Transcriber's note:

 The letter "o" with a macron is rendered [=o] in this text. It only appears in the word "Public[=o]la". 

 A detailed transcriber's note will be found at the end of the text. 

English Men of Letters

Edited by John Morley

THACKERAY

by

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

London:MacMillan and Co. 1879. The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved. Charles Dickens and Evans, Crystal Palace Press. 

CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. PAGEBIOGRAPHICAL 1

CHAPTER II. 

FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH 62

CHAPTER III. 

VANITY FAIR 90

CHAPTER IV. 

PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES 108

CHAPTER V. 

ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS 122

CHAPTER VI. 

THACKERAY'S BURLESQUES 139

CHAPTER VII. 

THACKERAY'S LECTURES 154

CHAPTER VIII. 

THACKERAY'S BALLADS 168

CHAPTER IX. 

THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK 184

THACKERAY

CHAPTER I. 

BIOGRAPHICAL. 

In the foregoing volumes of this series of _English Men of Letters_, andin other works of a similar nature which have appeared lately as to the_Ancient Classics_ and _Foreign Classics_, biography has naturally been, if not the leading, at any rate a considerable element. The desire iscommon to all readers to know not only what a great writer has written, but also of what nature has been the man who has produced such greatwork. As to all the authors taken in hand before, there has been extantsome written record of the man's life. Biographical details have beenmore or less known to the world, so that, whether of a Cicero, or of aGoethe, or of our own Johnson, there has been a story to tell. OfThackeray no life has been written; and though they who knew him, --andpossibly many who did not, --are conversant with anecdotes of the man, who was one so well known in society as to have created many anecdotes, yet there has been no memoir of his life sufficient to supply the wantsof even so small a work as this purports to be. For this the reason maysimply be told. Thackeray, not long before his death, had had his tasteoffended by some fulsome biography. Paragraphs, of which the eulogyseemed to have been the produce rather of personal love than of inquiryor judgment, disgusted him, and he begged of his girls that when heshould have gone there should nothing of the sort be done with his name. 

We can imagine how his mind had worked, how he had declared to himselfthat, as by those loving hands into which his letters, his notes, hislittle details, --his literary remains, as such documents used to becalled, --might naturally fall, truth of his foibles and of hisshortcomings could not be told, so should not his praises be written, orthat flattering portrait be limned which biographers are wont toproduce. Acting upon these instructions, his daughters, --while therewere two living, and since that the one surviving, --have carried out theorder which has appeared to them to be sacred. Such being the case, itcertainly is not my purpose now to write what may be called a life ofThackeray. In this preliminary chapter I will give such incidents andanecdotes of his life as will tell the reader perhaps all about him thata reader is entitled to ask. I will tell how he became an author, andwill say how first he worked and struggled, and then how he worked andprospered, and became a household word in English literature;--how, inthis way, he passed through that course of mingled failure and successwhich, though the literary aspirant may suffer, is probably better bothfor the writer and for the writings than unclouded early glory. Thesuffering no doubt is acute, and a touch of melancholy, perhaps ofindignation, may be given to words which have been written while theheart has been too full of its own wrongs; but this is better than thecontinued note of triumph which is still heard in the final voices ofthe spoilt child of literature, even when they are losing their music. Then I will tell how Thackeray died, early indeed, but still having donea good life's work. Something of his manner, something of his appearanceI can say, something perhaps of his condition of mind; because for somefew years he was known to me. But of the continual intercourse ofhimself with the world, and of himself with his own works, I can telllittle, because no record of his life has been made public. 

William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Calcutta, on July 18, 1811. Hisfather was Richmond Thackeray, son of W. M. Thackeray of Hadley, nearBarnet, in Middlesex. A relation of his, of the same name, a Rev. Mr. Thackeray, I knew well as rector of Hadley, many years afterwards. Him Ibelieve to have been a second cousin of our Thackeray, but I think theyhad never met each other. Another cousin was Provost of Kings atCambridge, fifty years ago, as Cambridge men will remember. Clergymen ofthe family have been numerous in England during the century, and therewas one, a Rev. Elias Thackeray, whom I also knew in my youth, adignitary, if I remember right, in the diocese of Meath. The Thackeraysseem to have affected the Church; but such was not at any period of hislife the bias of our novelist's mind. 

His father and grandfather were Indian civil servants. His mother wasAnne Becher, whose father was also in the Company's service. She marriedearly in India, and was only nineteen when her son was born. She wasleft a widow in 1816, with only one child, and was married a few yearsafterwards to Major Henry Carmichael Smyth, with whom Thackeray lived onterms of affectionate intercourse till the major died. All who knewWilliam Makepeace remember his mother well, a handsome, spare, gray-haired lady, whom Thackeray treated with a courtly deference aswell as constant affection. There was, however, something of discrepancybetween them as to matters of religion. Mrs. Carmichael Smyth wasdisposed to the somewhat austere observance of the evangelical sectionof the Church. Such, certainly, never became the case with her son. There was disagreement on the subject, and probably unhappiness atintervals, but never, I think, quarrelling. Thackeray's house was hismother's home whenever she pleased it, and the home also of hisstepfather. 

He was brought a child from India, and was sent early to the CharterHouse. Of his life and doings there his friend and schoolfellow GeorgeVenables writes to me as follows;

 "My recollection of him, though fresh enough, does not furnish much material for biography. He came to school young, --a pretty, gentle, and rather timid boy. I think his experience there was not generally pleasant. Though he had afterwards a scholarlike knowledge of Latin, he did not attain distinction in the school; and I should think that the character of the head-master, Dr. Russell, which was vigorous, unsympathetic, and stern, though not severe, was uncongenial to his own. With the boys who knew him, Thackeray was popular; but he had no skill in games, and, I think, no taste for them. .. . He was already known by his faculty of making verses, chiefly parodies. I only remember one line of one parody on a poem of L. E. L. 's, about 'Violets, dark blue violets;' Thackeray's version was 'Cabbages, bright green cabbages, ' and we thought it very witty. He took part in a scheme, which came to nothing, for a school magazine, and he wrote verses for it, of which I only remember that they were good of their kind. When I knew him better, in later years, I thought I could recognise the sensitive nature which he had as a boy. .. . His change of retrospective feeling about his school days was very characteristic. In his earlier books he always spoke of the Charter House as Slaughter House and Smithfield. As he became famous and prosperous his memory softened, and Slaughter House was changed into Grey Friars where Colonel Newcome ended his life. "

In February, 1829, when he was not as yet eighteen, Thackeray went up toTrinity College, Cambridge, and was, I think, removed in 1830. It may bepresumed, therefore, that his studies there were not very serviceable tohim. There are few, if any, records left of his doings at theuniversity, --unless it be the fact that he did there commence theliterary work of his life. The line about the cabbages, and the schemeof the school magazine, can hardly be said to have amounted even to acommencement. In 1829 a little periodical was brought out at Cambridge, called _The Snob_, with an assurance on the title that it was _not_conducted by members of the university. It is presumed that Thackeraytook a hand in editing this. He certainly wrote, and published in thelittle paper, some burlesque lines on the subject which was given forthe Chancellor's prize poem of the year. This was _Timbuctoo_, andTennyson was the victor on the occasion. There is some good fun in thefour first and four last lines of Thackeray's production. 

 In Africa, --a quarter of the world, -- Men's skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled; And somewhere there, unknown to public view A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo. 

 * * * * *

 I see her tribes the hill of glory mount, And sell their sugars on their own account; While round her throne the prostrate nations come, Sue for her rice, and barter for her rum. 

I cannot find in _The Snob_ internal evidence of much literary meritbeyond this. But then how many great writers have there been from whoseearly lucubrations no future literary excellence could beprognosticated?

There is something at any rate in the name of the publication whichtells of work that did come. Thackeray's mind was at all timespeculiarly exercised with a sense of snobbishness. His appreciation ofthe vice grew abnormally, so that at last he had a morbid horror of asnob--a morbid fear lest this or the other man should turn snob on hishands. It is probable that the idea was taken from the early _Snob_ atCambridge, either from his own participation in the work or from hisremembrance of it. _The Snob_ lived, I think, but nine weeks, and wasfollowed at an interval, in 1830, by _The Gownsman_, which lived to theseventeenth number, and at the opening of which Thackeray no doubt had ahand. It professed to be a continuation of _The Snob_. It contains adedication to all proctors, which I should not be sorry to attribute tohim. "To all Proctors, past, present, and future--

 Whose taste it is our privilege to follow, Whose virtue it is our duty to imitate, Whose presence it is our interest to avoid. "

There is, however, nothing beyond fancy to induce me to believe thatThackeray was the author of the dedication, and I do not know that thereis any evidence to show that he was connected with _The Snob_ beyond thewriting of _Timbuctoo_. 

In 1830 he left Cambridge, and went to Weimar either in that year or in1831. Between Weimar and Paris he spent some portion of his earlieryears, while his family, --his mother, that is, and his stepfather, --wereliving in Devonshire. It was then the purport of his life to become anartist, and he studied drawing at Paris, affecting especiallyBonnington, the young English artist who had himself painted at Parisand who had died in 1828. He never learned to draw, --perhaps never couldhave learned. That he was idle, and did not do his best, we may take forgranted. He was always idle, and only on some occasions, when the spiritmoved him thoroughly, did he do his best even in after life. But withdrawing, --or rather without it, --he did wonderfully well even when hedid his worst. He did illustrate his own books, and everyone knows howincorrect were his delineations. But as illustrations they wereexcellent. How often have I wished that characters of my own creatingmight be sketched as faultily, if with the same appreciation of theintended purpose. Let anyone look at the "plates, " as they are called in_Vanity Fair_, and compare each with the scenes and the charactersintended to be displayed, and there see whether the artist, --if we maycall him so, --has not managed to convey in the picture the exact feelingwhich he has described in the text. I have a little sketch of his, inwhich a cannon-ball is supposed to have just carried off the head of anaide-de-camp, --messenger I had perhaps better say, lest I might affrontmilitary feelings, --who is kneeling on the field of battle anddelivering a despatch to Marlborough on horseback. The graceful easewith which the duke receives the message though the messenger's head begone, and the soldier-like precision with which the headless herofinishes his last effort of military obedience, may not have beenportrayed with well-drawn figures, but no finished illustration evertold its story better. Dickens has informed us that he first metThackeray in 1835, on which occasion the young artist aspirant, lookingno doubt after profitable employment, "proposed to become theillustrator of my earliest book. " It is singular that such should havebeen the first interview between the two great novelists. We may presumethat the offer was rejected. 

In 1832, Thackeray came of age, and inherited his fortune, --as to whichvarious stories have been told. It seems to have amounted to about fivehundred a year, and to have passed through his hands in a year or two, interest and principal. It has been told of him that it was all takenaway from him at cards, but such was not the truth. Some went in anIndian bank in which he invested it. A portion was lost at cards. Butwith some of it, --the larger part as I think, --he endeavoured, inconcert with his stepfather, to float a newspaper, which failed. Thereseem to have been two newspapers in which he was so concerned, _TheNational Standard_ and _The Constitutional_. On the latter he wasengaged with his stepfather, and in carrying that on he lost the last ofhis money. _The National Standard_ had been running for some weeks whenThackeray joined it, and lost his money in it. It ran only for littlemore than twelve months, and then, the money having gone, the periodicalcame to an end. I know no road to fortune more tempting to a young man, or one that with more certainty leads to ruin. Thackeray, who in a waymore or less correct, often refers in his writings, if not to theincidents, at any rate to the remembrances of his own life, tells usmuch of the story of this newspaper in _Lovel the Widower_. "They arewelcome, " says the bachelor, "to make merry at my charges in respect ofa certain bargain which I made on coming to London, and in which, had Ibeen Moses Primrose purchasing green spectacles, I could scarcely havebeen more taken in. My Jenkinson was an old college acquaintance, whom Iwas idiot enough to imagine a respectable man. The fellow had a verysmooth tongue and sleek sanctified exterior. He was rather a popularpreacher, and used to cry a good deal in the pulpit. He and a queer winemerchant and bill discounter, Sherrick by name, had somehow gotpossession of that neat little literary paper, _The Museum_, whichperhaps you remember, and this eligible literary property my friendHoneyman, with his wheedling tongue, induced me to purchase. " Here isthe history of Thackeray's money, told by himself plainly enough, butwith no intention on his part of narrating an incident in his own lifeto the public. But the drollery of the circumstances, his own mingledfolly and young ambition, struck him as being worth narration, and themore forcibly as he remembered all the ins and outs of his ownreflections at the time, --how he had meant to enchant the world, andmake his fortune. There was literary capital in it of which he couldmake use after so many years. Then he tells us of this ambition, and ofthe folly of it; and at the same time puts forward the excuses to bemade for it. "I daresay I gave myself airs as editor of that confounded_Museum_, and proposed to educate the public taste, to diffuse moralityand sound literature throughout the nation, and to pocket a liberalsalary in return for my services. I daresay I printed my own sonnets, myown tragedy, my own verses. .. . I daresay I wrote satirical articles. .. . I daresay I made a gaby of myself to the world. Pray, my good friend, hast thou never done likewise? If thou hast never been a fool, be surethou wilt never be a wise man. " Thackeray was quite aware of his earlyweaknesses, and in the maturity of life knew well that he had not beenprecociously wise. He delighted so to tell his friends, and he delightedalso to tell the public, not meaning that any but an inner circle shouldknow that he was speaking of himself. But the story now is plain to allwho can read. [1]

It was thus that he lost his money; and then, not having prospered verywell with his drawing lessons in Paris or elsewhere, he was fain to takeup literature as a profession. It is a business which has itsallurements. It requires no capital, no special education, no training, and may be taken up at any time without a moment's delay. If a man cancommand a table, a chair, pen, paper, and ink, he can commence his tradeas literary man. It is thus that aspirants generally do commence it. Aman may or may not have another employment to back him, or means of hisown; or, --as was the case with Thackeray, when, after his firstmisadventure, he had to look about him for the means of living, --he mayhave nothing but his intellect and his friends. But the idea comes tothe man that as he has the pen and ink, and time on his hand, whyshould he not write and make money?

It is an idea that comes to very many men and women, old as well asyoung, --to many thousands who at last are crushed by it, of whom theworld knows nothing. A man can make the attempt though he has not a coatfit to go out into the street with; or a woman, though she be almost inrags. There is no apprenticeship wanted. Indeed there is no room forsuch apprenticeship. It is an art which no one teaches; there is noprofessor who, in a dozen lessons, even pretends to show the aspiranthow to write a book or an article. If you would be a watchmaker, youmust learn; or a lawyer, a cook, or even a housemaid. Before you canclean a horse you must go into the stable, and begin at the beginning. Even the cab-driving tiro must sit for awhile on the box, and learnsomething of the streets, before he can ply for a fare. But the literarybeginner rushes at once at the top rung of his ladder;--as though ayouth, having made up his mind to be a clergyman, should demand, withoutpreliminary steps, to be appointed Bishop of London. That he should beable to read and write is presumed, and that only. So much may bepresumed of everyone, and nothing more is wanted. 

In truth nothing more is wanted, --except those inner lights as to which, so many men live and die without having learned whether they possessthem or not. Practice, industry, study of literature, cultivation oftaste, and the rest, will of course lend their aid, will probably benecessary before high excellence is attained. But the instances are notto seek, --are at the fingers of us all, --in which the first uninstructedeffort has succeeded. A boy, almost, or perhaps an old woman, has satdown and the book has come, and the world has read it, and thebooksellers have been civil and have written their cheques. When alltrades, all professions, all seats at offices, all employments at whicha crust can be earned, are so crowded that a young man knows not whereto look for the means of livelihood, is there not an attraction in thiswhich to the self-confident must be almost invincible? The booksellersare courteous and write their cheques, but that is not half the whole?_Monstrari digito!_ That is obtained. The happy aspirant is written ofin newspapers, or, perhaps, better still, he writes of others. When thebarrister of forty-five has hardly got a name beyond Chancery Lane, thisglorious young scribe, with the first down on his lips, has printed hisnovel and been talked about. 

The temptation is irresistible, and thousands fall into it. How is a manto know that he is not the lucky one or the gifted one? There is thetable and there the pen and ink. Among the unfortunate he who failsaltogether and from the first start is not the most unfortunate. A shortperiod of life is wasted, and a sharp pang is endured. Then thedisappointed one is relegated to the condition of life which he wouldotherwise have filled a little earlier. He has been wounded, but notkilled, or even maimed. But he who has a little success, who succeeds inearning a few halcyon, but, ah! so dangerous guineas, is drawn into atrade from which he will hardly escape till he be driven from it, if hecome out alive, by sheer hunger. He hangs on till the guineas becomecrowns and shillings, --till some sad record of his life, made when heapplies for charity, declares that he has worked hard for the last yearor two and has earned less than a policeman in the streets or a porterat a railway. It is to that that he is brought by applying himself to abusiness which requires only a table and chair, with pen, ink, andpaper! It is to that which he is brought by venturing to believe that hehas been gifted with powers of imagination, creation, and expression. 

The young man who makes the attempt knows that he must run the chance. He is well aware that nine must fail where one will make his runninggood. So much as that does reach his ears, and recommends itself to hiscommon sense. But why should it not be he as well as another? There isalways some lucky one winning the prize. And this prize when it has beenwon is so well worth the winning! He can endure starvation, --so he tellshimself, --as well as another. He will try. But yet he knows that he hasbut one chance out of ten in his favour, and it is only in his happiermoments that he flatters himself that that remains to him. Then therefalls upon him, --in the midst of that labour which for its successespecially requires that a man's heart shall be light, and that he bealways at his best, --doubt and despair. If there be no chance, of whatuse is his labour?

 Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, and amuse himself after that fashion? Thus the very industry which alonecould give him a chance is discarded. It is so that the young man feelswho, with some slight belief in himself and with many doubts, sits downto commence the literary labour by which he hopes to live. 

So it was, no doubt, with Thackeray. Such were his hopes and hisfears;--with a resolution of which we can well understand that it shouldhave waned at times, of earning his bread, if he did not make hisfortune, in the world of literature. One has not to look far forevidence of the condition I have described, --that it was so, Amaryllisand all. How or when he made his very first attempt in London, I havenot learned; but he had not probably spent his money without forming"press" acquaintances, and had thus found an aperture for the thin endof the wedge. He wrote for _The Constitutional_, of which he was partproprietor, beginning his work for that paper as a correspondent fromParis. For a while he was connected with _The Times_ newspaper, thoughhis work there did not I think amount to much. His first regularemployment was on _Fraser's Magazine_, when Mr. Fraser's shop was inRegent Street, when Oliver Yorke was the presumed editor, and amongcontributors, Carlyle was one of the most notable. I imagine that thebattle of life was difficult enough with him even after he had becomeone of the leading props of that magazine. All that he wrote was nottaken, and all that was taken was not approved. In 1837-38, the _Historyof Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond_ appeared in themagazine. The _Great Hoggarty Diamond_ is now known to all readers ofThackeray's works. It is not my purpose to speak specially of it here, except to assert that it has been thought to be a great success. When itwas being brought out, the author told a friend of his, --and ofmine, --that it was not much thought of at Fraser's, and that he had beencalled upon to shorten it. That is an incident disagreeable in itsnature to any literary gentleman, and likely to be specially so when heknows that his provision of bread, certainly of improved bread andbutter, is at stake. The man who thus darkens his literary brow with thefrown of disapproval, has at his disposal all the loaves and all thefishes that are going. If the writer be successful, there will come atime when he will be above such frowns; but, when that opinion wentforth, Thackeray had not yet made his footing good, and the notice tohim respecting it must have been very bitter. It was in writing this_Hoggarty Diamond_ that Thackeray first invented the name of MichaelAngelo Titmarsh. Samuel Titmarsh was the writer, whereas Michael Angelowas an intending illustrator. Thackeray's nose had been broken in aschool fight, while he was quite a little boy, by another little boy, atthe Charter House; and there was probably some association intended tobe jocose with the name of the great artist, whose nose was broken byhis fellow-student Torrigiano, and who, as it happened, died exactlythree centuries before Thackeray. 

I can understand all the disquietude of his heart when that warning, asto the too great length of his story, was given to him. He was not a mancapable of feeling at any time quite assured in his position, and whenthat occurred he was very far from assurance. I think that at no timedid he doubt the sufficiency of his own mental qualification for thework he had taken in hand; but he doubted all else. He doubted theappreciation of the world; he doubted his fitness for turninghis intellect to valuable account; he doubted his physicalcapacity, --dreading his own lack of industry; he doubted his luck; hedoubted the continual absence of some of those misfortunes on which theworks of literary men are shipwrecked. Though he was aware of his ownpower, he always, to the last, was afraid that his own deficienciesshould be too strong against him. It was his nature to be idle, --to putoff his work, --and then to be angry with himself for putting it off. Ginger was hot in the mouth with him, and all the allurements of theworld were strong upon him. To find on Monday morning an excuse why heshould not on Monday do Monday's work was, at the time, an inexpressiblerelief to him, but had become deep regret, --almost a remorse, --beforethe Monday was over. To such a one it was not given to believe inhimself with that sturdy rock-bound foundation which we see to havebelonged to some men from the earliest struggles of their career. Tohim, then, must have come an inexpressible pang when he was told thathis story must be curtailed. 

Who else would have told such a story of himself to the firstacquaintance he chanced to meet? Of Thackeray it might be predicted thathe certainly would do so. No little wound of the kind ever came to himbut what he disclosed it at once. "They have only bought so many of mynew book. " "Have you seen the abuse of my last number?" "What am I toturn my hand to? They are getting tired of my novels. " "They don't readit, " he said to me of _Esmond_. "So you don't mean to publish my work?"he said once to a publisher in an open company. Other men keep theirlittle troubles to themselves. I have heard even of authors who havedeclared how all the publishers were running after their books; I haveheard some discourse freely of their fourth and fifth editions; I haveknown an author to boast of his thousands sold in this country, and histens of thousands in America; but I never heard anyone else declare thatno one would read his _chef-d'oeuvre_, and that the world was becomingtired of him. It was he who said, when he was fifty, that a man pastfifty should never write a novel. 

And yet, as I have said, he was from an early age fully conscious of hisown ability. That he was so is to be seen in the handling of many ofhis early works, --in _Barry Lyndon_, for instance, and the _Memoirs ofMr. C. James Yellowplush_. The sound is too certain for doubt of thatkind. But he had not then, nor did he ever achieve that assurance ofpublic favour which makes a man confident that his work will besuccessful. During the years of which we are now speaking Thackeray wasa literary Bohemian in this sense, --that he never regarded his ownstatus as certain. While performing much of the best of his life's workhe was not sure of his market, not certain of his readers, hispublishers, or his price; nor was he certain of himself. 

It is impossible not to form some contrast between him and Dickens as tothis period of his life, --a comparison not as to their literary merits, but literary position. Dickens was one year his junior in age, and atthis time, viz. 1837-38, had reached almost the zenith of hisreputation. _Pickwick_ had been published, and _Oliver Twist_ and_Nicholas Nickleby_ were being published. All the world was talkingabout the young author who was assuming his position with a confidencein his own powers which was fully justified both by his present andfuture success. It was manifest that he could make, not only his ownfortune, but that of his publishers, and that he was a literary herobound to be worshipped by all literary grades of men, down to the"devils" of the printing-office. At that time, Thackeray, the older man, was still doubting, still hesitating, still struggling. Everyone thenhad accepted the name of Charles Dickens. That of William Thackeray washardly known beyond the circle of those who are careful to makethemselves acquainted with such matters. It was then the custom, moregenerally than it is at present, to maintain anonymous writing inmagazines. Now, if anything of special merit be brought out, the name ofthe author, if not published, is known. It was much less so at theperiod in question; and as the world of readers began to be acquaintedwith Jeames Yellowplush, Catherine Hayes, and other heroes and heroines, the names of the author had to be inquired for. I remember myself, whenI was already well acquainted with the immortal Jeames, asking who wasthe writer. The works of Charles Dickens were at that time as well knownto be his, and as widely read in England, as those almost ofShakespeare. 

It will be said of course that this came from the earlier popularity ofDickens. That is of course; but why should it have been so? They hadbegun to make their effort much at the same time; and if there was anyadvantage in point of position as they commenced, it was with Thackeray. It might be said that the genius of the one was brighter than that ofthe other, or, at any rate, that it was more precocious. Butafter-judgment has, I think, not declared either of the suggestions tobe true. I will make no comparison between two such rivals, who were sodistinctly different from each, and each of whom, within so very short aperiod, has come to stand on a pedestal so high, --the two exalted to soequal a vocation. And if Dickens showed the best of his power early inlife, so did Thackeray the best of his intellect. In no display ofmental force did he rise above _Barry Lyndon_. I hardly know how theteller of a narrative shall hope to mount in simply intellectual facultyabove the effort there made. In what then was the difference? Why wasDickens already a great man when Thackeray was still a literaryBohemian?

