Initially destined for the profession of medicine, Traill took his degree in natural sciences in 1865 but then he read for the bar and was called in 1869.
In 1871 he received an appointment as an Inspector of Returns for the Board of Education, a position which left him leisure to cultivate his gift for literature.
[3] In 1897, he became first editor of Literature, when that weekly paper (afterwards sold and incorporated with the Academy) was established by the proprietors of The Times, and directed its fortunes until his death.
This told the story of the Exodus in articles which parodied very cleverly the style of all the leading journals of the day, and was at once recognized as the work of a born humorist.
He directed the production of a vast work on Social England in 1893-1898; he wrote, for several series of biographies, studies of Coleridge (1884), Sterne (1882), William III (1888), Shaftesbury (1886), Strafford (1889), and Lord Salisbury (1891); he compiled a biography of Sir John Franklin the Arctic explorer (1896); after a visit to Egypt he published a volume on the country; and in 1897 appeared his book on Lord Cromer, the man who had done so much to bring it back to prosperity.