. _The opening statements._ Here he assures her that she has no sincerer friend than he. _The initial sparring._ He accuses her of having received a letter from Mr. Slope, and she admits it. _The counterattack._ She tells him he may read the letter, and she hands it over to him. She over-reacts, however, in claiming that Mr. Slope is an "industrious, well-meaning clergyman." _The author's commentary._ In a paragraph beginning, "Here undoubtedly Eleanor put herself in the wrong," Trollope indulges in a review of the defender's tactics--her assumption of the "prejudice and conceit of the archdeacon" leading to her error of going too far. "She would neither give nor take quarter."