The answer is to be found not in the extent or in the nature of thegenius of either man, but in the condition of mind, --which indeed may beread plainly in their works by those who have eyes to see. The one wassteadfast, industrious, full of purpose, never doubting of himself, always putting his best foot foremost and standing firmly on it when hegot it there; with no inward trepidation, with no moments in which hewas half inclined to think that this race was not for his winning, thisgoal not to be reached by his struggles. The sympathy of friends wasgood to him, but he could have done without it. The good opinion whichhe had of himself was never shaken by adverse criticism; and thecriticism on the other side, by which it was exalted, came from theenumeration of the number of copies sold. He was a firm reliant man, very little prone to change, who, when he had discovered the nature ofhis own talent, knew how to do the very best with it. 

It may almost be said that Thackeray was the very opposite of this. Unsteadfast, idle, changeable of purpose, aware of his own intellect butnot trusting it, no man ever failed more generally than he to put hisbest foot foremost. Full as his works are of pathos, full of humour, full of love and charity, tending, as they always do, to truth andhonour and manly worth and womanly modesty, excelling, as they seem tome to do, most other written precepts that I know, they always seem tolack something that might have been there. There is a touch of vaguenesswhich indicates that his pen was not firm while he was using it. Heseems to me to have been dreaming ever of some high flight, and then tohave told himself, with a half-broken heart, that it was beyond hispower to soar up into those bright regions. I can fancy as the sheetswent from him every day he told himself, in regard to every sheet, thatit was a failure. Dickens was quite sure of his sheets. 

"I have got to make it shorter!" Then he would put his hands in hispockets, and stretch himself, and straighten the lines of his face, overwhich a smile would come, as though this intimation from his editor werethe best joke in the world; and he would walk away, with his heartbleeding, and every nerve in an agony. There are none of us who want tohave much of his work shortened now. 

In 1837 Thackeray married Isabella, daughter of Colonel Matthew Shawe, and from this union there came three daughters, Anne, Jane, and Harriet. The name of the eldest, now Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, who has followed soclosely in her father's steps, is a household word to the world of novelreaders; the second died as a child; the younger lived to marry LeslieStephen, who is too well known for me to say more than that he wrote, the other day, the little volume on Dr. Johnson in this series; but she, too, has now followed her father. Of Thackeray's married life what needbe said shall be contained in a very few words. It was grievouslyunhappy; but the misery of it came from God, and was in no wise due tohuman fault. She became ill, and her mind failed her. There was a periodduring which he would not believe that her illness was more thanillness, and then he clung to her and waited on her with an assiduity ofaffection which only made his task the more painful to him. At last itbecame evident that she should live in the companionship of some onewith whom her life might be altogether quiet, and she has since beendomiciled with a lady with whom she has been happy. Thus she was, afterbut a few years of married life, taken away from him, and he became asit were a widower till the end of his days. 

At this period, and indeed for some years after his marriage, his chiefliterary dependence was on _Fraser's Magazine_. He wrote also at thistime in the _New Monthly Magazine_. In 1840 he brought out his _ParisSketch Book_, as to which he tells us by a notice printed with the firstedition, that half of the sketches had already been published in variousperiodicals. Here he used the name Michael Angelo Titmarsh, as he didalso with the _Journey from Cornhill to Cairo_. Dickens had calledhimself Boz, and clung to the name with persistency as long as thepublic would permit it. Thackeray's affection for assumed names was moreintermittent, though I doubt whether he used his own name altogethertill it appeared on the title-page of _Vanity Fair_. About this timebegan his connection with _Punch_, in which much of his best workappeared. Looking back at our old friend as he used to come out fromweek to week at this time, we can hardly boast that we used to recognisehow good the literary pabulum was that was then given for ourconsumption. We have to admit that the ordinary reader, as the ordinarypicture-seer, requires to be guided by a name. We are moved to absoluteadmiration by a Raphael or a Hobbema, but hardly till we have learnedthe name of the painter, or, at any rate, the manner of his painting. Iam not sure that all lovers of poetry would recognise a _Lycidas_ comingfrom some hitherto unknown Milton. Gradually the good picture or thefine poem makes its way into the minds of a slowly discerning public. _Punch_, no doubt, became very popular, owing, perhaps, more to Leech, its artist, than to any other single person. Gradually the world ofreaders began to know that there was a speciality of humour to be foundin its pages, --fun and sense, satire and good humour, compressedtogether in small literary morsels as the nature of its columnsrequired. Gradually the name of Thackeray as one of the band of brethrenwas buzzed about, and gradually became known as that of the chief of theliterary brothers. But during the years in which he did much for_Punch_, say from 1843 to 1853, he was still struggling to make good hisfooting in literature. They knew him well in the _Punch_ office, and nodoubt the amount and regularity of the cheques from Messrs. Bradbury andEvans, the then and still owners of that happy periodical, made himaware that he had found for himself a satisfactory career. In "a goodday for himself, the journal, and the world, Thackeray found _Punch_. "This was said by his old friend Shirley Brooks, who himself lived to beeditor of the paper and died in harness, and was said most truly. _Punch_ was more congenial to him, and no doubt more generous, than_Fraser_. There was still something of the literary Bohemian about him, but not as it had been before. He was still unfixed, looking out forsome higher career, not altogether satisfied to be no more than one ofan anonymous band of brothers, even though the brothers were thebrothers of _Punch_. We can only imagine what were his thoughts as tohimself and that other man, who was then known as the great novelist ofthe day, --of a rivalry with whom he was certainly conscious. _Punch_ wasvery much to him, but was not quite enough. That must have been veryclear to himself as he meditated the beginning of _Vanity Fair_. 

Of the contributions to the periodical, the best known now are _The SnobPapers_ and _The Ballads of Policeman X_. But they were very numerous. Of Thackeray as a poet, or maker of verses, I will say a few words in achapter which will be devoted to his own so-called ballads. Here itseems only necessary to remark that there was not apparently any time inhis career at which he began to think seriously of appearing before thepublic as a poet. Such was the intention early in their career with manyof our best known prose writers, with Milton, and Goldsmith, and SamuelJohnson, with Scott, Macaulay, and more lately with Matthew Arnold;writers of verse and prose who ultimately prevailed some in onedirection, and others in the other. Milton and Goldsmith have been knownbest as poets, Johnson and Macaulay as writers of prose. But with all ofthem there has been a distinct effort in each art. Thackeray seems tohave tumbled into versification by accident; writing it as amateurs do, a little now and again for his own delectation, and to catch the tasteof partial friends. The reader feels that Thackeray would not have begunto print his verses unless the opportunity of doing so had been broughtin his way by his doings in prose. And yet he had begun to write verseswhen he was very young;--at Cambridge, as we have seen, when hecontributed more to the fame of Timbuctoo than I think even Tennyson hasdone, --and in his early years at Paris. Here again, though he must havefelt the strength of his own mingled humour and pathos, he always struckwith an uncertain note till he had gathered strength and confidence bypopularity. Good as they generally were, his verses were accidents, written not as a writer writes who claims to be a poet, but as thoughthey might have been the relaxation of a doctor or a barrister. 

And so they were. When Thackeray first settled himself in London, tomake his living among the magazines and newspapers, I do not imaginethat he counted much on his poetic powers. He describes it all in hisown dialogue between the pen and the album. 

"Since he, " says the pen, speaking of its master, Thackeray:

 Since he my faithful service did engage, To follow him through his queer pilgrimage I've drawn and written many a line and page. 

 Caricatures I scribbled have, and rhymes, And dinner-cards, and picture pantomimes, And many little children's books at times. 

 I've writ the foolish fancy of his brain; The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain; The idle word that he'd wish back again. 

 I've helped him to pen many a line for bread. 

It was thus he thought of his work. There had been caricatures, andrhymes, and many little children's books; and then the lines written forhis bread, which, except that they were written for _Punch_, were hardlyundertaken with a more serious purpose. In all of it there was ampleseriousness, had he known it himself. What a tale of the restlessness, of the ambition, of the glory, of the misfortunes of a great country isgiven in the ballads of Peter the French drummer! Of that brain so fullof fancy the pen had lightly written all the fancies. He did not know itwhen he was doing so, but with that word, fancy, he has describedexactly the gift with which his brain was specially endowed. If a writerbe accurate, or sonorous, or witty, or simply pathetic, he may, I think, gauge his own powers. He may do so after experience with something ofcertainty. But fancy is a gift which the owner of it cannot measure, andthe power of which, when he is using it, he cannot himself understand. There is the same lambent flame flickering over everything he did, eventhe dinner-cards and the picture pantomimes. He did not in the leastknow what he put into those things. So it was with his verses. It wasonly by degrees, when he was told of it by others, that he found thatthey too were of infinite value to him in his profession. 

The _Irish Sketch Book_ came out in 1843, in which he used, but onlyhalf used, the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. He dedicates it toCharles Lever, and in signing the dedication gave his own name. "Layingaside, " he says, "for a moment the travelling title of Mr. Titmarsh, letme acknowledge these favours in my own name, and subscribe myself, &c. &c. , W. M. Thackeray. " So he gradually fell into the declaration of hisown identity. In 1844 he made his journey to Turkey and Egypt, --_FromCornhill to Grand Cairo_, as he called it, still using the old nom deplume, but again signing the dedication with his own name. It was nowmade to the captain of the vessel in which he encountered that famouswhite squall, in describing which he has shown the wonderful power hehad over words. 

In 1846 was commenced, in numbers, the novel which first made his namewell known to the world. This was _Vanity Fair_, a work to which it isevident that he devoted all his mind. Up to this time his writings hadconsisted of short contributions, chiefly of sketches, each intended tostand by itself in the periodical to which it was sent. _Barry Lyndon_had hitherto been the longest; but that and _Catherine Hayes_, and the_Hoggarty Diamond_, though stories continued through various numbers, had not as yet reached the dignity, --or at any rate the length, --of athree-volume novel. But of late novels had grown to be much longer thanthose of the old well-known measure. Dickens had stretched his to nearlydouble the length, and had published them in twenty numbers. The attempthad caught the public taste and had been pre-eminently successful. Thenature of the tale as originated by him was altogether unlike that towhich the readers of modern novels had been used. No plot, with anarranged catastrophe or _dénoûment_, was necessary. Some untying of thevarious knots of the narrative no doubt were expedient, but these wereof the simplest kind, done with the view of giving an end to that whichmight otherwise be endless. The adventures of a _Pickwick_ or a_Nickleby_ required very little of a plot, and this mode of telling astory, which might be continued on through any number of pages, as longas the characters were interesting, met with approval. Thackeray, whohad never depended much on his plot in the shorter tales which he hadhitherto told, determined to adopt the same form in his first greatwork, but with these changes;--That as the central character withDickens had always been made beautiful with unnatural virtue, --for whowas ever so unselfish as _Pickwick_, so manly and modest as _Nicholas_, or so good a boy as _Oliver_?--so should his centre of interest be inevery respect abnormally bad. 

As to Thackeray's reason for this, --or rather as to that condition ofmind which brought about this result, --I will say something in a finalchapter, in which I will endeavour to describe the nature and effect ofhis work generally. Here it will be necessary only to declare that, suchwas the choice he now made of a subject in his first attempt to rise outof a world of small literary contributions, into the more assuredposition of the author of a work of importance. We are aware that themonthly nurses of periodical literature did not at first smile on theeffort. The proprietors of magazines did not see their way to undertake_Vanity Fair_, and the publishers are said to have generally looked shyupon it. At last it was brought out in numbers, --twenty-four numbersinstead of twenty, as with those by Dickens, --under the guardian handsof Messrs. Bradbury and Evans. This was completed in 1848, and then itwas that, at the age of thirty-seven, Thackeray first achieved forhimself a name and reputation through the country. Before this he hadbeen known at _Fraser's_ and at the _Punch_ office. He was known at theGarrick Club, and had become individually popular among literary men inLondon. He had made many fast friends, and had been, as it were, foundout by persons of distinction. But Jones, and Smith, and Robinson, inLiverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, did not know him as they knewDickens, Carlyle, Tennyson, and Macaulay, --not as they knew Landseer, orStansfeld, or Turner; not as they knew Macready, Charles Kean, or MissFaucit. In that year, 1848, his name became common in the memoirs of thetime. On the 5th of June I find him dining with Macready, to meet Sir J. Wilson, Panizzi, Landseer, and others. A few days afterwards Macreadydined with him. "Dined with Thackeray, met the Gordons, Kenyons, Procters, Reeve, Villiers, Evans, Stansfeld, and saw Mrs. Sartoris andS. C. Dance, White, H. Goldsmid, in the evening. " Again; "Dined withForster, having called and taken up Brookfield, met Rintoul, Kenyon, Procter, Kinglake, Alfred Tennyson, Thackeray. " Macready was veryaccurate in jotting down the names of those he entertained, whoentertained him, or were entertained with him. _Vanity Fair_ was comingout, and Thackeray had become one of the personages in literarysociety. In the January number of 1848 the _Edinburgh Review_ had anarticle on Thackeray's works generally as they were then known. Itpurports to combine the _Irish Sketch Book_, the _Journey from Cornhillto Grand Cairo_, and _Vanity Fair_ as far as it had then gone; but itdoes in truth deal chiefly with the literary merits of the latter. Iwill quote a passage from the article, as proving in regard toThackeray's work an opinion which was well founded, and as telling thestory of his life as far as it was then known;

"Full many a valuable truth, " says the reviewer, "has been sentundulating through the air by men who have lived and died unknown. Atthis moment the rising generation are supplied with the best of theirmental aliment by writers whose names are a dead letter to the mass; andamong the most remarkable of these is Michael Angelo Titmarsh, aliasWilliam Makepeace Thackeray, author of the _Irish Sketch Book_, of _AJourney from Cornhill to Grand Cairo_, of _Jeames's Diary_, of _The SnobPapers_ in _Punch_, of _Vanity Fair_, etc. Etc. 

"Mr. Thackeray is now about thirty-seven years of age, of a good family, and originally intended for the bar. He kept seven or eight terms atCambridge, but left the university without taking a degree, with theview of becoming an artist; and we well remember, ten or twelve yearsago, finding him day after day engaged in copying pictures in theLouvre, in order to qualify himself for his intended profession. It maybe doubted, however, whether any degree of assiduity would have enabledhim to excel in the money-making branches, for his talent was altogetherof the Hogarth kind, and was principally remarkable in the pen-and-inksketches of character and situation, which he dashed off for theamusement of his friends. At the end of two or three years of desultoryapplication he gave up the notion of becoming a painter, and took toliterature. He set up and edited with marked ability a weekly journal, on the plan of _The Athenĉum_ and _Literary Gazette_, but was unable tocompete successfully with such long-established rivals. He then became aregular man of letters, --that is, he wrote for respectable magazines andnewspapers, until the attention attracted to his contributions in_Fraser's Magazine_ and _Punch_ emboldened him to start on his ownaccount, and risk an independent publication. " Then follows a eulogisticand, as I think, a correct criticism on the book as far as it had gone. There are a few remarks perhaps a little less eulogistic as to some ofhis minor writings, _The Snob Papers_ in particular; and at the endthere is a statement with which I think we shall all now agree; "Awriter with such a pen and pencil as Mr. Thackeray's is an acquisitionof real and high value in our literature. "

The reviewer has done his work in a tone friendly to the author, whom heknew, [2]--as indeed it may be said that this little book will be writtenwith the same feeling, --but the public has already recognised the truthof the review generally. There can be no doubt that Thackeray, though hehad hitherto been but a contributor of anonymous pieces toperiodicals, --to what is generally considered as merely the ephemeralliterature of the month, --had already become effective on the tastes andmorals of readers. Affectation of finery; the vulgarity which apes goodbreeding but never approaches it; dishonest gambling, whether with diceor with railway shares; and that low taste for literary excitement whichis gratified by mysterious murders and Old Bailey executions had alreadyreceived condign punishment from Yellowplush, Titmarsh, Fitzboodle, andIkey Solomon. Under all those names Thackeray had plied his trade as asatirist. Though the truths, as the reviewer said, had been merely sentundulating through the air, they had already become effective. 

Thackeray had now become a personage, --one of the recognised stars ofthe literary heaven of the day. It was an honour to know him; and we maywell believe that the givers of dinners were proud to have him amongtheir guests. He had opened his oyster, --with his pen, an achievementwhich he cannot be said to have accomplished until _Vanity Fair_ hadcome out. In inquiring about him from those who survive him, and knewhim well in those days, I always hear the same account. "If I could onlytell you the impromptu lines which fell from him!" "If I had only keptthe drawings from his pen, which used to be chucked about as though theywere worth nothing!" "If I could only remember the drolleries!" Had theybeen kept, there might now be many volumes of these sketches, as towhich the reviewer says that their talent was "altogether of the Hogarthkind. " Could there be any kind more valuable? Like Hogarth, he couldalways make his picture tell his story; though, unlike Hogarth, he hadnot learned to draw. I have had sent to me for my inspection an album ofdrawings and letters, which, in the course of twenty years, from 1829 to1849, were despatched from Thackeray to his old friend EdwardFitzgerald. Looking at the wit displayed in the drawings, I feelinclined to say that had he persisted he would have been a secondHogarth. There is a series of ballet scenes, in which "Flore et Zephyr"are the two chief performers, which for expression and drollery exceedanything that I know of the kind. The set in this book are lithographs, which were published, but I do not remember to have seen them elsewhere. There are still among us many who knew him well;--Edward Fitzgerald andGeorge Venables, James Spedding and Kinglake, Mrs. Procter, --the widowof Barry Cornwall, who loved him well, --and Monckton Milnes, as he usedto be, whose touching lines written just after Thackeray's death willclose this volume, Frederick Pollock and Frank Fladgate, John Blackwoodand William Russell, --and they all tell the same story. Though he sorarely talked, as good talkers do, and was averse to sit down to work, there were always falling from his mouth and pen those little pearls. Among the friends who had been kindest and dearest to him in the days ofhis strugglings he once mentioned three to me, --Matthew Higgins, orJacob Omnium as he was more popularly called; William Stirling, whobecame Sir William Maxwell; and Russell Sturgis, who is now the seniorpartner in the great house of Barings. Alas, only the last of thesethree is left among us! Thackeray was a man of no great power ofconversation. I doubt whether he ever shone in what is called generalsociety. He was not a man to be valuable at a dinner-table as a goodtalker. It was when there were but two or three together that he washappy himself and made others happy; and then it would rather be fromsome special piece of drollery that the joy of the moment would come, than from the discussion of ordinary topics. After so many years his oldfriends remember the fag-ends of the doggerel lines which used to dropfrom him without any effort on all occasions of jollity. And though hecould be very sad, --laden with melancholy, as I think must have been thecase with him always, --the feeling of fun would quickly come to him, andthe queer rhymes would be poured out as plentifully as the sketches weremade. Here is a contribution which I find hanging in the memory of anold friend, the serious nature of whose literary labours would certainlyhave driven such lines from his mind, had they not at the time caughtfast hold of him:

 In the romantic little town of Highbury My father kept a circulatin' library; He followed in his youth that man immortal, who Conquered the Frenchmen on the plains of Waterloo. Mamma was an inhabitant of Drogheda, Very good she was to darn and to embroider. In the famous island of Jamaica, For thirty years I've been a sugar-baker; And here I sit, the Muses' 'appy vot'ry, A cultivatin' every kind of po'try, There may, perhaps, have been a mistake in a line, but the poem has beenhanded down with fair correctness over a period of forty years. He wasalways versifying. He once owed me five pounds seventeen shillings andsixpence, his share of a dinner bill at Richmond. He sent me a chequefor the amount in rhyme, giving the proper financial document on thesecond half of a sheet of note paper. I gave the poem away as anautograph, and now forget the lines. This was all trifling, the readerwill say. No doubt. Thackeray was always trifling, and yet alwaysserious. In attempting to understand his character it is necessary foryou to bear within your own mind the idea that he was always, within hisown bosom, encountering melancholy with buffoonery, and meanness withsatire. The very spirit of burlesque dwelt within him, --a spirit whichdoes not see the grand the less because of the travesties which it isalways engendering. 

In his youthful, --all but boyish, --days in London, he delighted to "puthimself up" at the Bedford, in Covent Garden. Then in his early marrieddays he lived in Albion Street, and from thence went to Great CoramStreet, till his household there was broken up by his wife's illness. Heafterwards took lodgings in St. James's Chambers, and then a house inYoung Street, Kensington. Here he lived from 1847, when he was achievinghis great triumph with _Vanity Fair_, down to 1853, when he removed to ahouse which he bought in Onslow Square. In Young Street there had cometo lodge opposite to him an Irish gentleman, who, on the part of hisinjured country, felt very angry with Thackeray. _The Irish Sketch Book_had not been complimentary, nor were the descriptions which Thackerayhad given generally of Irishmen; and there was extant an absurd ideathat in his abominable heroine Catherine Hayes he had alluded to MissCatherine Hayes the Irish singer. Word was taken to Thackeray that thisIrishman intended to come across the street and avenge his country onthe calumniator's person. Thackeray immediately called upon thegentleman, and it is said that the visit was pleasant to both parties. There certainly was no blood shed. 

He had now succeeded, --in 1848, --in making for himself a standing as aman of letters, and an income. What was the extent of his income I haveno means of saying; nor is it a subject on which, as I think, inquiryshould be made. But he was not satisfied with his position. He felt itto be precarious, and he was always thinking of what he owed to his twogirls. That _arbitrium popularis aurĉ_ on which he depended for hisdaily bread was not regarded by him with the confidence which itdeserved. He did not probably know how firm was the hold he had obtainedof the public ear. At any rate he was anxious, and endeavoured to securefor himself a permanent income in the public service. He had become bythis time acquainted, probably intimate, with the Marquis ofClanricarde, who was then Postmaster-General. In 1848 there fell avacancy in the situation of Assistant-Secretary at the General PostOffice, and Lord Clanricarde either offered it to him or promised togive it to him. The Postmaster-General had the disposal of theplace, --but was not altogether free from control in the matter. When hemade known his purpose at the Post Office, he was met by an assurancefrom the officer next under him that the thing could not be done. Theservices were wanted of a man who had had experience in the Post Office;and, moreover, it was necessary that the feelings of other gentlemenshould be consulted. Men who have been serving in an office many yearsdo not like to see even a man of genius put over their heads. In fact, the office would have been up in arms at such an injustice. LordClanricarde, who in a matter of patronage was not scrupulous, was stilla good-natured man and amenable. He attempted to befriend his friendtill he found that it was impossible, and then, with the best grace inthe world, accepted the official nominee that was offered to him. 

It may be said that had Thackeray succeeded in that attempt he wouldsurely have ruined himself. No man can be fit for the management andperformance of special work who has learned nothing of it before histhirty-seventh year; and no man could have been less so than Thackeray. There are men who, though they be not fit, are disposed to learn theirlesson and make themselves as fit as possible. Such cannot be said tohave been the case with this man. For the special duties which he wouldhave been called upon to perform, consisting to a great extent of themaintenance of discipline over a large body of men, training isrequired, and the service would have suffered for awhile under anyuntried elderly tiro. Another man might have put himself into harness. Thackeray never would have done so. The details of his work after thefirst month would have been inexpressibly wearisome to him. To have goneinto the city, and to have remained there every day from eleven tillfive, would have been all but impossible to him. He would not have doneit. And then he would have been tormented by the feeling that he wastaking the pay and not doing the work. There is a belief current, notconfined to a few, that a man may be a Government Secretary with agenerous salary, and have nothing to do. The idea is something thatremains to us from the old days of sinecures. If there be now remainingplaces so pleasant, or gentlemen so happy, I do not know them. Thackeray's notion of his future duties was probably very vague. Hewould have repudiated the notion that he was looking for a sinecure, butno doubt considered that the duties would be easy and light. It is nottoo much to assert, that he who could drop his pearls as I have saidabove, throwing them wide cast without an effort, would have found hiswork as Assistant-Secretary at the General Post Office to be altogethertoo much for him. And then it was no doubt his intention to joinliterature with the Civil Service. He had been taught to regard theCivil Service as easy, and had counted upon himself as able to add it tohis novels, and his work with his _Punch_ brethren, and to hiscontributions generally to the literature of the day. He might have doneso, could he have risen at five, and have sat at his private desk forthree hours before he began his official routine at the public one. Acapability for grinding, an aptitude for continuous task work, adisposition to sit in one's chair as though fixed to it by cobbler'swax, will enable a man in the prime of life to go through the tedium ofa second day's work every day; but of all men Thackeray was the last tobear the wearisome perseverance of such a life. Some more or lesscontinuous attendance at his office he must have given, and with itwould have gone _Punch_ and the novels, the ballads, the burlesques, theessays, the lectures, and the monthly papers full of mingled satire andtenderness, which have left to us that Thackeray which we could so illafford to lose out of the literature of the nineteenth century. Andthere would have remained to the Civil Service the memory of adisgraceful job. 

He did not, however, give up the idea of the Civil Service. In a letterto his American friend, Mr. Reed, dated 8th November, 1854, he says;"The secretaryship of our Legation at Washington was vacant the otherday, and I instantly asked for it; but in the very kindest letter LordClarendon showed how the petition was impossible. First, the place wasgiven away. Next, it would not be fair to appoint out of the service. But the first was an excellent reason;--not a doubt of it. " The validityof the second was probably not so apparent to him as it is to one whohas himself waited long for promotion. "So if ever I come, " hecontinues, "as I hope and trust to do this time next year, it must be inmy own coat, and not the Queen's. " Certainly in his own coat, and not inthe Queen's, must Thackeray do anything by which he could mend hisfortune or make his reputation. There never was a man less fit for theQueen's coat. 

Nevertheless he held strong ideas that much was due by the Queen'sministers to men of letters, and no doubt had his feelings of slightedmerit, because no part of the debt due was paid to him. In 1850 he wrotea letter to _The Morning Chronicle_, which has since been republished, in which he alludes to certain opinions which had been put forth in _TheExaminer_. "I don't see, " he says, "why men of letters should not verycheerfully coincide with Mr. Examiner in accepting all the honours, places, and prizes which they can get. The amount of such as will beawarded to them will not, we may be pretty sure, impoverish the countrymuch; and if it is the custom of the State to reward by money, or titlesof honour, or stars and garters of any sort, individuals who do thecountry service, --and if individuals are gratified at having 'Sir' or'My lord' appended to their names, or stars and ribbons hooked on totheir coats and waistcoats, as men most undoubtedly are, and as theirwives, families, and relations are, --there can be no reason why men ofletters should not have the chance, as well as men of the robe or thesword; or why, if honour and money are good for one profession, theyshould not be good for another. No man in other callings thinks himselfdegraded by receiving a reward from his Government; nor, surely, needthe literary man be more squeamish about pensions, and ribbons, andtitles, than the ambassador, or general, or judge. Every European statebut ours rewards its men of letters. The American Government gives themtheir full share of its small patronage; and if Americans, why notEnglishmen?"

In this a great subject is discussed which would be too long for thesepages; but I think that there now exists a feeling that literature canherself, for herself, produce a rank as effective as any that a Queen'sminister can bestow. Surely it would be a repainting of the lily, anadding a flavour to the rose, a gilding of refined gold to createto-morrow a Lord Viscount Tennyson, a Baron Carlyle, or a RightHonourable Sir Robert Browning. And as for pay and pension, the less thebetter of it for any profession, unless so far as it may be payment madefor work done. Then the higher the payment the better, in literature asin all other trades. It may be doubted even whether a special rank ofits own be good for literature, such as that which is achieved by thehappy possessors of the forty chairs of the Academy in France. Eventhough they had an angel to make the choice, --which they have not, --thatangel would do more harm to the excluded than good to the selected. 

_Pendennis_, _Esmond_, and _The Newcomes_ followed _Vanity Fair_, --notvery quickly indeed, always at an interval of two years, --in 1850, 1852, and 1854. As I purpose to devote a separate short chapter, or part of achapter, to each of these, I need say nothing here of their specialmerits or demerits. _Esmond_ was brought out as a whole. The othersappeared in numbers. "He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. " It isa mode of pronunciation in literature by no means very articulate, buteasy of production and lucrative. But though easy it is seductive, andleads to idleness. An author by means of it can raise money andreputation on his book before he has written it, and when the pang ofparturition is over in regard to one part, he feels himself entitled toa period of ease because the amount required for the next division willoccupy him only half the month. This to Thackeray was so alluring thatthe entirety of the final half was not always given to the task. Hisself-reproaches and bemoanings when sometimes the day for reappearingwould come terribly nigh, while yet the necessary amount of copy wasfar from being ready, were often very ludicrous and very sad;--ludicrousbecause he never told of his distress without adding to it something ofridicule which was irresistible, and sad because those who loved himbest were aware that physical suffering had already fallen upon him, andthat he was deterred by illness from the exercise of continuous energy. I myself did not know him till after the time now in question. Myacquaintance with him was quite late in his life. But he has told mesomething of it, and I have heard from those who lived with him howcontinual were his sufferings. In 1854, he says in one of his letters toMr. Reed, --the only private letters of his which I know to have beenpublished; "I am to-day just out of bed after another, about thedozenth, severe fit of spasms which I have had this year. My book wouldhave been written but for them. " His work was always going on, butthough not fuller of matter, --that would have been almostimpossible, --would have been better in manner had he been delayedneither by suffering nor by that palsying of the energies whichsuffering produces. 

This ought to have been the happiest period of his life, and should havebeen very happy. He had become fairly easy in his circumstances. He hadsucceeded in his work, and had made for himself a great name. He wasfond of popularity, and especially anxious to be loved by a small circleof friends. These good things he had thoroughly achieved. Immediatelyafter the publication of _Vanity Fair_ he stood high among the literaryheroes of his country, and had endeared himself especially to a specialknot of friends. His face and figure, his six feet four in height, withhis flowing hair, already nearly gray, and his broken nose, his broadforehead and ample chest, encountered everywhere either love or respect;and his daughters to him were all the world, --the bairns of whom hesays, at the end of the _White Squall_ ballad;

 I thought, as day was breaking, My little girls were waking, And smiling, and making A prayer at home for me. 

Nothing could have been more tender or endearing than his relations withhis children. But still there was a skeleton in his cupboard, --or rathertwo skeletons. His home had been broken up by his wife's malady, and hisown health was shattered. When he was writing _Pendennis_, in 1849, hehad a severe fever, and then those spasms came, of which four or fiveyears afterwards he wrote to Mr. Reed. His home, as a home should be, was never restored to him, --or his health. Just at that period of lifeat which a man generally makes a happy exchange in taking his wife'sdrawing-room in lieu of the smoking-room of his club, and assumes thosedomestic ways of living which are becoming and pleasant for maturedyears, that drawing-room and those domestic ways were closed againsthim. The children were then no more than babies, as far as society wasconcerned, --things to kiss and play with, and make a home happy if theycould only have had their mother with them. I have no doubt there werethose who thought that Thackeray was very jolly under his adversity. Jolly he was. It was the manner of the man to be so, --if that continualplayfulness which was natural to him, lying over a melancholy which wasas continual, be compatible with jollity. He laughed, and ate, anddrank, and threw his pearls about with miraculous profusion. But I fancythat he was far from happy. I remember once, when I was young, receiving advice as to the manner in which I had better spend myevenings; I was told that I ought to go home, drink tea, and read goodbooks. It was excellent advice, but I found that the reading of goodbooks in solitude was not an occupation congenial to me. It was so, Itake it, with Thackeray. He did not like his lonely drawing-room, andwent back to his life among the clubs by no means with contentment. 

In 1853, Thackeray having then his own two girls to provide for, added athird to his family, and adopted Amy Crowe, the daughter of an oldfriend, and sister of the well-known artist now among us. How it came topass that she wanted a home, or that this special home suited her, itwould be unnecessary here to tell even if I knew. But that he did give ahome to this young lady, making her in all respects the same as anotherdaughter, should be told of him. He was a man who liked to broaden hisback for the support of others, and to make himself easy under suchburdens. In 1862, she married a Thackeray cousin, a young officer withthe Victoria Cross, Edward Thackeray, and went out to India, --where shedied. 

In 1854, the year in which _The Newcomes_ came out, Thackeray had brokenhis close alliance with _Punch_. In December of that year there appearedfrom his pen an article in _The Quarterly_ on _John Leech's Pictures ofLife and Character_. It is a rambling discourse on picture-illustrationin general, full of interest, but hardly good as a criticism, --a portionof literary work for which he was not specially fitted. In it he tellsus how Richard Doyle, the artist, had given up his work for _Punch_, nothaving been able, as a Roman Catholic, to endure the skits which, atthat time, were appearing in one number after another against what wasthen called Papal aggression. The reviewer, --Thackeray himself, --thentells us of the secession of himself from the board of brethren. "Another member of Mr. Punch's cabinet, the biographer of _Jeames_, theauthor of _The Snob Papers_, resigned his functions, on account of Mr. Punch's assaults upon the present Emperor of the French nation, whoseanger Jeames thought it was unpatriotic to arouse. " How hard it must befor Cabinets to agree! This man or that is sure to have some petconviction of his own, and the better the man the stronger theconviction! Then the reviewer went on in favour of the artist of whom hewas specially speaking, making a comparison which must at the time havebeen odious enough to some of the brethren. "There can be no blinkingthe fact that in Mr. Punch's Cabinet John Leech is the right-hand man. Fancy a number of _Punch_ without Leech's pictures! What would you givefor it?" Then he breaks out into strong admiration of that onefriend, --perhaps with a little disregard as to the feelings of otherfriends. [3] This _Critical Review_, if it may properly be so called, --atany rate it is so named as now published, --is to be found in ourauthor's collected works, in the same volume with _Catherine_. It isthere preceded by another, from _The Westminster Review_, writtenfourteen years earlier, on _The Genius of Cruikshank_. This contains adescriptive catalogue of Cruikshank's works up to that period, and isinteresting from the piquant style in which it is written. I fancy thatthese two are the only efforts of the kind which he made, --and in bothhe dealt with the two great caricaturists of his time, he himself being, in the imaginative part of a caricaturist's work, equal in power toeither of them. 

We now come to a phase of Thackeray's life in which he achieved aremarkable success, attributable rather to his fame as a writer than toany particular excellence in the art which he then exercised. He tookupon himself the functions of a lecturer, being moved to do so by a hopethat he might thus provide a sum of money for the future sustenance ofhis children. No doubt he had been advised to this course, though I donot know from whom specially the advice may have come. Dickens hadalready considered the subject, but had not yet consented to read inpublic for money on his own account. John Forster, writing of the year1846, says of Dickens and the then only thought-of exercise of a newprofession; "I continued to oppose, for reasons to be stated in theirplace, that which he had set his heart upon too strongly to abandon, andwhich I still can wish he had preferred to surrender with all thatseemed to be its enormous gain. " And again he says, speaking of aproposition which had been made to Dickens from the town of Bradford;"At first this was entertained, but was abandoned, with some reluctance, upon the argument that to become publicly a reader must alter, withoutimproving, his position publicly as a writer, and that it was a changeto be justified only when the higher calling should have failed of theold success. " The meaning of this was that the money to be made wouldbe sweet, but that the descent to a profession which was considered tobe lower than that of literature itself would carry with it somethingthat was bitter. It was as though one who had sat on the woolsack asLord Chancellor should raise the question whether for the sake of theincome attached to it, he might, without disgrace, occupy a seat on alower bench; as though an architect should consider with himself thepropriety of making his fortune as a contractor; or the head of acollege lower his dignity, while he increased his finances, by takingpupils. When such discussions arise, money generally carries theday, --and should do so. When convinced that money may be earned withoutdisgrace, we ought to allow money to carry the day. When we talk ofsordid gain and filthy lucre, we are generally hypocrites. If gains besordid and lucre filthy, where is the priest, the lawyer, the doctor, orthe man of literature, who does not wish for dirty hands? An income, andthe power of putting by something for old age, something for those whoare to come after, is the wholesome and acknowledged desire of allprofessional men. Thackeray having children, and being gifted with nopower of making his money go very far, was anxious enough on thesubject. We may say now, that had he confined himself to his pen, hewould not have wanted while he lived, but would have left but littlebehind him. That he was anxious we have seen, by his attempts tosubsidise his literary gains by a Government office. I cannot but thinkthat had he undertaken public duties for which he was ill qualified, andreceived a salary which he could hardly have earned, he would have doneless for his fame than by reading to the public. Whether he did thatwell or ill, he did it well enough for the money. The people who heardhim, and who paid for their seats, were satisfied with theirbargain, --as they were also in the case of Dickens; and I venture to saythat in becoming publicly a reader, neither did Dickens or Thackeray"alter his position as a writer, " and "that it was a change to bejustified, " though the success of the old calling had in no degreewaned. What Thackeray did enabled him to leave a comfortable income forhis children, and one earned honestly, with the full approval of theworld around him. 

Having saturated his mind with the literature of Queen Anne's time, --notprobably in the first instance as a preparation for _Esmond_, but insuch a way as to induce him to create an Esmond, --he took the authorswhom he knew so well as the subject for his first series of lectures. Hewrote _The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century_ in 1851, whilehe must have been at work on _Esmond_, and first delivered the course atWillis's Rooms in that year. He afterwards went with these through manyof our provincial towns, and then carried them to the United States, where he delivered them to large audiences in the winter of 1852 and1853. Some few words as to the merits of the composition I willendeavour to say in another place. I myself never heard him lecture, andcan therefore give no opinion of the performance. That which I haveheard from others has been very various. It is, I think, certain that hehad none of those wonderful gifts of elocution which made it a pleasureto listen to Dickens, whatever he read or whatever he said; nor had hethat power of application by using which his rival taught himself withaccuracy the exact effect to be given to every word. The rendering of apiece by Dickens was composed as an oratorio is composed, and was thenstudied by heart as music is studied. And the piece was all given bymemory, without any looking at the notes or words. There was nothing ofthis with Thackeray. But the thing read was in itself of great interestto educated people. The words were given clearly, with sufficientintonation for easy understanding, so that they who were willing to hearsomething from him felt on hearing that they had received full value fortheir money. At any rate, the lectures were successful. The money wasmade, --and was kept. 

He came from his first trip to America to his new house in OnslowSquare, and then published _The Newcomes_. This, too, was one of hisgreat works, as to which I shall have to speak hereafter. Then, havingenjoyed his success in the first attempt to lecture, he prepared asecond series. He never essayed the kind of reading which with Dickensbecame so wonderfully popular. Dickens recited portions from hiswell-known works. Thackeray wrote his lectures expressly for thepurpose. They have since been added to his other literature, but theywere prepared as lectures. The second series were _The Four Georges_. Ina lucrative point of view they were even more successful than the first, the sum of money realised in the United States having been considerable. In England they were less popular, even if better attended, the subjectchosen having been distasteful to many. There arose the question whethertoo much freedom had not been taken with an office which, though it beno longer considered to be founded on divine right, is still as sacredas can be anything that is human. If there is to remain among us asovereign, that sovereign, even though divested of political power, should be endowed with all that personal respect can give. If we wishourselves to be high, we should treat that which is over us as high. And this should not depend altogether on personal character, though weknow, --as we have reason to know, --how much may be added to the firmnessof the feeling by personal merit. The respect of which we speak should, in the strongest degree, be a possession of the immediate occupant, andwill naturally become dim, --or perhaps be exaggerated, --in regard to thepast, as history or fable may tell of them. No one need hesitate tospeak his mind of King John, let him be ever so strong a stickler forthe privileges of majesty. But there are degrees of distance, and thethrone of which we wish to preserve the dignity seems to be assailedwhen unmeasured evil is said of one who has sat there within our ownmemory. There would seem to each of us to be a personal affront were adeparted relative delineated with all those faults by which we must ownthat even our near relatives have been made imperfect. It is a generalconviction as to this which so frequently turns the biography of thoserecently dead into mere eulogy. The fictitious charity which is enjoinedby the _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_ banishes truth. The feeling of whichI speak almost leads me at this moment to put down my pen. And, if somuch be due to all subjects, is less due to a sovereign?

Considerations such as these diminished, I think, the popularity ofThackeray's second series of lectures; or, rather, not their popularity, but the estimation in which they were held. On this head he defendedhimself more than once very gallantly, and had a great deal to say onhis side of the question. "Suppose, for example, in America, --inPhiladelphia or in New York, --that I had spoken about George IV. Interms of praise and affected reverence, do you believe they would havehailed his name with cheers, or have heard it with anything ofrespect?" And again; "We degrade our own honour and the sovereign's byunduly and unjustly praising him; and the mere slaverer and flatterer isone who comes forward, as it were, with flash notes, and pays with falsecoin his tribute to Cĉsar. I don't disguise that I feel somehow on mytrial here for loyalty, --for honest English feeling. " This was said byThackeray at a dinner at Edinburgh, in 1857, and shows how the matterrested on his mind. Thackeray's loyalty was no doubt true enough, butwas mixed with but little of reverence. He was one who revered modestyand innocence rather than power, against which he had in the bottom ofhis heart something of republican tendency. His leaning was no doubt ofthe more manly kind. But in what he said at Edinburgh he hardly hit thenail on the head. No one had suggested that he should have said goodthings of a king which he did not believe to be true. The question waswhether it may not be well sometimes for us to hold our tongues. AnAmerican literary man, here in England, would not lecture on the moralsof Hamilton, on the manners of General Jackson, on the general amenitiesof President Johnson. 

In 1857 Thackeray stood for Oxford, in the liberal interest, inopposition to Mr. Cardwell. He had been induced to do this by his oldfriend Charles Neate, who himself twice sat for Oxford, and died now notmany months since. He polled 1, 017 votes, against 1, 070 by Mr. Cardwell;and was thus again saved by his good fortune from attempting to fill asituation in which he would not have shone. There are, no doubt, many towhom a seat in Parliament comes almost as the birthright of a well-bornand well-to-do English gentleman. They go there with no more idea ofshining than they do when they are elected to a first-classclub;--hardly with more idea of being useful. It is the thing to do, andthe House of Commons is the place where a man ought to be--for a certainnumber of hours. Such men neither succeed nor fail, for nothing isexpected of them. From such a one as Thackeray something would have beenexpected, which would not have been forthcoming. He was too desultoryfor regular work, --full of thought, but too vague for practicalquestions. He could not have endured to sit for two or three hours at atime with his hat over his eyes, pretending to listen, as is the duty ofa good legislator. He was a man intolerant of tedium, and in the best ofhis time impatient of slow work. Nor, though his liberal feelings werevery strong, were his political convictions definite or accurate. He wasa man who mentally drank in much, feeding his fancy hourly with what hesaw, what he heard, what he read, and then pouring it all out with animmense power of amplification. But it would have been impossible forhim to study and bring home to himself the various points of acomplicated bill with a hundred and fifty clauses. In becoming a man ofletters, and taking that branch of letters which fell to him, heobtained the special place that was fitted for him. He was a round pegin a round hole. There was no other hole which he would have fittednearly so well. But he had his moment of political ambition, likeothers, --and paid a thousand pounds for his attempt. 

In 1857 the first number of _The Virginians_ appeared, and thelast, --the twenty-fourth, --in October, 1859. This novel, as all myreaders are aware, is a continuance of _Esmond_, and will be spoken ofin its proper place. He was then forty-eight years old, very gray, withmuch of age upon him, which had come from suffering, --age shown bydislike of activity and by an old man's way of thinking about manythings, --speaking as though the world were all behind him instead ofbefore; but still with a stalwart outward bearing, very erect in hisgait, and a countenance peculiarly expressive and capable of muchdignity. I speak of his personal appearance at this time, because it wasthen only that I became acquainted with him. In 1859 he undertook thelast great work of his life, the editorship of _The Cornhill Magazine_, a periodical set on foot by Mr. George Smith, of the house of Smith andElder, with an amount of energy greater than has generally been bestowedupon such enterprises. It will be well remembered still how much _TheCornhill_ was talked about and thought of before it first appeared, andhow much of that thinking and talking was due to the fact that Mr. Thackeray was to edit it. _Macmillan's_, I think, was the first of theshilling magazines, having preceded _The Cornhill_ by a month, and itwould ill become me, who have been a humble servant to each of them, togive to either any preference. But it must be acknowledged that a greatdeal was expected from _The Cornhill_, and I think it will be confessedthat it was the general opinion that a great deal was given by it. Thackeray had become big enough to give a special _éclat_ to anyliterary exploit to which he attached himself. Since the days of _TheConstitutional_ he had fought his way up the ladder and knew how to takehis stand there with an assurance of success. When it became known tothe world of readers that a new magazine was to appear under Thackeray'seditorship, the world of readers was quite sure that there would be alarge sale. Of the first number over one hundred and ten thousand weresold, and of the second and third over one hundred thousand. It is inthe nature of such things that the sale should fall off when the noveltyis over. People believe that a new delight has come, a new joy for ever, and then find that the joy is not quite so perfect or enduring as theyhad expected. But the commencement of such enterprises may be taken as ameasure of what will follow. The magazine, either by Thackeray's name orby its intrinsic merits, --probably by both, --achieved a great success. My acquaintance with him grew from my having been one of his staff fromthe first. 

About two months before the opening day I wrote to him suggesting thathe should accept from me a series of four short stories on which I wasengaged. I got back a long letter in which he said nothing about myshort stories, but asking whether I could go to work at once and let himhave a long novel, so that it might begin with the first number. At thesame time I heard from the publisher, who suggested some interestinglittle details as to honorarium. The little details were veryinteresting, but absolutely no time was allowed to me. It was requiredthat the first portion of my book should be in the printer's handswithin a month. Now it was my theory, --and ever since this occurrencehas been my practice, --to see the end of my own work before the publicshould see the commencement. [4] If I did this thing I must not onlyabandon my theory, but instantly contrive a story, or begin to write itbefore it was contrived. That was what I did, urged by the interestingnature of the details. A novelist cannot always at the spur of themoment make his plot and create his characters who shall, with anarranged sequence of events, live with a certain degree of eventfuldecorum, through that portion of their lives which is to be portrayed. Ihesitated, but allowed myself to be allured to what I felt to be wrong, much dreading the event. How seldom is it that theories stand the wearand tear of practice! I will not say that the story which came was good, but it was received with greater favour than any I had written before orhave written since. I think that almost anything would have been thenaccepted coming under Thackeray's editorship. 

I was astonished that work should be required in such haste, knowingthat much preparation had been made, and that the service of almost anyEnglish novelist might have been obtained if asked for in due time. Itwas my readiness that was needed, rather than any other gift! The riddlewas read to me after a time. Thackeray had himself intended to beginwith one of his own great novels, but had put it off till it was toolate. _Lovel the Widower_ was commenced at the same time with my ownstory, but _Lovel the Widower_ was not substantial enough to appear asthe principal joint at the banquet. Though your guests will undoubtedlydine off the little delicacies you provide for them, there must be aheavy saddle of mutton among the viands prepared. I was the saddle ofmutton, Thackeray having omitted to get his joint down to the fire intime enough. My fitness lay in my capacity for quick roasting. 

It may be interesting to give a list of the contributors to the firstnumber. My novel called _Framley Parsonage_ came first. At this banquetthe saddle of mutton was served before the delicacies. Then there was apaper by Sir John Bowring on _The Chinese and Outer Barbarians_. Thecommencing number of _Lovel the Widower_ followed. George Lewes camenext with his first chapters of _Studies in Animal Life_. Then there wasFather Prout's _Inauguration Ode_, dedicated to the author of _VanityFair_, --which should have led the way. I need hardly say that FatherProut was the Rev. F. Mahony. Then followed _Our Volunteers_, by SirJohn Burgoyne; _A Man of Letters of the Last Generation_, by ThorntonHunt; _The Search for Sir John Franklin_, from a private journal of anofficer of the Fox, now Sir Allen Young; and _The First Morning of1860_, by Mrs. Archer Clive. The number was concluded by the first ofthose _Roundabout Papers_ by Thackeray himself, which became sodelightful a portion of the literature of _The Cornhill Magazine_. 

It would be out of my power, and hardly interesting, to give an entirelist of those who wrote for _The Cornhill_ under Thackeray's editorialdirection. But I may name a few, to show how strong was the supportwhich he received. Those who contributed to the first number I havenamed. Among those who followed were Alfred Tennyson, Jacob Omnium, LordHoughton, William Russell, Mrs. Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Browning, RobertBell, George Augustus Sala, Mrs. Gaskell, James Hinton, Mary Howitt, John Kaye, Charles Lever, Frederick Locker, Laurence Oliphant, JohnRuskin, Fitzjames Stephen, T. A. Trollope, Henry Thompson, HermanMerivale, Adelaide Proctor, Matthew Arnold, the present Lord Lytton, andMiss Thackeray, now Mrs. Ritchie. Thackeray continued the editorship fortwo years and four months, namely, up to April, 1862; but, as allreaders will remember, he continued to write for it till he died, theday before Christmas Day, in 1863. His last contribution was, I think, apaper written for and published in the November number, called, "_Strange to say on Club Paper_, " in which he vindicated Lord Clyde fromthe accusation of having taken the club stationery home with him. It wasnot a great subject, for no one could or did believe that theField-Marshal had been guilty of any meanness; but the handling of ithas made it interesting, and his indignation has made it beautiful. 

The magazine was a great success, but justice compels me to say thatThackeray was not a good editor. As he would have been an indifferentcivil servant, an indifferent member of Parliament, so was heperfunctory as an editor. It has sometimes been thought well to select apopular literary man as an editor; first, because his name will attract, and then with an idea that he who can write well himself will be acompetent judge of the writings of others. The first may sell amagazine, but will hardly make it good; and the second will not availmuch, unless the editor so situated be patient enough to read what issent to him. Of a magazine editor it is required that he should bepatient, scrupulous, judicious, but above all things hard-hearted. Ithink it may be doubted whether Thackeray did bring himself to read thebasketfuls of manuscripts with which he was deluged, but he probablydid, sooner or later, read the touching little private notes by whichthey were accompanied, --the heartrending appeals, in which he was toldthat if this or the other little article could be accepted and paid for, a starving family might be saved from starvation for a month. He tellsus how he felt on receiving such letters in one of his _RoundaboutPapers_, which he calls "_Thorns in the cushion_. " "How am I to know, "he says--"though to be sure I begin to know now, --as I take the lettersoff the tray, which of those envelopes contains a real _bona fide_letter, and which a thorn? One of the best invitations this year Imistook for a thorn letter, and kept it without opening. " Then he givesthe sample of a thorn letter. It is from a governess with a poem, andwith a prayer for insertion and payment. "We have known better days, sir. I have a sick and widowed mother to maintain, and little brothersand sisters who look to me. " He could not stand this, and the moneywould be sent, out of his own pocket, though the poem mightbe--postponed, till happily it should be lost. 

From such material a good editor could not be made. Nor, in truth, do Ithink that he did much of the editorial work. I had once made anarrangement, not with Thackeray, but with the proprietors, as to somelittle story. The story was sent back to me by Thackeray--rejected. _Virginibus puerisque!_ That was the gist of his objection. There was aproject in a gentleman's mind, --as told in my story, --to run away with amarried woman! Thackeray's letter was very kind, very regretful, --fullof apology for such treatment to such a contributor. But--_Virginibuspuerisque!_ I was quite sure that Thackeray had not taken the trouble toread the story himself. Some moral deputy had read it, and disapproving, no doubt properly, of the little project to which I have alluded, hadincited the editor to use his authority. That Thackeray had sufferedwhen he wrote it was easy to see, fearing that he was giving pain to onehe would fain have pleased. I wrote him a long letter in return, as fullof drollery as I knew how to make it. In four or five days there came areply in the same spirit, --boiling over with fun. He had kept my letterby him, not daring to open it, --as he says that he did with thateligible invitation. At last he had given it to one of his girls toexamine, --to see whether the thorn would be too sharp, whether I hadturned upon him with reproaches. A man so susceptible, so prone to workby fits and starts, so unmethodical, could not have been a good editor. 

In 1862 he went into the new house which he had built for himself atPalace Green. I remember well, while this was still being built, how hisfriends used to discuss his imprudence in building it. Though he haddone well with himself, and had made and was making a large income, washe entitled to live in a house the rent of which could not be counted atless than from five hundred to six hundred pounds a year? Before he hadbeen there two years, he solved the question by dying, --when the housewas sold for two thousand pounds more than it had cost. He himself, inspeaking of his project, was wont to declare that he was laying out hismoney in the best way he could for the interest of his children;--and itturned out that he was right. 

In 1863 he died in the house which he had built, and at the period ofhis death was writing a new novel in numbers, called _Denis Duval_. In_The Cornhill_, _The Adventures of Philip_ had appeared. This newenterprise was destined for commencement on 1st January, 1864, and, though the writer was gone, it kept its promise, as far as it went. Three numbers, and what might probably have been intended for half of afourth, appeared. It may be seen, therefore, that he by no means held tomy theory, that the author should see the end of his work before thepublic sees the commencement. But neither did Dickens or Mrs. Gaskell, both of whom died with stories not completed, which, when they died, were in the course of publication. All the evidence goes against thenecessity of such precaution. Nevertheless, were I giving advice to atiro in novel writing, I should recommend it. 

With the last chapter of _Denis Duval_ was published in the magazine aset of notes on the book, taken for the most part from Thackeray's ownpapers, and showing how much collateral work he had given to thefabrication of his novel. No doubt in preparing other tales, especially_Esmond_, a very large amount of such collateral labour was foundnecessary. He was a man who did very much of such work, delighting todeal in little historical incidents. They will be found in almosteverything that he did, and I do not know that he was ever accused ofgross mistakes. But I doubt whether on that account he should be calleda laborious man. He could go down to Winchelsea, when writing about thelittle town, to see in which way the streets lay, and to provide himselfwith what we call local colouring. He could jot down the suggestions, asthey came to his mind, of his future story. There was an irregularity insuch work which was to his taste. His very notes would be delightful toread, partaking of the nature of pearls when prepared only for his ownuse. But he could not bring himself to sit at his desk and do anallotted task day after day. He accomplished what must be considered asquite a sufficient life's work. He had about twenty-five years for thepurpose, and that which he has left is an ample produce for the time. Nevertheless he was a man of fits and starts, who, not having been inhis early years drilled to method, never achieved it in his career. 

He died on the day before Christmas Day, as has been said above, verysuddenly, in his bed, early in the morning, in the fifty-third year ofhis life. To those who saw him about in the world there seemed to be noreason why he should not continue his career for the next twenty years. But those who knew him were so well aware of his constant sufferings, that, though they expected no sudden catastrophe, they were hardlysurprised when it came. His death was probably caused by those spasms ofwhich he had complained ten years before, in his letter to Mr. Reed. Onthe last day but one of the year, a crowd of sorrowing friends stoodover his grave as he was laid to rest in Kensal Green; and, as quicklyafterwards as it could be executed, a bust to his memory was put up inWestminster Abbey. It is a fine work of art, by Marochetti; but, as alikeness, is, I think, less effective than that which was modelled, andthen given to the Garrick Club, by Durham, and has lately been put intomarble, and now stands in the upper vestibule of the club. Neither ofthem, in my opinion, give so accurate an idea of the man as a statuettein bronze, by Boehm, of which two or three copies were made. One of themis in my possession. It has been alleged, in reference to this, thatthere is something of a caricature in the lengthiness of the figure, inthe two hands thrust into the trousers pockets, and in the protrusion ofthe chin. But this feeling has originated in the general idea that anyface, or any figure, not made by the artist more beautiful or moregraceful than the original is an injustice. The face must be smoother, the pose of the body must be more dignified, the proportions moreperfect, than in the person represented, or satisfaction is not felt. Mr. Boehm has certainly not flattered, but, as far as my eye can judge, he has given the figure of the man exactly as he used to stand beforeus. I have a portrait of him in crayon, by Samuel Lawrence, as like, buthardly as natural. 

A little before his death Thackeray told me that he had then succeededin replacing the fortune which he had lost as a young man. Ho had, infact, done better, for he left an income of seven hundred and fiftypounds behind him. 

It has been said of Thackeray that he was a cynic. This has been said sogenerally, that the charge against him has become proverbial. This, stated barely, leaves one of two impressions on the mind, or perhaps thetwo together, --that this cynicism was natural to his character and cameout in his life, or that it is the characteristic of his writings. Ofthe nature of his writings generally, I will speak in the last chapterof this little book. As to his personal character as a cynic, I mustfind room to quote the following first stanzas of the little poem whichappeared to his memory in _Punch_, from the pen of Shirley Brooks;

 He was a cynic! By his life all wrought Of generous acts, mild words, and gentle ways; His heart wide open to all kindly thought, His hand so quick to give, his tongue to praise!

 He was a cynic! You might read it writ In that broad brow, crowned with its silver hair; In those blue eyes, with childlike candour lit, In that sweet smile his lips were wont to wear!

 He was a cynic! By the love that clung About him from his children, friends, and kin; By the sharp pain light pen and gossip tongue Wrought in him, chafing the soft heart within!

The spirit and nature of the man have been caught here with absolutetruth. A public man should of course be judged from his public work. Ifhe wrote as a cynic, --a point which I will not discuss here, --it may befair that he who is to be known as a writer should be so called. But, asa man, I protest that it would be hard to find an individual fartherremoved from the character. Over and outside his fancy, which was thegift which made him so remarkable, --a certain feminine softness was themost remarkable trait about him. To give some immediate pleasure was thegreat delight of his life, --a sovereign to a schoolboy, gloves to agirl, a dinner to a man, a compliment to a woman. His charity wasoverflowing. His generosity excessive. I heard once a story of woe froma man who was the dear friend of both of us. The gentleman wanted alarge sum of money instantly, --something under two thousand pounds, --hadno natural friends who could provide it, but must go utterly to the wallwithout it. Pondering over this sad condition of things just revealed tome, I met Thackeray between the two mounted heroes at the Horse Guards, and told him the story. "Do you mean to say that I am to find twothousand pounds?" he said, angrily, with some expletives. I explainedthat I had not even suggested the doing of anything, --only that we mightdiscuss the matter. Then there came over his face a peculiar smile, anda wink in his eye, and he whispered his suggestion, as though halfashamed of his meanness. "I'll go half, " he said, "if anybody will dothe rest. " And he did go half, at a day or two's notice, though thegentleman was no more than simply a friend. I am glad to be able to addthat the money was quickly repaid. I could tell various stories of thesame kind, only that I lack space, and that they, if simply added one tothe other, would lack interest. 

He was no cynic, but he was a satirist, and could now and then be asatirist in conversation, hitting very hard when he did hit. When he wasin America he met at dinner a literary gentleman of high character, middle-aged, and most dignified deportment. The gentleman was one whosecharacter and acquirements stood very high, --deservedly so, --but who, insociety, had that air of wrapping his toga around him, which adds, or issupposed to add, many cubits to a man's height. But he had a brokennose. At dinner he talked much of the tender passion, and did so in amanner which stirred up Thackeray's feeling of the ridiculous. "What hasthe world come to, " said Thackeray out loud to the table, "when twobroken-nosed old fogies like you and me sit talking about love to eachother!" The gentleman was astounded, and could only sit wrapping histoga in silent dismay for the rest of the evening. Thackeray then, as atother similar times, had no idea of giving pain, but when he saw afoible he put his foot upon it, and tried to stamp it out. 

Such is my idea of the man whom many call a cynic, but whom I regard asone of the most soft-hearted of human beings, sweet as Charity itself, who went about the world dropping pearls, doing good, and never wilfullyinflicting a wound. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The report that he had lost all his money and was going to live bypainting in Paris, was still prevalent in London in 1836. Macready, onthe 27th April of that year, says in his _Diary_; "At Garrick Club, where I dined and saw the papers. Met Thackeray, who has spent all hisfortune, and is now about to settle in Paris, I believe as an artist. "But at this time he was, in truth, turning to literature as aprofession. 

[2] The article was written by Abraham Hayward, who is still with us, and was no doubt instigated by a desire to assist Thackeray in hisstruggle upwards, in which it succeeded. 

[3] For a week there existed at the _Punch_ office a grudge againstThackeray in reference to this awkward question: "What would you givefor your _Punch_ without John Leech?" Then he asked the confraternity todinner, --_more Thackerayano_, --and the confraternity came. Who can doubtbut they were very jolly over the little blunder? For years afterwardsThackeray was a guest at the well-known _Punch_ dinner, though he was nolonger one of the contributors. 

[4] I had begun an Irish story and half finished it, which would reachjust the required length. Would that do, I asked. I was civilly toldthat my Irish story would no doubt be charming, but was not quite thething that was wanted. Could I not begin a new one, --English, --and ifpossible about clergymen? The details were so interesting that had acouple of archbishops been demanded, I should have produced them. 

CHAPTER II. 

FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 

How Thackeray commenced his connection with _Fraser's Magazine_ I amunable to say. We know how he had come to London with a view to aliterary career, and that he had at one time made an attempt to earn hisbread as a correspondent to a newspaper from Paris. It is probable thathe became acquainted with the redoubtable Oliver Yorke, otherwise Dr. Maginn, or some of his staff, through the connection which he had thusopened with the press. He was not known, or at any rate he wasunrecognised, by _Fraser_ in January, 1835, in which month an amusingcatalogue was given of the writers then employed, with portraits ofthem, all seated at a symposium. I can trace no article to his penbefore November, 1837, when the _Yellowplush Correspondence_ wascommenced, though it is hardly probable that he should have commencedwith a work of so much pretension. There had been published a volumecalled _My Book, or the Anatomy of Conduct_, by John Skelton, and a veryabsurd book no doubt it was. We may presume that it contained maxims onetiquette, and that it was intended to convey in print those invaluablelessons on deportment which, as Dickens has told us, were subsequentlygiven by Mr. Turveydrop, in the academy kept by him for that purpose. Thackeray took this as his foundation for the _Fashionable Fax andPolite Annygoats_, by Jeames Yellowplush, with which he commenced thoserepeated attacks against snobbism which he delighted to make through aconsiderable portion of his literary life. Oliver Yorke has himselfadded four or five pages of his own to Thackeray's lucubrations; andwith the second, and some future numbers, there appeared illustrationsby Thackeray himself, illustrations at this time not having been commonwith the magazine. From all this I gather that the author was alreadyheld in estimation by _Fraser's_ confraternity. I remember well my owndelight with _Yellowplush_ at the time, and how I inquired who was theauthor. It was then that I first heard Thackeray's name. 

The _Yellowplush Papers_ were continued through nine numbers. No furtherreference was made to Mr. Skelton and his book beyond that given at thebeginning of the first number, and the satire is only shown by theattempt made by Yellowplush, the footman, to give his ideas generally onthe manners of noble life. The idea seems to be that a gentleman may, inheart and in action, be as vulgar as a footman. No doubt he may, but thechances are very much that he won't. But the virtue of the memoir doesnot consist in the lessons, but in the general drollery of the letters. The "orthogwaphy is inaccuwate, " as a certain person says in thememoirs, --"so inaccuwate" as to take a positive study to "compwehend"it; but the joke, though old, is so handled as to be very amusing. Thackeray soon rushes away from his criticisms on snobbism to othermatters. There are the details of a card-sharping enterprise, in whichwe cannot but feel that we recognise something of the author's ownexperiences in the misfortunes of Mr. Dawkins; there is the Earl ofCrab's, and then the first of those attacks which he was tempted tomake on the absurdities of his brethren of letters, and the only onewhich now has the appearance of having been ill-natured. His firstvictims were Dr. Dionysius Lardner and Mr. Edward Bulwer Lytton, as hewas then. We can surrender the doctor to the whip of the satirist; andfor "Sawedwadgeorgeearllittnbulwig, " as the novelist is made to callhimself, we can well believe that he must himself have enjoyed the_Yellowplush Memoirs_ if he ever re-read them in after life. The speechin which he is made to dissuade the footman from joining the world ofletters is so good that I will venture to insert it: "Bullwig wasviolently affected; a tear stood in his glistening i. 'Yellowplush, 'says he, seizing my hand, 'you _are_ right. Quit not your presentoccupation; black boots, clean knives, wear plush all your life, butdon't turn literary man. Look at me. I am the first novelist in Europe. I have ranged with eagle wings over the wide regions of literature, andperched on every eminence in its turn. I have gazed with eagle eyes onthe sun of philosophy, and fathomed the mysterious depths of the humanmind. All languages are familiar to me, all thoughts are known to me, all men understood by me. I have gathered wisdom from the honeyed lipsof Plato, as we wandered in the gardens of the Academies; wisdom, too, from the mouth of Job Johnson, as we smoked our backy in Seven Dials. Such must be the studies, and such is the mission, in this world of thePoet-Philosopher. But the knowledge is only emptiness; the initiation isbut misery; the initiated a man shunned and banned by his fellows. Oh!'said Bullwig, clasping his hands, and throwing his fine i's up to thechandelier, 'the curse of Pwomethus descends upon his wace. Wath andpunishment pursue them from genewation to genewation! Wo to genius, theheaven-scaler, the fire-stealer! Wo and thrice-bitter desolation! Earthis the wock on which Zeus, wemorseless, stwetches his withingwictim;--men, the vultures that feed and fatten on him. Ai, ai! it isagony eternal, --gwoaning and solitawy despair! And you, Yellowplush, would penetwate these mystewies; you would waise the awful veil, andstand in the twemendous Pwesence. Beware, as you value your peace, beware! Withdraw, wash Neophyte! For heaven's sake! O for heaven'ssake!'--Here he looked round with agony;--'give me a glass ofbwandy-and-water, for this clawet is beginning to disagwee with me. '" Itwas thus that Thackeray began that vein of satire on his contemporariesof which it may be said that the older he grew the more amusing it was, and at the same time less likely to hurt the feelings of the authorsatirised. 

The next tale of any length from Thackeray's pen, in the magazine, wasthat called _Catherine_, which is the story taken from the life of awretched woman called Catherine Hayes. It is certainly not pleasantreading, and was not written with a pleasant purpose. It assumes to havecome from the pen of Ikey Solomon, of Horsemonger Lane, and its objectis to show how disgusting would be the records of thieves, cheats, andmurderers if their doings and language were described according to theirnature instead of being handled in such a way as to create sympathy, andtherefore imitation. Bulwer's _Eugene Aram_, Harrison Ainsworth's _JackSheppard_, and Dickens' Nancy were in his mind, and it was thus that hepreached his sermon against the selection of such heroes and heroines bythe novelists of the day. "Be it granted, " he says, in his epilogue, "Solomon is dull; but don't attack his morality. He humbly submitsthat, in his poem, no man shall mistake virtue for vice, no man shallallow a single sentiment of pity or admiration to enter his bosom forany character in the poem, it being from beginning to end a scene ofunmixed rascality, performed by persons who never deviate into goodfeeling. " The intention is intelligible enough, but such a story neithercould have been written nor read, --certainly not written by Thackeray, nor read by the ordinary reader of a first-class magazine, --had he notbeen enabled to adorn it by infinite wit. Captain Brock, though a braveman, is certainly not described as an interesting or gallant soldier;but he is possessed of great resources. Captain Macshane, too, is athorough blackguard; but he is one with a dash of loyalty about him, sothat the reader can almost sympathise with him, and is tempted to saythat Ikey Solomon has not quite kept his promise. 

_Catherine_ appeared in 1839 and 1840. In the latter of those years _TheShabby Genteel_ story also came out. Then in 1841 there followed _TheHistory of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond_, illustratedby Samuel's cousin, Michael Angelo. But though so announced in _Fraser_, there were no illustrations, and those attached to the story in latereditions are not taken from sketches by Thackeray. This, as far as Iknow, was the first use of the name Titmarsh, and seems to indicate someintention on the part of the author of creating a hoax as to twopersonages, --one the writer and the other the illustrator. If it were sohe must soon have dropped the idea. In the last paragraph he has shakenoff his cousin Michael. The main object of the story is to expose thevillany of bubble companies, and the danger they run who venture to havedealings with city matters which they do not understand. I cannot butthink that he altered his mind and changed his purpose while he waswriting it, actuated probably by that editorial monition as to itslength. 

In 1842 were commenced _The Confessions of George Fitz-Boodle_, whichwere continued into 1843. I do not think that they attracted muchattention, or that they have become peculiarly popular since. They aresupposed to contain the reminiscences of a younger son, who moans overhis poverty, complains of womankind generally, laughs at the world allround, and intersperses his pages with one or two excellent ballads. Iquote one, written for the sake of affording a parody, with the parodyalong with it, because the two together give so strong an example of thecondition of Thackeray's mind in regard to literary products. The"humbug" of everything, the pretence, the falseness of affectedsentiment, the remoteness of poetical pathos from the true condition ofthe average minds of men and women, struck him so strongly, that hesometimes allowed himself almost to feel, --or at any rate, to say, --thatpoetical expression, as being above nature, must be unnatural. He haddeclared to himself that all humbug was odious, and should be by himlaughed down to the extent of his capacity. His Yellowplush, hisCatherine Hayes, his Fitz-Boodle, his Barry Lyndon, and Becky Sharp, with many others of this kind, were all invented and treated for thispurpose and after this fashion. I shall have to say more on the samesubject when I come to _The Snob Papers_. In this instance he wrote avery pretty ballad, _The Willow Tree_, --so good that if left by itselfit would create no idea of absurdity or extravagant pathos in the mindof the ordinary reader, --simply that he might render his own work absurdby his own parody. 

 THE WILLOW-TREE. 

 No. I. 

 THE WILLOW-TREE. 

 No. II. 

 Know ye the willow-tree, Whose gray leaves quiver, Whispering gloomily To yon pale river? Lady, at eventide Wander not near it! They say its branches hide A sad lost spirit!

 Long by the willow-tree Vainly they sought her, Wild rang the mother's screams O'er the gray water. "Where is my lovely one? Where is my daughter?

 Rouse thee, sir constable-- Rouse thee and look. Fisherman, bring your net, Boatman, your hook. Beat in the lily-beds, Dive in the brook. "

 Once to the willow-tree A maid came fearful, Pale seemed her cheek to be, Her blue eye tearful. Soon as she saw the tree, Her steps moved fleeter. No one was there--ah me!-- No one to meet her!

 Vainly the constable Shouted and called her. Vainly the fisherman Beat the green alder. Vainly he threw the net. Never it hauled her!

 Quick beat her heart to hear The far bells' chime Toll from the chapel-tower The trysting-time. But the red sun went down In golden flame, And though she looked around, Yet no one came!

 Mother beside the fire Sat, her night-cap in; Father in easychair, Gloomily napping; When at the window-sill Came a light tapping. 

 Presently came the night, Sadly to greet her, -- Moon in her silver light, Stars in their glitter. Then sank the moon away Under the billow. Still wept the maid alone-- There by the willow!

 And a pale countenance Looked through the casement. Loud beat the mother's heart, Sick with amazement, And at the vision which Came to surprise her! Shrieking in an agony-- "Lor'! it's Elizar!"

 Through the long darkness, By the stream rolling, Hour after hour went on Tolling and tolling. Long was the darkness, Lonely and stilly. Shrill came the night wind, Piercing and chilly. 

 Yes, 'twas Elizabeth;-- Yes, 'twas their girl; Pale was her cheek, and her Hair out of curl. "Mother!" the loved one, Blushing, exclaimed, "Let not your innocent Lizzy be blamed. 

 Yesterday, going to Aunt Jones's to tea, Mother, dear mother, I Forgot the door-key! And as the night was cold, And the way steep, Mrs. Jones kept me to Breakfast and sleep. "

 Shrill blew the morning breeze, Biting and cold. Bleak peers the gray dawn Over the wold! Bleak over moor and stream Looks the gray dawn, Gray with dishevelled hair. Still stands the willow there-- The maid is gone!

 Whether her pa and ma Fully believed her, That we shall never know. Stern they received her; And for the work of that Cruel, though short, night, -- Sent her to bed without Tea for a fortnight. 

 Domine, Domine! Sing we a litany-- Sing for poor maiden-hearts broken and weary; Sing we a litany, Wail we and weep we a wild miserere!

 MORAL. 

 Hey diddle diddlety, Cat and the fiddlety, Maidens of England take caution by she! Let love and suicide Never tempt you aside, And always remember to take the door-key!

Mr. George Fitz-Boodle gave his name to other narratives beyond his own_Confessions_. A series of stories was carried on by him in _Fraser_, called _Men's Wives_, containing three; _Ravenwing_, _Mr. And Mrs. Frank Berry_, and _Dennis Hoggarty's Wife_. The first chapter in _Mr. And Mrs. Frank Berry_ describes "The Fight at Slaughter House. "Slaughter House, as Mr. Venables reminded us in the last chapter, wasnear Smithfield in London, --the school which afterwards became GreyFriars; and the fight between Biggs and Berry is the record of one whichtook place in the flesh when Thackeray was at the Charter House. But Mr. Fitz-Boodle's name was afterwards attached to a greater work than these, to a work so great that subsequent editors have thought him to beunworthy of the honour. In the January number, 1844, of _Fraser'sMagazine_, are commenced the _Memoirs of Barry Lyndon_, and theauthorship is attributed to Mr. Fitz-Boodle. The title given in themagazine was _The Luck of Barry Lyndon: a Romance of the last Century_. By Fitz-Boodle. In the collected edition of Thackeray's works the_Memoirs_ are given as "Written by himself, " and were, I presume, sobrought out by Thackeray, after they had appeared in _Fraser_. Why Mr. George Fitz-Boodle should have been robbed of so great an honour I donot know. 

In imagination, language, construction, and general literary capacity, Thackeray never did anything more remarkable than _Barry Lyndon_. I havequoted the words which he put into the mouth of Ikey Solomon, declaringthat in the story which he has there told he has created nothing butdisgust for the wicked characters he has produced, and that he has "usedhis humble endeavours to cause the public also to hate them. " Here, in_Barry Lyndon_, he has, probably unconsciously, acted in directopposition to his own principles: Barry Lyndon is as great a scoundrelas the mind of man ever conceived. He is one who might have taken as hismotto Satan's words; "Evil, be thou my good. " And yet his story is sowritten that it is almost impossible not to entertain something of afriendly feeling for him. He tells his own adventures as a card-sharper, bully, and liar; as a heartless wretch, who had neither love norgratitude in his composition; who had no sense even of loyalty; whoregarded gambling as the highest occupation to which a man could devotehimself, and fraud as always justified by success; a man possessed byall meannesses except cowardice. And the reader is so carried away byhis frankness and energy as almost to rejoice when he succeeds, and togrieve with him when he is brought to the ground. 

The man is perfectly satisfied as to the reasonableness, --I might almostsay, as to the rectitude, --of his own conduct throughout. He is one of adecayed Irish family, that could boast of good blood. His father hadobtained possession of the remnants of the property by turningProtestant, thus ousting the elder brother, who later on becomes hisnephew's confederate in gambling. The elder brother is true to the oldreligion, and as the law stood in the last century, the younger brother, by changing his religion, was able to turn him out. Barry, when a boy, learns the slang and the gait of the debauched gentlemen of the day. Heis specially proud of being a gentleman by birth and manners. He hadbeen kidnapped, and made to serve as a common soldier, but boasts thathe was at once fit for the occasion when enabled to show as a courtgentleman. "I came to it at once, " he says, "and as if I had never doneanything else all my life. I had a gentleman to wait upon me, a French_friseur_ to dress my hair of a morning. I knew the taste of chocolateas by intuition almost, and could distinguish between the right Spanishand the French before I had been a week in my new position. I had ringson all my fingers and watches in both my fobs, canes, trinkets, andsnuffboxes of all sorts. I had the finest natural taste for lace andchina of any man I ever knew. "

To dress well, to wear a sword with a grace, to carry away his plunderwith affected indifference, and to appear to be equally easy when heloses his last ducat, to be agreeable to women, and to look like agentleman, --these are his accomplishments. In one place he rises to theheight of a grand professor in the art of gambling, and gives hislessons with almost a noble air. "Play grandly, honourably. Be not ofcourse cast down at losing; but above all, be not eager at winning, asmean souls are. " And he boasts of his accomplishments with so mucheloquence as to make the reader sure that he believes in them. He isquite pathetic over himself, and can describe with heartrending wordsthe evils that befall him when others use against him successfully anyof the arts which he practises himself. 

The marvel of the book is not so much that the hero should evidentlythink well of himself, as that the author should so tell his story as toappear to be altogether on the hero's side. In _Catherine_, the horrorsdescribed are most truly disgusting, --so much that the story, thoughvery clever, is not pleasant reading. _The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon_ arevery pleasant to read. There is nothing to shock or disgust. The styleof narrative is exactly that which might be used as to the exploits of aman whom the author intended to represent as deserving of sympathy andpraise, --so that the reader is almost brought to sympathise. But Ishould be doing an injustice to Thackeray if I were to leave animpression that he had taught lessons tending to evil practice, such ashe supposed to have been left by _Jack Sheppard_ or _Eugene Aram_. Noone will be tempted to undertake the life of a _chevalier d'industrie_by reading the book, or be made to think that cheating at cards iseither an agreeable or a profitable profession. The following isexcellent as a tirade in favour of gambling, coming from Redmond deBalibari, as he came to be called during his adventures abroad, but itwill hardly persuade anyone to be a gambler;

"We always played on parole with anybody, --any person, that is, ofhonour and noble lineage. We never pressed for our winnings, or declinedto receive promissory notes in lieu of gold. But woe to the man who didnot pay when the note became due! Redmond de Balibari was sure to waitupon him with his bill, and I promise you there were very few bad debts. On the contrary, gentlemen were grateful to us for our forbearance, andour character for honour stood unimpeached. In latter times, a vulgarnational prejudice has chosen to cast a slur upon the character of menof honour engaged in the profession of play; but I speak of the good olddays of Europe, before the cowardice of the French aristocracy (in theshameful revolution, which served them right) brought discredit upon ourorder. They cry fie now upon men engaged in play; but I should like toknow how much more honourable _their_ modes of livelihood are than ours. The broker of the Exchange, who bulls and bears, and buys and sells, anddabbles with lying loans, and trades upon state-secrets, --what is he buta gamester? The merchant who deals in teas and tallow, is he any better?His bales of dirty indigo are his dice, his cards come up every yearinstead of every ten minutes, and the sea is his green-table. You callthe profession of the law an honourable one, where a man will lie forany bidder;--lie down poverty for the sake of a fee from wealth; liedown right because wrong is in his brief. You call a doctor anhonourable man, --a swindling quack who does not believe in the nostrumswhich he prescribes, and takes your guinea for whispering in your earthat it is a fine morning. And yet, forsooth, a gallant man, who sitshim down before the baize and challenges all comers, his money againsttheirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed by your modern moralworld! It is a conspiracy of the middle-class against gentlemen. It isonly the shopkeeper cant which is to go down nowadays. I say that playwas an institution of chivalry. It has been wrecked along with otherprivileges of men of birth. When Seingalt engaged a man forsix-and-thirty hours without leaving the table, do you think he showedno courage? How have we had the best blood and the brightest eyes too, of Europe throbbing round the table, as I and my uncle have held thecards and the bank against some terrible player, who was matching somethousands out of his millions against our all, which was there on thebaize! When we engaged that daring Alexis Kossloffsky, and won seventhousand louis on a single coup, had we lost we should have been beggarsthe next day; when _he_ lost, he was only a village and a few hundredserfs in pawn the worse. When at Toeplitz the Duke of Courland broughtfourteen lacqueys, each with four bags of florins, and challenged ourbank to play against the sealed bags, what did we ask? 'Sir, ' said we, 'we have but eighty thousand florins in bank, or two hundred thousand atthree months. If your highness's bags do not contain more than eightythousand we will meet you. ' And we did; and after eleven hours' play, in which our bank was at one time reduced to two hundred and threeducats, we won seventeen thousand florins of him. Is _this_ notsomething like boldness? Does this profession not require skill, andperseverance, and bravery? Four crowned heads looked on at the game, andan imperial princess, when I turned up the ace of hearts and madeParoli, burst into tears. No man on the European Continent held a higherposition than Redmond Barry then; and when the Duke of Courland lost hewas pleased to say that we had won nobly. And so we had, and spent noblywhat we won. " This is very grand, and is put as an eloquent man wouldput it who really wished to defend gambling. 

The rascal, of course, comes to a miserable end, but the tone of thenarrative is continued throughout. He is brought to live at last withhis old mother in the Fleet prison, on a wretched annuity of fiftypounds per annum, which she has saved out of the general wreck, andthere he dies of delirium tremens. For an assumed tone of continuedirony, maintained through the long memoir of a life, never becomingtedious, never unnatural, astounding us rather by its naturalness, Iknow nothing equal to _Barry Lyndon_. 

As one reads, one sometimes is struck by a conviction that this or theother writer has thoroughly liked the work on which he is engaged. Thereis a gusto about his passages, a liveliness in the language, a spring inthe motion of the words, an eagerness of description, a lilt, if I mayso call it, in the progress of the narrative, which makes the readerfeel that the author has himself greatly enjoyed what he has written. Hehas evidently gone on with his work without any sense of weariness, ordoubt; and the words have come readily to him. So it has been with_Barry Lyndon_. "My mind was filled full with those blackguards, "Thackeray once said to a friend. It is easy enough to see that it wasso. In the passage which I have above quoted, his mind was running overwith the idea that a rascal might be so far gone in rascality as to bein love with his own trade. 

This was the last of Thackeray's long stories in _Fraser_. I have givenby no means a complete catalogue of his contributions to the magazine, but I have perhaps mentioned those which are best known. There were manyshort pieces which have now been collected in his works, such as _LittleTravels and Roadside Sketches_, and the _Carmen Lilliense_, in which thepoet is supposed to be detained at Lille by want of money. There areothers which I think are not to be found in the collected works, such asa _Box of Novels by Titmarsh_, and _Titmarsh in the Picture Galleries_. After the name of Titmarsh had been once assumed it was generally usedin the papers which he sent to _Fraser_. 

Thackeray's connection with _Punch_ began in 1843, and, as far as I canlearn, _Miss Tickletoby's Lectures on English History_ was his firstcontribution. They, however, have not been found worthy of a place inthe collected edition. His short pieces during a long period of his lifewere so numerous that to have brought them all together would haveweighted his more important works with too great an amount of extraneousmatter. The same lady, Miss Tickletoby, gave a series of lectures. Therewas _The History of the next French Revolution_, and _The Wanderings ofour Fat Contributor_, --the first of which is, and the latter is not, perpetuated in his works. Our old friend Jeames Yellowplush, or De laPluche, --for we cannot for a moment doubt that he is the sameJeames, --is very prolific, and as excellent in his orthography, hissense, and satire, as ever. These papers began with _The LuckySpeculator_. He lives in The Albany; he hires a brougham; and is devotedto Miss Emily Flimsey, the daughter of Sir George, who had been hismaster, --to the great injury of poor Maryanne, the fellow-servant whohad loved him in his kitchen days. Then there follows that wonderfulballad, _Jeames of Backley Square_. Upon this he writes an angry letterto _Punch_, dated from his chambers in The Albany; "Has a reglarsuscriber to your amusing paper, I beg leaf to state that I should neverhave done so had I supposed that it was your 'abbit to igspose themistaries of privit life, and to hinger the delligit feelings of umbleindividyouls like myself. " He writes in his own defence, both as toMaryanne and to the share-dealing by which he had made his fortune; andhe ends with declaring his right to the position which he holds. "Youare corrict in stating that I am of hancient Normin fam'ly. This is morethan Peal can say, to whomb I applied for a barnetcy; but the primmierbeing of low igstraction, natrally stikles for his horder. " And theletter is signed "Fitzjames De la Pluche. " Then follows his diary, beginning with a description of the way in which he rushed into_Punch's_ office, declaring his misfortunes, when losses had come uponhim. "I wish to be paid for my contribewtions to your paper. Suckmstances is altered with me. " Whereupon he gets a cheque uponMessrs. Pump and Aldgate, and has himself carried away to newspeculations. He leaves his diary behind him, and _Punch_surreptitiously publishes it. There is much in the diary which comesfrom Thackeray's very heart. Who does not remember his indignationagainst Lord Bareacres? "I gave the old humbug a few shares out of myown pocket. 'There, old Pride, ' says I, 'I like to see you down on yourknees to a footman. There, old Pomposity! Take fifty pounds. I like tosee you come cringing and begging for it!' Whenever I see him in a verypublic place, I take my change for my money. I digg him in the ribbs, orclap his padded old shoulders. I call him 'Bareacres, my old brick, ' andI see him wince. It does my 'art good. " It does Thackeray's heart goodto pour himself out in indignation against some imaginary Bareacres. Heblows off his steam with such an eagerness that he forgets for a time, or nearly forgets, his cacography. Then there are "Jeames on TimeBargings, " "Jeames on the Gauge Question, " "Mr. Jeames again. " Of allour author's heroes Jeames is perhaps the most amusing. There is notmuch in that joke of bad spelling, and we should have been inclined tosay beforehand, that Mrs. Malaprop had done it so well and sosufficiently, that no repetition of it would be received with greatfavour. Like other dishes, it depends upon the cooking. Jeames, with his"suckmstances, " high or low, will be immortal. 

There were _The Travels in London_, a long series of them; and then_Punch's Prize Novelists_, in which Thackeray imitates the language andplots of Bulwer, Disraeli, Charles Lever, G. P. R. James, Mrs. Gore, andCooper, the American. They are all excellent; perhaps Codlingsby is thebest. Mendoza, when he is fighting with the bargeman, or drinking withCodlingsby, or receiving Louis Philippe in his rooms, seems to have comedirect from the pen of our Premier. Phil Fogerty's jump, and the youngerand the elder horsemen, as they come riding into the story, one in hisarmour and the other with his feathers, have the very savour and tone ofLever and James; but then the savour and the tone are not so piquant. Iknow nothing in the way of imitation to equal Codlingsby, if it be notThe Tale of Drury Lane, by W. S. In the _Rejected Addresses_, of whichit is said that Walter Scott declared that he must have written ithimself. The scene between Dr. Franklin, Louis XVI. , Marie Antoinette, and Tatua, the chief of the Nose-rings, as told in _The Stars andStripes_, is perfect in its way, but it fails as being a caricature ofCooper. The caricaturist has been carried away beyond and above hismodel, by his own sense of fun. 

Of the ballads which appeared in _Punch_ I will speak elsewhere, as Imust give a separate short chapter to our author's power ofversification; but I must say a word of _The Snob Papers_, which were atthe time the most popular and the best known of all Thackeray'scontributions to _Punch_. I think that perhaps they were more charming, more piquant, more apparently true, when they came out one after anotherin the periodical, than they are now as collected together. I think thatone at a time would be better than many. And I think that the first halfin the long list of snobs would have been more manifestly snobs to usthan they are now with the second half of the list appended. In fact, there are too many of them, till the reader is driven to tell himselfthat the meaning of it all is that Adam's family is from first to last afamily of snobs. "First, " says Thackeray, in preface, "the world wasmade; then, as a matter of course, snobs; they existed for years andyears, and were no more known than America. But presently, --ingenspatebat tellus, --the people became darkly aware that there was such arace. Not above five-and-twenty years since, a name, an expressivemonosyllable, arose to designate that case. That name has spread overEngland like railroads subsequently; snobs are known and recognisedthroughout an empire on which I am given to understand the sun neversets. _Punch_ appears at the right season to chronicle their history;and the individual comes forth to write that history in _Punch_. 

"I have, --and for this gift I congratulate myself with a deep andabiding thankfulness, --an eye for a snob. If the truthful is thebeautiful, it is beautiful to study even the snobbish;--to track snobsthrough history as certain little dogs in Hampshire hunt out truffles;to sink shafts in society, and come upon rich veins of snob-ore. Snobbishness is like Death, in a quotation from Horace, which I hope younever heard, 'beating with equal foot at poor men's doors, and kickingat the gates of emperors. ' It is a great mistake to judge of snobslightly, and think they exist among the lower classes merely. An immensepercentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of thismortal life. You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of snobs; to do soshows that you are yourself a snob. I myself have been taken for one. "

The state of Thackeray's mind when he commenced his delineations ofsnobbery is here accurately depicted. Written, as these papers were, for_Punch_, and written, as they were, by Thackeray, it was a necessitythat every idea put forth should be given as a joke, and that the satireon society in general should be wrapped up in burlesque absurdity. Butnot the less eager and serious was his intention. When he tells us, atthe end of the first chapter, of a certain Colonel Snobley, whom he metat "Bagnigge Wells, " as he says, and with whom he was so disgusted thathe determined to drive the man out of the house, we are well aware thathe had met an offensive military gentleman, --probably at Tunbridge. Gentlemen thus offensive, even though tamely offensive, were peculiarlyoffensive to him. We presume, by what follows, that this gentleman, ignorantly, --for himself most unfortunately, --spoke of Public[=o]la. Thackeray was disgusted, --disgusted that such a name should be luggedinto ordinary conversation at all, and then that a man should talk abouta name with which he was so little acquainted as not to know how topronounce it. The man was therefore a snob, and ought to be put down; inall which I think that Thackeray was unnecessarily hard on the man, andgave him too much importance. 

So it was with him in his whole intercourse with snobs, --as he callsthem. He saw something that was distasteful, and a man instantly becamea snob in his estimation. "But you _can_ draw, " a man once said to him, there having been some discussion on the subject of Thackeray's artpowers. The man meant no doubt to be civil, but meant also to imply thatfor the purpose needed the drawing was good enough, a matter on which hewas competent to form an opinion. Thackeray instantly put the man downas a snob for flattering him. The little courtesies of the world and thelittle discourtesies became snobbish to him. A man could not wear hishat, or carry his umbrella, or mount his horse, without falling intosome error of snobbism before his hypercritical eyes. St. Michael wouldhave carried his armour amiss, and St. Cecilia have been snobbish as shetwanged her harp. 

I fancy that a policeman considers that every man in the street would beproperly "run in, " if only all the truth about the man had been known. The tinker thinks that every pot is unsound. The cobbler doubts thestability of every shoe. So at last it grew to be the case withThackeray. There was more hope that the city should be saved because ofits ten just men, than for society, if society were to depend on ten whowere not snobs. All this arose from the keenness of his vision into thatwhich was really mean. But that keenness became so aggravated by theintenseness of his search that the slightest speck of dust became to hiseyes as a foul stain. Public[=o]la, as we saw, damned one poor man to awretched immortality, and another was called pitilessly over the coals, because he had mixed a grain of flattery with a bushel of truth. Thackeray tells us that he was born to hunt out snobs, as certain dogsare trained to find truffles. But we can imagine that a dog, veryenergetic at producing truffles, and not finding them as plentiful ashis heart desired, might occasionally produce roots which were notgenuine, --might be carried on in his energies till to his senses everyfungus-root became a truffle. I think that there has been something ofthis with our author's snob-hunting, and that his zeal was at lastgreater than his discrimination. 

The nature of the task which came upon him made this fault almostunavoidable. When a hit is made, say with a piece at a theatre, or witha set of illustrations, or with a series of papers on this or the othersubject, --when something of this kind has suited the taste of themoment, and gratified the public, there is a natural inclination on thepart of those who are interested to continue that which has been foundto be good. It pays and it pleases, and it seems to suit everybody. Thenit is continued usque ad nauseam. We see it in everything. When the kingsaid he liked partridges, partridges were served to him every day. Theworld was pleased with certain ridiculous portraits of its big men. Thebig men were soon used up, and the little men had to be added. 

We can imagine that even _Punch_ may occasionally be at a loss forsubjects wherewith to delight its readers. In fact, _The Snob Papers_were too good to be brought to an end, and therefore there wereforty-five of them. A dozen would have been better. As he himself saysin his last paper, "for a mortal year we have been together flatteringand abusing the human race. " It was exactly that. Of course weknow, --everybody always knows, --that a bad specimen of his order may befound in every division of society. There may be a snob king, a snobparson, a snob member of parliament, a snob grocer, tailor, goldsmith, and the like. But that is not what has been meant. We did not want aspecial satirist to tell us what we all knew before. Had snobbishnessbeen divided for us into its various attributes and characteristics, rather than attributed to various classes, the end sought, --theexposure, namely, of the evil, --would have been better attained. Thesnobbishness of flattery, of falsehood, of cowardice, lying, time-serving, money-worship, would have been perhaps attacked to abetter purpose than that of kings, priests, soldiers, merchants, or menof letters. The assault as made by Thackeray seems to have been made onthe profession generally. 

The paper on clerical snobs is intended to be essentially generous, andis ended by an allusion to certain old clerical friends which has asweet tone of tenderness in it. "How should he who knows you, notrespect you or your calling? May this pen never write a pennyworth againif it ever casts ridicule upon either. " But in the meantime he hasthrown his stone at the covetousness of bishops, because of certainIrish prelates who died rich many years before he wrote. Theinsinuation is that bishops generally take more of the loaves and fishesthan they ought, whereas the fact is that bishops' incomes are generallyso insufficient for the requirements demanded of them, that a feelingprevails that a clergyman to be fit for a bishopric should have aprivate income. He attacks the snobbishness of the universities, showingus how one class of young men consists of fellow-commoners, who wearlace and drink wine with their meals, and another class consists ofsizars, or servitors, who wear badges, as being poor, and are neverallowed to take their food with their fellow-students. That arrangementsfit for past times are not fit for these is true enough. Consequentlythey should gradually be changed; and from day to day are changed. Butthere is no snobbishness in this. Was the fellow-commoner a snob when heacted in accordance with the custom of his rank and standing? or thesizar who accepted aid in achieving that education which he could nothave got without it? or the tutor of the college, who carried out therules entrusted to him? There are two military snobs, Rag and Famish. One is a swindler and the other a debauched young idiot. No doubt theyare both snobs, and one has been, while the other is, an officer. Butthere is, --I think, not an unfairness so much as an absence ofintuition, --in attaching to soldiers especially two vices to which allclasses are open. Rag was a gambling snob, and Famish a drunkensnob, --but they were not specially military snobs. There is a chapterdevoted to dinner-giving snobs, in which I think the doctrine laid downwill not hold water, and therefore that the snobbism imputed is notproved. "Your usual style of meal, " says the satirist--"that isplenteous, comfortable, and in its perfection, --should be that to whichyou welcome your friends. " Then there is something said about the"Brummagem plate pomp, " and we are told that it is right that dukesshould give grand dinners, but that we, --of the middle class, --shouldentertain our friends with the simplicity which is customary with us. Inall this there is, I think, a mistake. The duke gives a grand dinnerbecause he thinks his friends will like it, sitting down when alone withthe duchess, we may suppose, with a retinue and grandeur less than thatwhich is arrayed for gala occasions. So is it with Mr. Jones, who is nosnob because he provides a costly dinner, --if he can afford it. He doesit because he thinks his friends will like it. It may be that the granddinner is a bore, --and that the leg of mutton with plenty of gravy andpotatoes all hot, would be nicer. I generally prefer the leg of muttonmyself. But I do not think that snobbery is involved in the other. Aman, no doubt, may be a snob in giving a dinner. I am not a snob becausefor the occasion I eke out my own dozen silver forks with plated ware;but if I make believe that my plated ware is true silver, then I am asnob. 

In that matter of association with our betters, --we will for the momentpresume that gentlemen and ladies with titles or great wealth are ourbetters, --great and delicate questions arise as to what is snobbery, andwhat is not, in speaking of which Thackeray becomes very indignant, andexplains the intensity of his feelings as thoroughly by a charminglittle picture as by his words. It is a picture of Queen Elizabeth asshe is about to trample with disdain on the coat which that snob Raleighis throwing for her use on the mud before her. This is intended totypify the low parasite nature of the Englishman which has beendescribed in the previous page or two. "And of these calmmoralists, "--it matters not for our present purpose who were themoralists in question, --"is there one I wonder whose heart would notthrob with pleasure if he could be seen walking arm-in-arm with a coupleof dukes down Pall Mall? No; it is impossible, in our condition ofsociety, not to be sometimes a snob. " And again: "How should it beotherwise in a country where lordolatry is part of our creed, and whereour children are brought up to respect the 'Peerage' as the Englishman'ssecond Bible. " Then follows the wonderfully graphic picture of QueenElizabeth and Raleigh. 

In all this Thackeray has been carried away from the truth by his hatredfor a certain meanness of which there are no doubt examples enough. Asfor Raleigh, I think we have always sympathised with the young man, instead of despising him, because he felt on the impulse of the momentthat nothing was too good for the woman and the queen combined. The ideaof getting something in return for his coat could hardly have come soquick to him as that impulse in favour of royalty and womanhood. If oneof us to-day should see the queen passing, would he not raise his hat, and assume, unconsciously, something of an altered demeanour because ofhis reverence for majesty? In doing so he would have no mean desire ofgetting anything. The throne and its occupant are to him honourable, andhe honours them. There is surely no greater mistake than to suppose thatreverence is snobbishness. I meet a great man in the street, and somechance having brought me to his knowledge, he stops and says a word tome. Am I a snob because I feel myself to be graced by his notice? Surelynot. And if his acquaintance goes further and he asks me to dinner, am Inot entitled so far to think well of myself because I have been foundworthy of his society?

They who have raised themselves in the world, and they, too, whoseposition has enabled them to receive all that estimation can give, allthat society can furnish, all that intercourse with the great can give, are more likely to be pleasant companions than they who have been lessfortunate. That picture of two companion dukes in Pall Mall is toogorgeous for human eye to endure. A man would be scorched to cinders byso much light, as he would be crushed by a sack of sovereigns eventhough he might be allowed to have them if he could carry them away. Butthere can be no doubt that a peer taken at random as a companion wouldbe preferable to a clerk from a counting-house, --taken at random. Theclerk might turn out a scholar on your hands, and the peer no betterthan a poor spendthrift;--but the chances are the other way. 

A tufthunter is a snob, a parasite is a snob, the man who allows themanhood within him to be awed by a coronet is a snob. The man whoworships mere wealth is a snob. But so also is he who, in fear lest heshould be called a snob, is afraid to seek the acquaintance, --or if itcome to speak of the acquaintance, --of those whose acquaintance ismanifestly desirable. In all this I feel that Thackeray was carriedbeyond the truth by his intense desire to put down what is mean. 

It is in truth well for us all to know what constitutes snobbism, and Ithink that Thackeray, had he not been driven to dilution and dilatation, could have told us. If you will keep your hands from picking andstealing, and your tongue from evil speaking, lying, and slandering, youwill not be a snob. The lesson seems to be simple, and perhaps a littletrite, but if you look into it, it will be found to contain nearly allthat is necessary. 

But the excellence of each individual picture as it is drawn is not theless striking because there may be found some fault with the series as awhole. What can excel the telling of the story of Captain Shindy at hisclub, --which is, I must own, as true as it is graphic. Captain Shindy isa real snob. "'Look at it, sir; is it cooked? Smell it, sir. Is it meatfit for a gentleman?' he roars out to the steward, who stands tremblingbefore him, and who in vain tells him that the Bishop of Bullocksmithyhas just had three from the same loin. " The telling as regards CaptainShindy is excellent, but the sidelong attack upon the episcopate iscruel. "All the waiters in the club are huddled round the captain'smutton-chop. He roars out the most horrible curses at John for notbringing the pickles. He utters the most dreadful oaths because Thomashas not arrived with the Harvey sauce. Peter comes tumbling with thewater-jug over Jeames, who is bringing the 'glittering canisters withbread. '

 * * * * *

"Poor Mrs. Shindy and the children are, meanwhile, in dingy lodgingssomewhere, waited upon by a charity girl in pattens. "

The visit to Castle Carabas, and the housekeeper's description of thewonders of the family mansion, is as good. "'The Side Entrance and'All, ' says the housekeeper. 'The halligator hover the mantelpiece wasbrought home by Hadmiral St. Michaels, when a capting with Lord Hanson. The harms on the cheers is the harms of the Carabas family. The great'all is seventy feet in lenth, fifty-six in breath, and thirty-eightfeet 'igh. The carvings of the chimlies, representing the buth of Venusand 'Ercules and 'Eyelash, is by Van Chislum, the most famous sculptureof his hage and country. The ceiling, by Calimanco, represents Painting, Harchitecture, and Music, --the naked female figure with thebarrel-organ, --introducing George, first Lord Carabas, to the Temple ofthe Muses. The winder ornaments is by Vanderputty. The floor isPatagonian marble; and the chandelier in the centre was presented toLionel, second marquis, by Lewy the Sixteenth, whose 'ead was cut hoffin the French Revolution. We now henter the South Gallery, " etc. Etc. All of which is very good fun, with a dash of truth in it also as to thesnobbery;--only in this it will be necessary to be quite sure where thesnobbery lies. If my Lord Carabas has a "buth of Venus, " beautiful forall eyes to see, there is no snobbery, only good-nature, in the showingit; nor is there snobbery in going to see it, if a beautiful "buth ofVenus" has charms for you. If you merely want to see the inside of alord's house, and the lord is puffed up with the pride of showing his, then there will be two snobs. 

Of all those papers it may be said that each has that quality of a pearlabout it which in the previous chapter I endeavoured to explain. In eachsome little point is made in excellent language, so as to charm by itsneatness, incision, and drollery. But _The Snob Papers_ had better beread separately, and not taken in the lump. 

Thackeray ceased to write for _Punch_ in 1852, either entirely or almostso. 

CHAPTER III. 

VANITY FAIR. 

Something has been said, in the biographical chapter, of the way inwhich _Vanity Fair_ was produced, and of the period in the author's lifein which it was written. He had become famous, --to a limited extent, --bythe exquisite nature of his contributions to periodicals; but he desiredto do something larger, something greater, something, perhaps, lessephemeral. For though _Barry Lyndon_ and others have not proved to beephemeral, it was thus that he regarded them. In this spirit he went towork and wrote _Vanity Fair_. 

It may be as well to speak first of the faults which were attributed toit. It was said that the good people were all fools, and that the cleverpeople were all knaves. When the critics, --the talking critics as wellas the writing critics, --began to discuss _Vanity Fair_, there hadalready grown up a feeling as to Thackeray as an author--that he was onewho had taken up the business of castigating the vices of the world. Scott had dealt with the heroics, whether displayed in his FloraMacIvors or Meg Merrilieses, in his Ivanhoes or Ochiltrees. MissEdgeworth had been moral; Miss Austen conventional; Bulwer had beenpoetical and sentimental; Marryat and Lever had been funny andpugnacious, always with a dash of gallantry, displaying funny naval andfunny military life; and Dickens had already become great in paintingthe virtues of the lower orders. But by all these some kind of virtuehad been sung, though it might be only the virtue of riding a horse orfighting a duel. Even Eugene Aram and Jack Sheppard, with whom Thackerayfound so much fault, were intended to be fine fellows, though they brokeinto houses and committed murders. The primary object of all thosewriters was to create an interest by exciting sympathy. To enhance oursympathy personages were introduced who were very vile indeed, --asBucklaw, in the guise of a lover, to heighten our feelings forRavenswood and Lucy; as Wild, as a thief-taker, to make us more anxiousfor the saving of Jack; as Ralph Nickleby, to pile up the pity for hisniece Kate. But each of these novelists might have appropriately begunwith an _Arma virumque cano_. The song was to be of somethinggodlike, --even with a Peter Simple. With Thackeray it had beenaltogether different. Alas, alas! the meanness of human wishes; thepoorness of human results! That had been his tone. There can be no doubtthat the heroic had appeared contemptible to him, as being untrue. Thegirl who had deceived her papa and mamma seemed more probable to himthan she who perished under the willow-tree from sheer love, --as givenin the last chapter. Why sing songs that are false? Why tell of LucyAshtons and Kate Nicklebys, when pretty girls, let them be ever sobeautiful, can be silly and sly? Why pour philosophy out of the mouth ofa fashionable young gentleman like Pelham, seeing that young gentlemenof that sort rarely, or we may say never, talk after that fashion? Whymake a housebreaker a gallant charming young fellow, the truth beingthat housebreakers as a rule are as objectionable in their manners asthey are in their morals? Thackeray's mind had in truth worked in thisway, and he had become a satirist. That had been all very well for_Fraser_ and _Punch_; but when his satire was continued through a longnovel, in twenty-four parts, readers, --who do in truth like the heroicbetter than the wicked, --began to declare that this writer was nonovelist, but only a cynic. 

Thence the question arises what a novel should be, --which I willendeavour to discuss very shortly in a later chapter. But this specialfault was certainly found with _Vanity Fair_ at the time. Heroinesshould not only be beautiful, but should be endowed also with a quasicelestial grace, --grace of dignity, propriety, and reticence. A heroineshould hardly want to be married, the arrangement being almost toomundane, --and, should she be brought to consent to undergo such bond, because of its acknowledged utility, it should be at some period sodistant as hardly to present itself to the mind as a reality. Eating anddrinking should be altogether indifferent to her, and her clothes shouldbe picturesque rather than smart, and that from accident rather thandesign. Thackeray's Amelia does not at all come up to the descriptionhere given. She is proud of having a lover, constantly declaring toherself and to others that he is "the greatest and the best ofmen, "--whereas the young gentleman is, in truth, a very little man. Sheis not at all indifferent as to her finery, nor, as we see incidentally, to enjoying her suppers at Vauxhall. She is anxious to be married, --andas soon as possible. A hero too should be dignified and of a noblepresence; a man who, though he may be as poor as Nicholas Nickleby, should nevertheless be beautiful on all occasions, and never deficientin readiness, address, or self-assertion. _Vanity Fair_ is speciallydeclared by the author to be "a novel without a hero, " and therefore wehave hardly a right to complain of deficiency of heroic conduct in anyof the male characters. But Captain Dobbin does become the hero, and isdeficient. Why was he called Dobbin, except to make him ridiculous? Whyis he so shamefully ugly, so shy, so awkward? Why was he the son of agrocer? Thackeray in so depicting him was determined to run counter tothe recognised taste of novel readers. And then again there was thefeeling of another great fault. Let there be the virtuous in a novel andlet there be the vicious, the dignified and the undignified, the sublimeand the ridiculous, --only let the virtuous, the dignified, and thesublime be in the ascendant. Edith Bellenden, and Lord Evandale, andMorton himself would be too stilted, were they not enlivened by Mause, and Cuddie, and Poundtext. But here, in this novel, the vicious and theabsurd have been made to be of more importance than the good and thenoble. Becky Sharp and Rawdon Crawley are the real heroine and hero ofthe story. It is with them that the reader is called upon to interesthimself. It is of them that he will think when he is reading the book. It is by them that he will judge the book when he has read it. There wasno doubt a feeling with the public that though satire may be very wellin its place, it should not be made the backbone of a work so long andso important as this. A short story such as _Catherine_ or _BarryLyndon_ might be pronounced to have been called for by the iniquities ofan outside world; but this seemed to the readers to have been addressedalmost to themselves. Now men and women like to be painted as Titianwould paint them, or Raffaelle, --not as Rembrandt, or even Rubens. 

Whether the ideal or the real is the best form of a novel may bequestioned, but there can be no doubt that as there are novelists whocannot descend from the bright heaven of the imagination to walk withtheir feet upon the earth, so there are others to whom it is not givento soar among clouds. The reader must please himself, and make hisselection if he cannot enjoy both. There are many who are carried into aheaven of pathos by the woes of a Master of Ravenswood, who failaltogether to be touched by the enduring constancy of a Dobbin. Thereare others, --and I will not say but they may enjoy the keenest delightwhich literature can give, --who cannot employ their minds on fictionunless it be conveyed in poetry. With Thackeray it was essential thatthe representations made by him should be, to his own thinking, lifelike. A Dobbin seemed to him to be such a one as might probably bemet with in the world, whereas to his thinking a Ravenswood was simply acreature of the imagination. He would have said of such, as we would sayof female faces by Raffaelle, that women would like to be like them, butare not like them. Men might like to be like Ravenswood, and women maydream of men so formed and constituted, but such men do not exist. Dobbins do, and therefore Thackeray chose to write of a Dobbin. 

So also of the preference given to Becky Sharp and to Rawdon Crawley. Thackeray thought that more can be done by exposing the vices thanextolling the virtues of mankind. No doubt he had a more thorough beliefin the one than in the other. The Dobbins he did encounter--seldom; theRawdon Crawleys very often. He saw around him so much that was mean! Hewas hurt so often by the little vanities of people! It was thus that hewas driven to that overthoughtfulness about snobs of which I have spokenin the last chapter. It thus became natural to him to insist on thething which he hated with unceasing assiduity, and only to break out nowand again into a rapture of love for the true nobility which was dear tohim, --as he did with the character of Captain Dobbin. 

It must be added to all this that, before he has done with his snob orhis knave, he will generally weave in some little trait of humanity bywhich the sinner shall be relieved from the absolute darkness of utteriniquity. He deals with no Varneys or Deputy-Shepherds, all villany andall lies, because the snobs and knaves he had seen had never been allsnob or all knave. Even Shindy probably had some feeling for the poorwoman he left at home. Rawdon Crawley loved his wicked wife dearly, andthere were moments even with her in which some redeeming trait halfreconciles her to the reader. 

Such were the faults which were found in _Vanity Fair_; but though thefaults were found freely, the book was read by all. Those who are oldenough can well remember the effect which it had, and the welcome whichwas given to the different numbers as they appeared. Though the story isvague and wandering, clearly commenced without any idea of an ending, yet there is something in the telling which makes every portion of itperfect in itself. There are absurdities in it which would not beadmitted to anyone who had not a peculiar gift of making even hisabsurdities delightful. No schoolgirl who ever lived would have thrownback her gift-book, as Rebecca did the "dixonary, " out of the carriagewindow as she was taken away from school. But who does not love thatscene with which the novel commences? How could such a girl as AmeliaOsborne have got herself into such society as that in which we see herat Vauxhall? But we forgive it all because of the telling. And thenthere is that crowning absurdity of Sir Pitt Crawley and hisestablishment. 

I never could understand how Thackeray in his first serious attemptcould have dared to subject himself and Sir Pitt Crawley to the criticsof the time. Sir Pitt is a baronet, a man of large property, and inParliament, to whom Becky Sharp goes as a governess at the end of adelightful visit with her friend Amelia Sedley, on leaving MissPinkerton's school. The Sedley carriage takes her to Sir Pitt's door. "When the bell was rung a head appeared between the interstices of thedining-room shutters, and the door was opened by a man in drab breechesand gaiters, with a dirty old coat, a foul old neckcloth lashed roundhis bristly neck, a shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair oftwinkling gray eyes, and a mouth perpetually on the grin. 

"'This Sir Pitt Crawley's?' says John from the box. 

"'E'es, ' says the man at the door with a nod. 

"'Hand down these 'ere trunks there, ' said John. 

"'Hand 'em down yourself, ' said the porter. " But John on the boxdeclines to do this, as he cannot leave his horses. 

"The bald-headed man, taking his hands out of his breeches' pockets, advanced on this summons, and throwing Miss Sharp's trunk over hisshoulder, carried it into the house. " Then Becky is shown into thehouse, and a dismantled dining-room is described, into which she is ledby the dirty man with the trunk. 

 Two kitchen chairs, and a round table, and an attenuated old poker and tongs, were, however, gathered round the fireplace, as was a saucepan over a feeble, sputtering fire. There was a bit of cheese and bread and a tin candlestick on the table, and a little black porter in a pint pot. 

 "Had your dinner, I suppose?" This was said by him of the bald head. "It is not too warm for you? Like a drop of beer?"

 "Where is Sir Pitt Crawley?" said Miss Sharp majestically. 

 "He, he! _I_'m Sir Pitt Crawley. Rek'lect you owe me a pint for bringing down your luggage. He, he! ask Tinker if I ain't. "

 The lady addressed as Mrs. Tinker at this moment made her appearance, with a pipe and a paper of tobacco, for which she had been despatched a minute before Miss Sharp's arrival; and she handed the articles over to Sir Pitt, who had taken his seat by the fire. 

 "Where's the farden?" said he. "I gave you three-halfpence; where's the change, old Tinker?"

 "There, " replied Mrs. Tinker, flinging down the coin. "It's only baronets as cares about farthings. "

Sir Pitt Crawley has always been to me a stretch of audacity which Ihave been unable to understand. But it has been accepted; and from thiscommencement of Sir Pitt Crawley have grown the wonderful characters ofthe Crawley family, --old Miss Crawley, the worldly, wicked, pleasure-loving aunt, the Rev. Bute Crawley and his wife, who are quiteas worldly, the sanctimonious elder son, who in truth is not less so, and Rawdon, who ultimately becomes Becky's husband, --who is the bad heroof the book, as Dobbin is the good hero. They are admirable; but it isquite clear that Thackeray had known nothing of what was coming aboutthem when he caused Sir Pitt to eat his tripe with Mrs. Tinker in theLondon dining-room. 

There is a double story running through the book, the parts of which arebut lightly woven together, of which the former tells us the life andadventures of that singular young woman Becky Sharp, and the other thetroubles and ultimate success of our noble hero Captain Dobbin. Thoughit be true that readers prefer, or pretend to prefer, the romantic tothe common in their novels, and complain of pages which are defiled withthat which is low, yet I find that the absurd, the ludicrous, and eventhe evil, leave more impression behind them than the grand, thebeautiful, or even the good. Dominie Sampson, Dugald Dalgetty, andBothwell are, I think, more remembered than Fergus MacIvor, than Ivanhoehimself, or Mr. Butler the minister. It certainly came to pass that, inspite of the critics, Becky Sharp became the first attraction in _VanityFair_. When we speak now of _Vanity Fair_, it is always to Becky thatour thoughts recur. She has made a position for herself in the world offiction, and is one of our established personages. 

I have already said how she left school, throwing the "dixonary" out ofthe window, like dust from her feet, and was taken to spend a fewhalcyon weeks with her friend Amelia Sedley, at the Sedley mansion inRussell Square. There she meets a brother Sedley home from India, --theimmortal Jos, --at whom she began to set her hitherto untried cap. Herewe become acquainted both with the Sedley and with the Osborne families, with all their domestic affections and domestic snobbery, and have toconfess that the snobbery is stronger than the affection. As we desireto love Amelia Sedley, we wish that the people around her were lessvulgar or less selfish, --especially we wish it in regard to thathandsome young fellow, George Osborne, whom she loves with her wholeheart. But with Jos Sedley we are inclined to be content, though he befat, purse-proud, awkward, a drunkard, and a coward, because we do notwant anything better for Becky. Becky does not want anything better forherself, because the man has money. She has been born a pauper. Sheknows herself to be but ill qualified to set up as a beauty, --though bydint of cleverness she does succeed in that afterwards. She has noadvantages in regard to friends or family as she enters life. She mustearn her bread for herself. Young as she is, she loves money, and has agreat idea of the power of money. Therefore, though Jos is distastefulat all points, she instantly makes her attack. She fails, however, atany rate for the present. She never becomes his wife, but at last shesucceeds in getting some of his money. But before that time comes shehas many a suffering to endure, and many a triumph to enjoy. 

She goes to Sir Pitt Crawley as governess for his second family, and istaken down to Queen's Crawley in the country. There her clevernessprevails, even with the baronet, of whom I have just given Thackeray'sportrait. She keeps his accounts, and writes his letters, and helps himto save money; she reads with the elder sister books they ought not tohave read; she flatters the sanctimonious son. In point of fact, shebecomes all in all at Queen's Crawley, so that Sir Pitt himself falls inlove with her, --for there is reason to think that Sir Pitt may soonbecome again a widower. But there also came down to the baronet's house, on an occasion of general entertaining, Captain Rawdon Crawley. Ofcourse Becky sets her cap at him, and of course succeeds. She alwayssucceeds. Though she is only the governess, he insists upon dancing withher, to the neglect of all the young ladies of the neighbourhood. Theycontinue to walk together by moonlight, --or starlight, --the great, heavy, stupid, half-tipsy dragoon, and the intriguing, covetous, altogether unprincipled young woman. And the two young people absolutelycome to love one another in their way, --the heavy, stupid, fuddleddragoon, and the false, covetous, altogether unprincipled young woman. 

The fat aunt Crawley is a maiden lady, very rich, and Becky quitesucceeds in gaining the rich aunt by her wiles. The aunt becomes so fondof Becky down in the country, that when she has to return to her ownhouse in town, sick from over-eating, she cannot be happy without takingBecky with her. So Becky is installed in the house in London, havingbeen taken away abruptly from her pupils, to the great dismay of the oldlady's long-established resident companion. They all fall in love withher; she makes herself so charming, she is so clever; she can even, byhelp of a little care in dressing, become so picturesque! As all thisgoes on, the reader feels what a great personage is Miss Rebecca Sharp. 

Lady Crawley dies down in the country, while Becky is still staying withhis sister, who will not part with her. Sir Pitt at once rushes up totown, before the funeral, looking for consolation where only he can findit. Becky brings him down word from his sister's room that the old ladyis too ill to see him. 

 "So much the better, " Sir Pitt answered; "I want to see you, Miss Sharp. I want you back at Queen's Crawley, miss, " the baronet said. His eyes had such a strange look, and were fixed upon her so stedfastly that Rebecca Sharp began almost to tremble. Then she half promises, talks about the dear children, and angles with the old man. "I tell you I want you, " he says; "I'm going back to the vuneral, will you come back?--yes or no?"

 "I daren't. I don't think--it wouldn't be right--to be alone--with you, sir, " Becky said, seemingly in great agitation. 

 "I say again, I want you. I can't get on without you. I didn't see what it was till you went away. The house all goes wrong. It's not the same place. All my accounts has got muddled again. You must come back. Do come back. Dear Becky, do come. "

 "Come, --as what, sir?" Rebecca gasped out. 

 "Come as Lady Crawley, if you like. There, will that zatisfy you? Come back and be my wife. You're vit for it. Birth be hanged. You're as good a lady as ever I see. You've got more brains in your little vinger than any baronet's wife in the country. Will you come? Yes or no?" Rebecca is startled, but the old man goes on. "I'll make you happy; zee if I don't. You shall do what you like, spend what you like, and have it all your own way. I'll make you a settlement. I'll do everything regular. Look here, " and the old man fell down on his knees and leered at her like a satyr. 

But Rebecca, though she had been angling, angling for favour and loveand power, had not expected this. For once in her life she loses herpresence of mind, and exclaims: "Oh Sir Pitt; oh sir; I--I'm marriedalready!" She has married Rawdon Crawley, Sir Pitt's younger son, MissCrawley's favourite among those of her family who are looking for hermoney. But she keeps her secret for the present, and writes a charmingletter to the Captain; "Dearest, --Something tells me that we shallconquer. You shall leave that odious regiment. Quit gaming, racing, andbe a good boy, and we shall all live in Park Lane, and _ma tante_ shallleave us all her money. " _Ma tante's_ money has been in her mind allthrough, but yet she loves him. 

 "Suppose the old lady doesn't come to, " Rawdon said to his little wife as they sat together in the snug little Brompton lodgings. She had been trying the new piano all the morning. The new gloves fitted her to a nicety. The new shawl became her wonderfully. The new rings glittered on her little hands, and the new watch ticked at her waist. 

 "_I'll_ make your fortune, " she said; and Delilah patted Samson's cheek. 

 "You can do anything, " he said, kissing the little hand. "By Jove you can! and we'll drive down to the Star and Garter and dine, by Jove!"

They were neither of them quite heartless at that moment, nor did Rawdonever become quite bad. Then follow the adventures of Becky as a marriedwoman, through all of which there is a glimmer of love for her stupidhusband, while it is the real purpose of her heart to get money how shemay, --by her charms, by her wit, by her lies, by her readiness. Shemakes love to everyone, --even to her sanctimonious brother-in-law, whobecomes Sir Pitt in his time, --and always succeeds. But in herlove-making there is nothing of love. She gets hold of thatwell-remembered old reprobate, the Marquis of Steyne, who possesses thetwo valuable gifts of being very dissolute and very rich, and from himshe obtains money and jewels to her heart's desire. The abominations ofLord Steyne are depicted in the strongest language of which _VanityFair_ admits. The reader's hair stands almost on end in horror at thewickedness of the two wretches, --at her desire for money, sheer money;and his for wickedness, sheer wickedness. Then her husband finds herout, --poor Rawdon! who with all his faults and thickheaded stupidity, has become absolutely entranced by the wiles of his little wife. He iscarried off to a sponging-house, in order that he may be out of the way, and, on escaping unexpectedly from thraldom, finds the lord in hiswife's drawing-room. Whereupon he thrashes the old lord, nearly killinghim; takes away the plunder which he finds on his wife's person, andhurries away to seek assistance as to further revenge;--for he isdetermined to shoot the marquis, or to be shot. He goes to one CaptainMacmurdo, who is to act as his second, and there he pours out his heart. "You don't know how fond I was of that one, " Rawdon said, half-inarticulately. "Damme, I followed her like a footman! I gave upeverything I had to her. I'm a beggar because I would marry her. ByJove, sir, I've pawned my own watch to get her anything she fancied. Andshe, --she's been making a purse for herself all the time, and grudged mea hundred pounds to get me out of quod!" His friend alleges that thewife may be innocent after all. "It may be so, " Rawdon exclaimed sadly;"but this don't look very innocent!" And he showed the captain thethousand-pound note which he had found in Becky's pocketbook. 

But the marquis can do better than fight; and Rawdon, in spite of histrue love, can do better than follow the quarrel up to his own undoing. The marquis, on the spur of the moment, gets the lady's husbandappointed governor of Coventry Island, with a salary of three thousandpounds a year; and poor Rawdon at last condescends to accept theappointment. He will not see his wife again, but he makes her anallowance out of his income. 

In arranging all this, Thackeray is enabled to have a side blow at theBritish way of distributing patronage, --for the favour of which he wasafterwards himself a candidate. He quotes as follows from _The Royalist_newspaper: "We hear that the governorship"--of Coventry Island--"hasbeen offered to Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C. B. , a distinguished Waterlooofficer. We need not only men of acknowledged bravery, but men ofadministrative talents to superintend the affairs of our colonies; andwe have no doubt that the gentleman selected by the Colonial Office tofill the lamented vacancy which has occurred at Coventry Island, isadmirably calculated for the post. " The reader, however, is aware thatthe officer in question cannot write a sentence or speak two wordscorrectly. 

Our heroine's adventures are carried on much further, but they cannot begiven here in detail. To the end she is the same, --utterly false, selfish, covetous, and successful. To have made such a woman really inlove would have been a mistake. Her husband she likes best, --because heis, or was, her own. But there is no man so foul, so wicked, sounattractive, but that she can fawn over him for money and jewels. Thereare women to whom nothing is nasty, either in person, language, scenes, actions, or principle, --and Becky is one of them; and yet she is herselfattractive. A most wonderful sketch, for the perpetration of which allThackeray's power of combined indignation and humour was necessary!

The story of Amelia and her two lovers, George Osborne and Captain, oras he came afterwards to be, Major, and Colonel Dobbin, is lessinteresting, simply because goodness and eulogy are less exciting thanwickedness and censure. Amelia is a true, honest-hearted, thoroughlyEnglish young woman, who loves her love because he is grand, --to hereyes, --and loving him, loves him with all her heart. Readers have saidthat she is silly, only because she is not heroic. I do not know thatshe is more silly than many young ladies whom we who are old have lovedin our youth, or than those whom our sons are loving at the presenttime. Readers complain of Amelia because she is absolutely true tonature. There are no Raffaellistic touches, no added graces, no divineromance. She is feminine all over, and British, --loving, true, thoroughly unselfish, yet with a taste for having things comfortable, forgiving, quite capable of jealousy, but prone to be appeased at once, at the first kiss; quite convinced that her lover, her husband, herchildren are the people in all the world to whom the greatestconsideration is due. Such a one is sure to be the dupe of a BeckySharp, should a Becky Sharp come in her way, --as is the case with somany sweet Amelias whom we have known. But in a matter of love she issound enough and sensible enough, --and she is as true as steel. I knowno trait in Amelia which a man would be ashamed to find in his owndaughter. 

She marries her George Osborne, who, to tell the truth of him, is but apoor kind of fellow, though he is a brave soldier. He thinks much of hisown person, and is selfish. Thackeray puts in a touch or two here andthere by which he is made to be odious. He would rather give a presentto himself than to the girl who loved him. Nevertheless, when her fatheris ruined he marries her, and he fights bravely at Waterloo, and iskilled. "No more firing was heard at Brussels. The pursuit rolled milesaway. Darkness came down on the field and the city, --and Amelia waspraying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bulletthrough his heart. "

Then follows the long courtship of Dobbin, the true hero, --he who hasbeen the friend of George since their old school-days; who has livedwith him and served him, and has also loved Amelia. But he has lovedher, --as one man may love another, --solely with a view to the profit ofhis friend. He has known all along that George and Amelia have beenengaged to each other as boy and girl. George would have neglected her, but Dobbin would not allow it. George would have jilted the girl wholoved him, but Dobbin would not let him. He had nothing to get forhimself, but loving her as he did, it was the work of his life to getfor her all that she wanted. 

George is shot at Waterloo, and then come fifteen years ofwidowhood, --fifteen years during which Becky is carrying on hermanoeuvres, --fifteen years during which Amelia cannot bring herself toaccept the devotion of the old captain, who becomes at last a colonel. But at the end she is won. "The vessel is in port. He has got the prizehe has been trying for all his life. The bird has come in at last. Thereit is, with its head on its shoulder, billing and cooing clean up to hisheart, with soft outstretched fluttering wings. This is what he hasasked for every day and hour for eighteen years. This is what he haspined after. Here it is, --the summit, the end, the last page of thethird volume. "

The reader as he closes the book has on his mind a strong conviction, the strongest possible conviction, that among men George is as weak andDobbin as noble as any that he has met in literature; and that amongwomen Amelia is as true and Becky as vile as any he has encountered. Ofso much he will be conscious. In addition to this he will unconsciouslyhave found that every page he has read will have been of interest tohim. There has been no padding, no longueurs; every bit will have hadits weight with him. And he will find too at the end, if he will thinkof it--though readers, I fear, seldom think much of this in regard tobooks they have read--that the lesson taught in every page has beengood. There may be details of evil painted so as to disgust, --paintedalmost too plainly, --but none painted so as to allure. 

CHAPTER IV. 

PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. 

The absence of the heroic was, in Thackeray, so palpable to Thackerayhimself that in his original preface to _Pendennis_, when he began to beaware that his reputation was made, he tells his public what they mayexpect and what they may not, and makes his joking complaint of thereaders of his time because they will not endure with patience the truepicture of a natural man. "Even the gentlemen of our age, " hesays, --adding that the story of _Pendennis_ is an attempt to describeone of them, just as he is, --"even those we cannot show as they are withthe notorious selfishness of their time and their education. Since theauthor of _Tom Jones_ was buried, no writer of fiction among us has beenpermitted to depict to his utmost power a MAN. We must shape him, andgive him a certain conventional temper. " Then he rebukes his audiencebecause they will not listen to the truth. "You will not hear what movesin the real world, what passes in society, in the clubs, colleges, mess-rooms, --what is the life and talk of your sons. " You want theRaffaellistic touch, or that of some painter of horrors equally removedfrom the truth. I tell you how a man really does act, --as did Fieldingwith Tom Jones, --but it does not satisfy you. You will not sympathisewith this young man of mine, this Pendennis, because he is neitherangel nor imp. If it be so, let it be so. I will not paint for youangels or imps, because I do not see them. The young man of the day, whom I do see, and of whom I know the inside and the out thoroughly, himI have painted for you; and here he is, whether you like the picture ornot. This is what Thackeray meant, and, having this in his mind, heproduced _Pendennis_. 

The object of a novel should be to instruct in morals while it amuses. Icannot think but that every novelist who has thought much of his artwill have realised as much as that for himself. Whether this may best bedone by the transcendental or by the commonplace is the question whichit more behoves the reader than the author to answer, because the authormay be fairly sure that he who can do the one will not, probably cannot, do the other. If a lad be only five feet high he does not try to enlistin the Guards. Thackeray complains that many ladies have "remonstratedand subscribers left him, " because of his realistic tendency. Nevertheless he has gone on with his work, and, in _Pendennis_, haspainted a young man as natural as Tom Jones. Had he expended himself inthe attempt, he could not have drawn a Master of Ravenswood. 

It has to be admitted that Pendennis is not a fine fellow. He is not asweak, as selfish, as untrustworthy as that George Osborne whom Ameliamarried in _Vanity Fair_; but nevertheless, he is weak, and selfish, anduntrustworthy. He is not such a one as a father would wish to see hisson, or a mother to welcome as a lover for her daughter. But then, fathers are so often doomed to find their sons not all that they wish, and mothers to see their girls falling in love with young men who arenot Paladins. In our individual lives we are contented to endure anadmixture of evil, which we should resent if imputed to us in thegeneral. We presume ourselves to be truth-speaking, noble in oursentiments, generous in our actions, modest and unselfish, chivalrousand devoted. But we forgive and pass over in silence a few delinquenciesamong ourselves. What boy at school ever is a coward, --in the general?What gentleman ever tells a lie? What young lady is greedy? We take itfor granted, as though they were fixed rules in life, that our boys fromour public schools look us in the face and are manly; that our gentlementell the truth as a matter of course; and that our young ladies arerefined and unselfish. Thackeray is always protesting that it is not so, and that no good is to be done by blinking the truth. He knows that wehave our little home experiences. Let us have the facts out, and mendwhat is bad if we can. This novel of _Pendennis_ is one of his loudestprotests to this effect. 

I will not attempt to tell the story of Pendennis, how his mother lovedhim, how he first came to be brought up together with Laura Bell, how hethrashed the other boys when he was a boy, and how he fell in love withMiss Fotheringay, née Costigan, and was determined to marry her while hewas still a hobbledehoy, how he went up to Boniface, that well-knowncollege at Oxford, and there did no good, spending money which he hadnot got, and learning to gamble. The English gentleman, as we know, never lies; but Pendennis is not quite truthful; when the college tutor, thinking that he hears the rattling of dice, makes his way into Pen'sroom, Pen and his two companions are found with three _Homers_ beforethem, and Pen asks the tutor with great gravity; "What was the presentcondition of the river Scamander, and whether it was navigable or no?"He tells his mother that, during a certain vacation he must stay up andread, instead of coming home, --but, nevertheless, he goes up to Londonto amuse himself. The reader is soon made to understand that, though Penmay be a fine gentleman, he is not trustworthy. But he repents and comeshome, and kisses his mother; only, alas! he will always be kissingsomebody else also. 

The story of the Amorys and the Claverings, and that wonderful Frenchcook M. Alcide Mirobolant, forms one of those delightful digressionswhich Thackeray scatters through his novels rather than weaves intothem. They generally have but little to do with the story itself, andare brought in only as giving scope for some incident to the real heroor heroine. But in this digression Pen is very much concerned indeed, for he is brought to the very verge of matrimony with that peculiarlydisagreeable lady Miss Amory. He does escape at last, but only within afew pages of the end, when we are made unhappy by the lady's victoryover that poor young sinner Foker, with whom we have all come tosympathise, in spite of his vulgarity and fast propensities. She wouldto the last fain have married Pen, in whom she believes, thinking thathe would make a name for her. "Il me faut des émotions, " says Blanche. Whereupon the author, as he leaves her, explains the nature of this MissAmory's feelings. "For this young lady was not able to carry out anyemotion to the full, but had a sham enthusiasm, a sham hatred, a shamlove, a sham taste, a sham grief; each of which flared and shone veryvehemently for an instant, but subsided and gave place to the next shamemotion. " Thackeray, when he drew this portrait, must certainly havehad some special young lady in his view. But though we are made unhappyfor Foker, Foker too escapes at last, and Blanche, with her emotions, marries that very doubtful nobleman Comte Montmorenci de Valentinois. 

But all this of Miss Amory is but an episode. The purport of the storyis the way in which the hero is made to enter upon the world, subject ashe has been to the sweet teaching of his mother, and subject as he ismade to be to the worldly lessons of his old uncle the major. Then he isill, and nearly dies, and his mother comes up to nurse him. And there ishis friend Warrington, of whose family down in Suffolk we shall haveheard something when we have read _The Virginians_, --one I think of thefinest characters, as it is certainly one of the most touching, thatThackeray ever drew. Warrington, and Pen's mother, and Laura are ourhero's better angels, --angels so good as to make us wonder that acreature so weak should have had such angels about him; though we aredriven to confess that their affection and loyalty for him are natural. There is a melancholy beneath the roughness of Warrington, and afeminine softness combined with the reticent manliness of the man, whichhave endeared him to readers beyond perhaps any character in the book. Major Pendennis has become immortal. Selfish, worldly, false, padded, caring altogether for things mean and poor in themselves; still thereader likes him. It is not quite all for himself. To Pen he isgood, --to Pen who is the head of his family, and to come after him asthe Pendennis of the day. To Pen and to Pen's mother he is beneficentafter his lights. In whatever he undertakes it is so contrived that thereader shall in some degree sympathise with him. And so it is with poorold Costigan, the drunken Irish captain, Miss Fotheringay's papa. He wasnot a pleasant person. "We have witnessed the déshabille of MajorPendennis, " says our author; "will any one wish to be valet-de-chambreto our other hero, Costigan? It would seem that the captain, beforeissuing from his bedroom, scented himself with otto of whisky. " Yetthere is a kindliness about him which softens our hearts, though intruth he is very careful that the kindness shall always be shown tohimself. 

Among these people Pen makes his way to the end of the novel, comingnear to shipwreck on various occasions, and always deserving theshipwreck which he has almost encountered. Then there will arise thequestion whether it might not have been better that he should bealtogether shipwrecked, rather than housed comfortably with such a wifeas Laura, and left to that enjoyment of happiness forever after, whichis the normal heaven prepared for heroes and heroines who have donetheir work well through three volumes. It is almost the only instance inall Thackeray's works in which this state of bliss is reached. GeorgeOsborne, who is the beautiful lover in _Vanity Fair_, is killed almostbefore our eyes, on the field of battle, and we feel that Nemesis haswith justice taken hold of him. Poor old Dobbin does marry the widow, after fifteen years of further service, when we know him to be amiddle-aged man and her a middle-aged woman. That glorious Paradise ofwhich I have spoken requires a freshness which can hardly be attributedto the second marriage of a widow who has been fifteen years mourningfor her first husband. Clive Newcome, "the first young man, " if we mayso call him, of the novel which I shall mention just now, is carried sofar beyond his matrimonial elysium that we are allowed to see tooplainly how far from true may be those promises of hymeneal happinessforever after. The cares of married life have settled down heavily uponhis young head before we leave him. He not only marries, but loses hiswife, and is left a melancholy widower with his son. Esmond and Beatrixcertainly reach no such elysium as that of which we are speaking. ButPen, who surely deserved a Nemesis, though perhaps not one so black asthat demanded by George Osborne's delinquencies, is treated as though hehad been passed through the fire, and had come out, --if not pure gold, still gold good enough for goldsmiths. "And what sort of a husband willthis Pendennis be?" This is the question asked by the author himself atthe end of the novel; feeling, no doubt, some hesitation as to thejustice of what he had just done. "And what sort of a husband will thisPendennis be?" many a reader will ask, doubting the happiness of such amarriage and the future of Laura. The querists are referred to that ladyherself, who, seeing his faults and wayward moods--seeing and owningthat there are better men than he--loves him always with the mostconstant affection. The assertion could be made with perfect confidence, but is not to the purpose. That Laura's affection should be constant, noone would doubt; but more than that is wanted for happiness. How aboutPendennis and his constancy?

_The Newcomes_, which I bracket in this chapter with _Pendennis_, wasnot written till after _Esmond_, and appeared between that novel and_The Virginians_, which was a sequel to _Esmond_. It is supposed to beedited by Pen, whose own adventures we have just completed, and iscommenced by that celebrated night passed by Colonel Newcome and his boyClive at the Cave of Harmony, during which the colonel is at first sopleasantly received and so genially entertained, but from which he is atlast banished, indignant at the iniquities of our drunken old friendCaptain Costigan, with whom we had become intimate in Pen's own memoirs. The boy Clive is described as being probably about sixteen. At the endof the story he has run through the adventures of his early life, and isleft a melancholy man, a widower, one who has suffered the extremity ofmisery from a stepmother, and who is wrapped up in the only son that isleft to him, --as had been the case with his father at the beginning ofthe novel. _The Newcomes_, therefore, like Thackeray's other tales, israther a slice from the biographical memoirs of a family, than a romanceor novel in itself. 

It is full of satire from the first to the last page. Every word of itseems to have been written to show how vile and poor a place this worldis; how prone men are to deceive, how prone to be deceived. There is ascene in which "his Excellency Rummun Loll, otherwise his HighnessRummun Loll, " is introduced to Colonel Newcome, --or ratherpresented, --for the two men had known each other before. All London wastalking of Rummun Loll, taking him for an Indian prince, but thecolonel, who had served in India, knew better. Rummun Loll was no morethan a merchant, who had made a precarious fortune by doubtful means. All the girls, nevertheless, are running after his Excellency. "He'sknown to have two wives already in India, " says Barnes Newcome; "but, bygad, for a settlement, I believe some of the girls here would marryhim. " We have a delightful illustration of the London girls, with theirbare necks and shoulders, sitting round Rummun Loll and worshipping himas he reposes on his low settee. There are a dozen of them so enchantedthat the men who wish to get a sight of the Rummun are quite kept at adistance. This is satire on the women. A few pages on we come upon aclergyman who is no more real than Rummun Loll. The clergyman, CharlesHoneyman, had married the colonel's sister and had lost his wife, andnow the brothers-in-law meet. "'Poor, poor Emma!' exclaimed theecclesiastic, casting his eyes towards the chandelier and passing awhite cambric pocket-handkerchief gracefully before them. No man inLondon understood the ring business or the pocket-handkerchief businessbetter, or smothered his emotion more beautifully. 'In the gayestmoments, in the giddiest throng of fashion, the thoughts of the pastwill rise; the departed will be among us still. But this is not thestrain wherewith to greet the friend newly arrived on our shores. How itrejoices me to behold you in old England. '" And so the satirist goes onwith Mr. Honeyman the clergyman. Mr. Honeyman the clergyman has beenalready mentioned, in that extract made in our first chapter from _Lovelthe Widower_. It was he who assisted another friend, "with his wheedlingtongue, " in inducing Thackeray to purchase that "neat little literarypaper, "--called then _The Museum_, but which was in truth _The NationalStandard_. In describing Barnes Newcome, the colonel's relative, Thackeray in the same scene attacks the sharpness of the young men ofbusiness of the present day. There were, or were to be, sometransactions with Rummun Loll, and Barnes Newcome, being in doubt, asksthe colonel a question or two as to the certainty of the Rummun's money, much to the colonel's disgust. "The young man of business had droppedhis drawl or his languor, and was speaking quite unaffectedly, good-naturedly, and selfishly. Had you talked to him for a week youwould not have made him understand the scorn and loathing with which thecolonel regarded him. Here was a young fellow as keen as the oldestcurmudgeon, --a lad with scarce a beard to his chin, that would pursuehis bond as rigidly as Shylock. " "Barnes Newcome never missed a church, "he goes on, "or dressing for dinner. He never kept a tradesman waitingfor his money. He seldom drank too much, and never was late forbusiness, or huddled over his toilet, however brief his sleep or severehis headache. In a word, he was as scrupulously whited as any sepulchrein the whole bills of mortality. " Thackeray had lately seen some BarnesNewcome when he wrote that. 

It is all satire; but there is generally a touch of pathos even throughthe satire. It is satire when Miss Quigley, the governess in ParkStreet, falls in love with the old colonel after some dim fashion of herown. "When she is walking with her little charges in the Park, faintsignals of welcome appear on her wan cheeks. She knows the dear colonelamidst a thousand horsemen. " The colonel had drunk a glass of wine withher after his stately fashion, and the foolish old maid thinks too muchof it. Then we are told how she knits purses for him, "as she sits alonein the schoolroom, --high up in that lone house, when the little ones arelong since asleep, --before her dismal little tea-tray, and her littledesk containing her mother's letters and her mementoes of home. " MissQuigley is an ass; but we are made to sympathise entirely with the ass, because of that morsel of pathos as to her mother's letters. 

Clive Newcome, our hero, who is a second Pen, but a better fellow, ishimself a satire on young men, --on young men who are idle and ambitiousat the same time. He is a painter; but, instead of being proud of hisart, is half ashamed of it, --because not being industrious he has not, while yet young, learned to excel. He is "doing" a portrait of Mrs. Pendennis, Laura, and thus speaks of his business. "No. 666, "--he issupposed to be quoting from the catalogue of the Royal Academy for theyear, --"No. 666. Portrait of Joseph Muggins, Esq. , Newcome, GeorgeStreet. No. 979. Portrait of Mrs. Muggins on her gray pony, Newcome. No. 579. Portrait of Joseph Muggins, Esq. 's dog Toby, Newcome. This is whatI am fit for. These are the victories I have set myself on achieving. OhMrs. Pendennis! isn't it humiliating? Why isn't there a war? Why haven'tI a genius? There is a painter who lives hard by, and who begs me tocome and look at his work. He is in the Muggins line too. He gets hiscanvases with a good light upon them; excludes the contemplation ofother objects; stands beside his picture in an attitude himself; andthinks that he and they are masterpieces. Oh me, what drivellingwretches we are! Fame!--except that of just the one or two, --what's theuse of it?" In all of which Thackeray is speaking his own feelings abouthimself as well as the world at large. What's the use of it all? Ohvanitas vanitatum! Oh vanity and vexation of spirit! "So Clive Newcome, "he says afterwards, "lay on a bed of down and tossed and tumbled there. He went to fine dinners, and sat silent over them; rode fine horses, andblack care jumped up behind the moody horseman. " As I write this I havebefore me a letter from Thackeray to a friend describing his ownsuccess when _Vanity Fair_ was coming out, full of the same feeling. Heis making money, but he spends it so fast that he never has any; and asfor the opinions expressed on his books, he cares little for what hehears. There was always present to him a feeling of black care seatedbehind the horseman, --and would have been equally so had there been noreal care present to him. A sardonic melancholy was the characteristicmost common to him, --which, however, was relieved by an always presentcapacity for instant frolic. It was these attributes combined which madehim of all satirists the most humorous, and of all humorists the mostsatirical. It was these that produced the Osbornes, the Dobbins, thePens, the Clives, and the Newcomes, whom, when he loved them the most, he could not save himself from describing as mean and unworthy. Asomewhat heroic hero of romance, --such a one, let us say, as Waverley, or Lovel in _The Antiquary_, or Morton in _Old Mortality_, --wasrevolting to him, as lacking those foibles which human nature seemed tohim to demand. 

The story ends with two sad tragedies, neither of which would have beendemanded by the story, had not such sadness been agreeable to theauthor's own idiosyncrasy. The one is the ruin of the old colonel'sfortunes, he having allowed himself to be enticed into bubblespeculations; and the other is the loss of all happiness, and evencomfort, to Clive the hero, by the abominations of his mother-in-law. The woman is so iniquitous, and so tremendous in her iniquities, thatshe rises to tragedy. Who does not know Mrs. Mack the Campaigner? Why atthe end of his long story should Thackeray have married his hero to solackadaisical a heroine as poor little Rosey, or brought on the stagesuch a she-demon as Rosey's mother? But there is the Campaigner in allher vigour, a marvel of strength of composition, --one of the mostvividly drawn characters in fiction;--but a woman so odious that one isinduced to doubt whether she should have been depicted. 

The other tragedy is altogether of a different kind, and thoughunnecessary to the story, and contrary to that practice of story-tellingwhich seems to demand that calamities to those personages with whom weare to sympathise should not be brought in at the close of a work offiction, is so beautifully told that no lover of Thackeray's work wouldbe willing to part with it. The old colonel, as we have said, is ruinedby speculation, and in his ruin is brought to accept the alms of thebrotherhood of the Grey Friars. Then we are introduced to the CharterHouse, at which, as most of us know, there still exists a brotherhood ofthe kind. He dons the gown, --this old colonel, who had always beencomfortable in his means, and latterly apparently rich, --and occupiesthe single room, and eats the doled bread, and among his poor brotherssits in the chapel of his order. The description is perhaps as fine asanything that Thackeray ever did. The gentleman is still the gentleman, with all the pride of gentry;--but not the less is he the humblebedesman, aware that he is living upon charity, not made to grovel byany sense of shame, but knowing that, though his normal pride may beleft to him, an outward demeanour of humility is befitting. 

And then he dies. "At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began totoll, and Thomas Newcome's hands outside the bed feebly beat time, --and, just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over hisface, and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said, 'Adsum, '--and fell back. It was the word we used at school when nameswere called; and, lo, he whose heart was as that of a little child hadanswered to his name, and stood in the presence of his Maker!"

CHAPTER V. 

ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 

The novel with which we are now going to deal I regard as the greatestwork that Thackeray did. Though I do not hesitate to compare himselfwith himself, I will make no comparison between him and others; Itherefore abstain from assigning to _Esmond_ any special niche amongprose fictions in the English language, but I rank it so high as tojustify me in placing him among the small number of the highest class ofEnglish novelists. Much as I think of _Barry Lyndon_ and _Vanity Fair_, I cannot quite say this of them; but, as a chain is not stronger thanits weakest link, so is a poet, or a dramatist, or a novelist to beplaced in no lower level than that which he has attained by his highestsustained flight. The excellence which has been reached here Thackerayachieved, without doubt, by giving a greater amount of forethought tothe work he had before him than had been his wont. When we were young weused to be told, in our house at home, that "elbow-grease" was the oneessential necessary to getting a tough piece of work well done. If amahogany table was to be made to shine, it was elbow-grease that theoperation needed. Forethought is the elbow-grease which a novelist, --orpoet, or dramatist, --requires. It is not only his plot that has to beturned and re-turned in his mind, not his plot chiefly, but he has tomake himself sure of his situations, of his characters, of his effects, so that when the time comes for hitting the nail he may know where tohit it on the head, --so that he may himself understand the passion, thecalmness, the virtues, the vices, the rewards and punishments which hemeans to explain to others, --so that his proportions shall be correct, and he be saved from the absurdity of devoting two-thirds of his book tothe beginning, or two-thirds to the completion of his task. It is fromwant of this special labour, more frequently than from intellectualdeficiency, that the tellers of stories fail so often to hit their nailson the head. To think of a story is much harder work than to write it. The author can sit down with the pen in his hand for a given time, andproduce a certain number of words. That is comparatively easy, and if hehave a conscience in regard to his task, work will be done regularly. But to think it over as you lie in bed, or walk about, or sit cosilyover your fire, to turn it all in your thoughts, and make the thingsfit, --that requires elbow-grease of the mind. The arrangement of thewords is as though you were walking simply along a road. The arrangementof your story is as though you were carrying a sack of flour while youwalked. Fielding had carried his sack of flour before he wrote _TomJones_, and Scott his before he produced _Ivanhoe_. So had Thackeraydone, --a very heavy sack of flour, --in creating _Esmond_. In _VanityFair_, in _Pendennis_, and in _The Newcomes_, there was more of thatmere wandering in which no heavy burden was borne. The richness of theauthor's mind, the beauty of his language, his imagination andperception of character are all there. For that which was lovely he hasshown his love, and for the hateful his hatred; but, nevertheless, theyare comparatively idle books. His only work, as far as I can judge them, in which there is no touch of idleness, is _Esmond_. _Barry Lyndon_ isconsecutive, and has the well-sustained purpose of exhibiting a finishedrascal; but _Barry Lyndon_ is not quite the same from beginning to end. All his full-fledged novels, except _Esmond_, contain rather strings ofincidents and memoirs of individuals, than a completed story. But_Esmond_ is a whole from beginning to end, with its tale well told, itspurpose developed, its moral brought home, --and its nail hit well on thehead and driven in. 

I told Thackeray once that it was not only his best work, but so muchthe best, that there was none second to it. "That was what I intended, "he said, "but I have failed. Nobody reads it. After all, what does itmatter?" he went on after awhile. "If they like anything, one ought tobe satisfied. After all, Esmond was a prig. " Then he laughed and changedthe subject, not caring to dwell on thoughts painful to him. Theelbow-grease of thinking was always distasteful to him, and had no doubtbeen so when he conceived and carried out this work. 

To the ordinary labour necessary for such a novel he added very much byhis resolution to write it in a style different, not only from thatwhich he had made his own, but from that also which belonged to thetime. He had devoted himself to the reading of the literature of QueenAnne's reign, and having chosen to throw his story into that period, andto create in it personages who were to be peculiarly concerned with theperiod, he resolved to use as the vehicle for his story the forms ofexpression then prevalent. No one who has not tried it can understandhow great is the difficulty of mastering a phase of one's own languageother than that which habit has made familiar. To write in anotherlanguage, if the language be sufficiently known, is a much less arduousundertaking. The lad who attempts to write his essay in Ciceronian Latinstruggles to achieve a style which is not indeed common to him, but ismore common than any other he has become acquainted with in that tongue. But Thackeray in his work had always to remember his Swift, his Steele, and his Addison, and to forget at the same time the modes of expressionwhich the day had adopted. Whether he asked advice on the subject, I donot know. But I feel sure that if he did he must have been counselledagainst it. Let my reader think what advice he would give to any writeron such a subject. Probably he asked no advice, and would have takennone. No doubt he found himself, at first imperceptibly, gliding into aphraseology which had attractions for his ear, and then probably was socharmed with the peculiarly masculine forms of sentences which thusbecame familiar to him, that he thought it would be almost as difficultto drop them altogether as altogether to assume the use of them. And ifhe could do so successfully, how great would be the assistance given tothe local colouring which is needed for a novel in prose, the scene ofwhich is thrown far back from the writer's period! Were I to write apoem about Coeur de Lion I should not mar my poem by using the simplelanguage of the day; but if I write a prose story of the time, I cannotaltogether avoid some attempt at far-away quaintnesses in language. Tocall a purse a "gypsire, " and to begin your little speeches with "Marrycome up, " or to finish them with "Quotha, " are but poor attempts. Buteven they have had their effect. Scott did the best he could with hisCoeur de Lion. When we look to it we find that it was but little;though in his hands it passed for much. "By my troth, " said the knight, "thou hast sung well and heartily, and in high praise of thine order. "We doubt whether he achieved any similarity to the language of the time;but still, even in the little which he attempted there was something ofthe picturesque. But how much more would be done if in very truth thewhole language of a story could be thrown with correctness into the formof expression used at the time depicted?

It was this that Thackeray tried in his _Esmond_, and he has done italmost without a flaw. The time in question is near enough to us, andthe literature sufficiently familiar to enable us to judge. Whether folkswore by their troth in the days of king Richard I. We do not know, butwhen we read Swift's letters, and Addison's papers, or Defoe's novels wedo catch the veritable sounds of Queen Anne's age, and can say forourselves whether Thackeray has caught them correctly or not. No readercan doubt that he has done so. Nor is the reader ever struck with theaffectation of an assumed dialect. The words come as though they hadbeen written naturally, --though not natural to the middle of thenineteenth century. It was a tour de force; and successful as such atour de force so seldom is. But though Thackeray was successful inadopting the tone he wished to assume, he never quite succeeded, as faras my ear can judge, in altogether dropping it again. 

And yet it has to be remembered that though _Esmond_ deals with thetimes of Queen Anne, and "copies the language" of the time, as Thackerayhimself says in the dedication, the story is not supposed to have beenwritten till the reign of George II. Esmond in his narrative speaks ofFielding and Hogarth, who did their best work under George II. The ideais that Henry Esmond, the hero, went out to Virginia after the eventstold, and there wrote the memoir in the form of an autobiography. Theestate of Castlewood in Virginia had been given to the Esmond family byCharles II. , and this Esmond, our hero, finding that expatriation wouldbest suit both his domestic happiness and his politicaldifficulties, --as the reader of the book will understand might be thecase, --settles himself in the colony, and there writes the history ofhis early life. He retains the manners, and with the manners thelanguage of his youth. He lives among his own people, a countrygentleman with a broad domain, mixing but little with the world beyond, and remains an English gentleman of the time of Queen Anne. The story iscontinued in _The Virginians_, the name given to a record of two ladswho were grandsons of Harry Esmond, whose names are Warrington. Before_The Virginians_ appeared we had already become acquainted with a scionof that family, the friend of Arthur Pendennis, a younger son of SirMiles Warrington, of Suffolk. Henry Esmond's daughter had in a previousgeneration married a younger son of the then baronet. This is mentionednow to show the way in which Thackeray's mind worked afterwards upon thedetails and characters which he had originated in _Esmond_. 

It is not my purpose to tell the story here, but rather to explain theway in which it is written, to show how it differs from other stories, and thus to explain its effect. Harry Esmond, who tells the story, is ofcourse the hero. There are two heroines who equally command oursympathy, --Lady Castlewood the wife of Harry's kinsman, and herdaughter Beatrix. Thackeray himself declared the man to be a prig, andhe was not altogether wrong. Beatrix, with whom throughout the wholebook he is in love, knew him well. "Shall I be frank with you, Harry, "she says, when she is engaged to another suitor, "and say that if youhad not been down on your knees and so humble, you might have faredbetter with me? A woman of my spirit, cousin, is to be won by gallantry, and not by sighs and rueful faces. All the time you are worshipping andsinging hymns to me, I know very well I am no goddess. " And again: "Asfor you, you want a woman to bring your slippers and cap, and to sit atyour feet and cry, O caro, caro! O bravo! whilst you read yourShakespeares and Miltons and stuff. " He was a prig, and the girl heloved knew him, and being quite of another way of thinking herself, would have nothing to say to him in the way of love. But withoutsomething of the aptitudes of a prig the character which the authorintended could not have been drawn. There was to be courage, --militarycourage, --and that propensity to fighting which the tone of the agedemanded in a finished gentleman. Esmond therefore is ready enough touse his sword. But at the same time he has to live as becomes one whosename is in some degree under a cloud; for though he be not in truth anillegitimate offshoot of the noble family which is his, and though heknows that he is not so, still he has to live as though he were. Hebecomes a soldier, and it was just then that our army was accustomed "toswear horribly in Flanders. " But Esmond likes his books, and cannotswear or drink like other soldiers. Nevertheless he has a sort of likingfor fast ways in others, knowing that such are the ways of a gallantcavalier. There is a melancholy over his life which makes him always, to himself and to others, much older than his years. He is well awarethat, being as he is, it is impossible that Beatrix should love him. Nowand then there is a dash of lightness about him, as though he had taughthimself in his philosophy that even sorrow may be borne with asmile, --as though there was something in him of the Stoic's doctrine, which made him feel that even disappointed love should not be seen towound too deep. But still when he smiles, even when he indulges in somelittle pleasantry, there is that garb of melancholy over him whichalways makes a man a prig. But he is a gentleman from the crown of hishead to the sole of his foot. Thackeray had let the whole power of hisintellect apply itself to a conception of the character of a gentleman. This man is brave, polished, gifted with that old-fashioned courtesywhich ladies used to love, true as steel, loyal as faith himself, with apower of self-abnegation which astonishes the criticising reader when hefinds such a virtue carried to such an extent without seeming to beunnatural. To draw the picture of a man and say that he is gifted withall the virtues is easy enough, --easy enough to describe him asperforming all the virtues. The difficulty is to put your man on hislegs, and make him move about, carrying his virtues with a natural gait, so that the reader shall feel that he is becoming acquainted with fleshand blood, not with a wooden figure. The virtues are all there withHenry Esmond, and the flesh and blood also, so that the reader believesin them. But still there is left a flavour of the character whichThackeray himself tasted when he called his hero a prig. 

The two heroines, Lady Castlewood and Beatrix, are mother and daughter, of whom the former is in love with Esmond, and the latter is loved byhim. Fault has been found with the story, because of the unnaturalrivalry, --because it has been felt that a mother's solicitude for herdaughter should admit of no such juxtaposition. But the criticism hascome, I think, from those who have failed to understand, not from thosewho have understood, the tale;--not because they have read it, butbecause they have not read it, and have only looked at it or heard ofit. Lady Castlewood is perhaps ten years older than the boy Esmond, whomshe first finds in her husband's house, and takes as a protégé; and fromthe moment in which she finds that he is in love with her own daughter, she does her best to bring about a marriage between them. Her husband isalive, and though he is a drunken brute, --after the manner of lords ofthat time, --she is thoroughly loyal to him. The little touches, of whichthe woman is herself altogether unconscious, that gradually turn a lovefor the boy into a love for the man, are told so delicately, that it isonly at last that the reader perceives what has in truth happened to thewoman. She is angry with him, grateful to him, careful over him, gradually conscious of all his worth, and of all that he does to her andhers, till at last her heart is unable to resist. But then she is awidow;--and Beatrix has declared that her ambition will not allow her tomarry so humble a swain, and Esmond has become, --as he says of himselfwhen he calls himself "an old gentleman, "--"the guardian of all thefamily, " "fit to be the grandfather of you all. "

The character of Lady Castlewood has required more delicacy in itsmanipulation than perhaps any other which Thackeray has drawn. There isa mixture in it of self-negation and of jealousy, of gratefulness ofheart and of the weary thoughtfulness of age, of occasionalsprightliness with deep melancholy, of injustice with a thoroughappreciation of the good around her, of personal weakness, --as shownalways in her intercourse with her children, and of personalstrength, --as displayed when she vindicates the position of her kinsmanHenry to the Duke of Hamilton, who is about to marry Beatrix;--a mixturewhich has required a master's hand to trace. These contradictions areessentially feminine. Perhaps it must be confessed that in theunreasonableness of the woman, the author has intended to bear moreharshly on the sex than it deserves. But a true woman will forgive him, because of the truth of Lady Castlewood's heart. Her husband had beenkilled in a duel, and there were circumstances which had induced her atthe moment to quarrel with Harry and to be unjust to him. He had beenill, and had gone away to the wars, and then she had learned the truth, and had been wretched enough. But when he comes back, and she sees him, by chance at first, as the anthem is being sung in the cathedral choir, as she is saying her prayers, her heart flows over with tenderness tohim. "I knew you would come back, " she said; "and to-day, Harry, in theanthem when they sang it, --'When the Lord turned the captivity of Zionwe were like them that dream, '--I thought, yes, like them thatdream, --them that dream. And then it went on, 'They that sow in tearsshall reap in joy, and he that goeth forth and weepeth, shall doubtlesscome home again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. ' I lookedup from the book and saw you. I was not surprised when I saw you. I knewyou would come, my dear, and saw the gold sunshine round your head. " Andso it goes on, running into expressions of heartmelting tenderness. Andyet she herself does not know that her own heart is seeking his withall a woman's love. She is still willing that he should possess Beatrix. "I would call you my son, " she says, "sooner than the greatest prince inEurope. " But she warns him of the nature of her own girl. "'Tis for mypoor Beatrix I tremble, whose headstrong will affrights me, whosejealous temper, and whose vanity no prayers of mine can cure. " It is butvery gradually that Esmond becomes aware of the truth. Indeed, he hasnot become altogether aware of it till the tale closes. The reader doesnot see that transfer of affection from the daughter to the mother whichwould fail to reach his sympathy. In the last page of the last chapterit is told that it is so, --that Esmond marries Lady Castlewood, --but itis not told till all the incidents of the story have been completed. 

But of the three characters I have named, Beatrix is the one that hasmost strongly exercised the writer's powers, and will most interest thereader. As far as outward person is concerned she is very lovely, --socharming, that every man that comes near to her submits himself to herattractions and caprices. It is but rarely that a novelist can succeedin impressing his reader with a sense of female loveliness. The attemptis made so frequently, --comes so much as a matter of course in everynovel that is written, and fails so much as a matter of course, that thereader does not feel the failure. There are things which we do notexpect to have done for us in literature because they are done soseldom. Novelists are apt to describe the rural scenes among which theircharacters play their parts, but seldom leave any impression of theplaces described. Even in poetry how often does this occur? The wordsused are pretty, well chosen, perhaps musical to the ear, and in thatway befitting; but unless the spot has violent characteristics of itsown, such as Burley's cave or the waterfall of Lodore, no strikingportrait is left. Nor are we disappointed as we read, because we havenot been taught to expect it to be otherwise. So it is with thoseword-painted portraits of women, which are so frequently given and soseldom convey any impression. Who has an idea of the outside look ofSophia Western, or Edith Bellenden, or even of Imogen, thoughIachimo, who described her, was so good at words? A series ofpictures, --illustrations, --as we have with Dickens' novels, and withThackeray's, may leave an impression of a figure, --though even then notoften of feminine beauty. But in this work Thackeray has succeeded inimbuing us with a sense of the outside loveliness of Beatrix by the mereforce of words. We are not only told it, but we feel that she was such aone as a man cannot fail to covet, even when his judgment goes againsthis choice. 

Here the judgment goes altogether against the choice. The girl grows upbefore us from her early youth till her twenty-fifth or twenty-sixthyear, and becomes, --such as her mother described her, --one whoseheadlong will, whose jealousy, and whose vanity nothing could restrain. She has none of those soft foibles, half allied to virtues, by whichweak women fall away into misery or perhaps distraction. She does notwant to love or to be loved. She does not care to be fondled. She has nolonging for caresses. She wants to be admired, --and to make use of theadmiration she shall achieve for the material purposes of her life. Shewishes to rise in the world; and her beauty is the sword with which shemust open her oyster. As to her heart, it is a thing of which shebecomes aware, only to assure herself that it must be laid aside andput out of the question. Now and again Esmond touches it. She justfeels that she has a heart to be touched. But she never has a doubt asto her conduct in that respect. She will not allow her dreams ofambition to be disturbed by such folly as love. 

In all that there might be something, if not good and great, nevertheless grand, if her ambition, though worldly, had in it a touchof nobility. But this poor creature is made with her bleared blind eyesto fall into the very lowest depths of feminine ignobility. One lovercomes after another. Harry Esmond is, of course, the lover with whom thereader interests himself. At last there comes a duke, --fifty years old, indeed, but with semi-royal appanages. As his wife she will become aduchess, with many diamonds, and be her Excellency. The man is stern, cold, and jealous; but she does not doubt for a moment. She is to beDuchess of Hamilton, and towers already in pride of place above hermother, and her kinsman lover, and all her belongings. The story here, with its little incidents of birth, and blood, and ignoble pride, andgratified ambition, with a dash of true feminine nobility on the part ofthe girl's mother, is such as to leave one with the impression that ithas hardly been beaten in English prose fiction. Then, in the lastmoment, the duke is killed in a duel, and the news is brought to thegirl by Esmond. She turns upon him and rebukes him harshly. Then shemoves away, and feels in a moment that there is nothing left for her inthis world, and that she can only throw herself upon devotion forconsolation. "I am best in my own room and by myself, " she said. Hereyes were quite dry, nor did Esmond ever see them otherwise, save once, in respect of that grief. She gave him a cold hand as she went out. "Thank you, brother, " she said in a low voice, and with a simplicitymore touching than tears, "all that you have said is true and kind, andI will go away and will ask pardon. "

But the consolation coming from devotion did not go far with such a oneas her. We cannot rest on religion merely by saying that we will do so. Very speedily there comes consolation in another form. Queen Anne is onher deathbed, and a young Stuart prince appears upon the scene, of whomsome loyal hearts dream that they can make a king. He is such as Stuartswere, and only walks across the novelist's canvas to show his folly andheartlessness. But there is a moment in which Beatrix thinks that shemay rise in the world to the proud place of a royal mistress. That isher last ambition! That is her pride! That is to be her glory! Thebleared eyes can see no clearer than that. But the mock prince passesaway, and nothing but the disgrace of the wish remains. 

Such is the story of _Esmond_, leaving with it, as does all Thackeray'swork, a melancholy conviction of the vanity of all things human. _Vanitas vanitatum_, as he wrote on the pages of the French lady'salbum, and again in one of the earlier numbers of _The CornhillMagazine_. With much that is picturesque, much that is droll, much thatis valuable as being a correct picture of the period selected, the gistof the book is melancholy throughout. It ends with the promise ofhappiness to come, but that is contained merely in a concludingparagraph. The one woman, during the course of the story, becomes awidow, with a living love in which she has no hope, with children forwhom her fears are almost stronger than her affection, who never canrally herself to happiness for a moment. The other, with all her beautyand all her brilliance, becomes what we have described, --and marries atlast her brother's tutor, who becomes a bishop by means of herintrigues. Esmond, the hero, who is compounded of all good gifts, aftera childhood and youth tinged throughout with melancholy, vanishes fromus, with the promise that he is to be rewarded by the hand of the motherof the girl he has loved. 

And yet there is not a page in the book over which a thoughtful readercannot pause with delight. The nature in it is true nature. Given astory thus sad, and persons thus situated, and it is thus that thedetails would follow each other, and thus that the people would conductthemselves. It was the tone of Thackeray's mind to turn away from theprospect of things joyful, and to see, --or believe that he saw, --in allhuman affairs, the seed of something base, of something which would beantagonistic to true contentment. All his snobs, and all his fools, andall his knaves, come from the same conviction. Is it not the doctrine onwhich our religion is founded, --though the sadness of it there isalleviated by the doubtful promise of a heaven?

 Though thrice a thousand years are passed Since David's son, the sad and splendid, The weary king ecclesiast Upon his awful tablets penned it. 

So it was that Thackeray preached his sermon. But melancholy though itbe, the lesson taught in _Esmond_ is salutary from beginning to end. Thesermon truly preached is that glory can only come from that which istruly glorious, and that the results of meanness end always in the mean. No girl will be taught to wish to shine like Beatrix, nor will any youthbe made to think that to gain the love of such a one it can be worth hiswhile to expend his energy or his heart. 

_Esmond_ was published in 1852. It was not till 1858, some time after hehad returned from his lecturing tours, that he published the sequelcalled _The Virginians_. It was first brought out in twenty-four monthlynumbers, and ran through the years 1858 and 1859, Messrs. Bradbury andEvans having been the publishers. It takes up by no means the story of_Esmond_, and hardly the characters. The twin lads, who are called theVirginians, and whose name is Warrington, are grandsons of Esmond andhis wife Lady Castlewood. Their one daughter, born at the estate inVirginia, had married a Warrington, and the Virginians are the issue ofthat marriage. In the story, one is sent to England, there to make hisway; and the other is for awhile supposed to have been killed by theIndians. How he was not killed, but after awhile comes again forward inthe world of fiction, will be found in the story, which it is not ourpurpose to set forth here. The most interesting part of the narrative isthat which tells us of the later fortunes of Madame Beatrix, --theBaroness Bernstein, --the lady who had in her youth been Beatrix Esmond, who had then condescended to become Mrs. Tasker, the tutor's wife, whence she rose to be the "lady" of a bishop, and, after the bishop hadbeen put to rest under a load of marble, had become the baroness, --arich old woman, courted by all her relatives because of her wealth. 

In _The Virginians_, as a work of art, is discovered, more strongly thanhad shown itself yet in any of his works, that propensity to wanderingwhich came to Thackeray because of his idleness. It is, I think, to befound in every book he ever wrote, --except _Esmond_; but is here moreconspicuous than it had been in his earlier years. Though he can settlehimself down to his pen and ink, --not always even to that without astruggle, but to that with sufficient burst of energy to produce alarge average amount of work, --he cannot settle himself down to the taskof contriving a story. There have been those, --and they have not beenbad judges of literature, --who have told me that they have best likedthese vague narratives. The mind of the man has been clearly exhibitedin them. In them he has spoken out his thoughts, and given the world toknow his convictions, as well as could have been done in the carryingout any well-conducted plot. And though the narratives be vague, thecharacters are alive. In _The Virginians_, the two young men and theirmother, and the other ladies with whom they have to deal, and especiallytheir aunt, the Baroness Bernstein, are all alive. For desultoryreading, for that picking up of a volume now and again which requirespermission to forget the plot of a novel, this novel is admirablyadapted. There is not a page of it vacant or dull. But he who takes itup to read as a whole, will find that it is the work of a desultorywriter, to whom it is not infrequently difficult to remember theincidents of his own narrative. "How good it is, even as it is!--but ifhe would have done his best for us, what might he not have done!" This, I think, is what we feel when we read _The Virginians_. The author'smind has in one way been active enough, --and powerful, as it always is;but he has been unable to fix it to an intended purpose, and has gone onfrom day to day furthering the difficulty he has intended to master, till the book, under the stress of circumstances, --demands for copy andthe like, --has been completed before the difficulty has even in truthbeen encountered. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THACKERAY'S BURLESQUES. 

As so much of Thackeray's writing partakes of the nature of burlesque, it would have been unnecessary to devote a separate chapter to thesubject, were it not that there are among his tales two or three soexceedingly good of their kind, coming so entirely up to our idea ofwhat a prose burlesque should be, that were I to omit to mention them Ishould pass over a distinctive portion of our author's work. 

The volume called _Burlesques_, published in 1869, begins with the_Novels by Eminent Hands_, and _Jeames's Diary_, to which I have alreadyalluded. It contains also _The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan_, _A Legend of the Rhine_, and _Rebecca and Rowena_. It is of these that Iwill now speak. _The History of the Next French Revolution_ and _Cox'sDiary_, with which the volume is concluded, are, according to mythinking, hardly equal to the others; nor are they so properly calledburlesques. 

Nor will I say much of Major Gahagan, though his adventures are verygood fun. He is a warrior, --that is, of course, --and he is one in whosewonderful narrative all that distant India can produce in the way ofboasting, is superadded to Ireland's best efforts in the same line. Baron Munchausen was nothing to him; and to the bare and simplemiracles of the baron is joined that humour without which Thackeraynever tells any story. This is broad enough, no doubt, but is stillhumour;--as when the major tells us that he always kept in his ownapartment a small store of gunpowder; "always keeping it under my bed, with a candle burning for fear of accidents. " Or when he describes hiscourage; "I was running, --running as the brave stag before thehounds, --running, as I have done a great number of times in my life, when there was no help for it but a run. " Then he tells us of hisdigestion. "Once in Spain I ate the leg of a horse, and was so eager toswallow this morsel, that I bolted the shoe as well as the hoof, andnever felt the slightest inconvenience from either. " He storms acitadel, and has only a snuff box given him for his reward. "Nevermind, " says Major Gahagan; "when they want me to storm a fort again, Ishall know better. " By which we perceive that the major remembered hisHorace, and had in his mind the soldier who had lost his purse. But themajor's adventures, excellent as they are, lack the continued interestwhich is attached to the two following stories. 

Of what nature is _The Legend of the Rhine_, we learn from thecommencement. "It was in the good old days of chivalry, when everymountain that bathes its shadow in the Rhine had its castle; notinhabited as now by a few rats and owls, nor covered with moss andwallflowers and funguses and creeping ivy. No, no; where the ivy nowclusters there grew strong portcullis and bars of steel; where thewallflowers now quiver in the ramparts there were silken bannersembroidered with wonderful heraldry; men-at-arms marched where now youshall only see a bank of moss or a hideous black champignon; and inplace of the rats and owlets, I warrant me there were ladies andknights to revel in the great halls, and to feast and dance, and to makelove there. " So that we know well beforehand of what kind will thisstory be. It will be pure romance, --burlesqued. "Ho seneschal, fill me acup of hot liquor; put sugar in it, good fellow; yea, and a little hotwater, --but very little, for my soul is sad as I think of those days andknights of old. "

A knight is riding alone on his war-horse, with all his armour withhim, --and his luggage. His rank is shown by the name on his portmanteau, and his former address and present destination by a card which wasattached. It had run, "Count Ludwig de Hombourg, Jerusalem, but the nameof the Holy City had been dashed out with the pen, and that of Godesbergsubstituted. " "By St. Hugo of Katzenellenbogen, " said the good knightshivering, "'tis colder here than at Damascus. Shall I be at Godesbergin time for dinner?" He has come to see his friend Count Karl, Margraveof Godesberg. 

But at Godesberg everything is in distress and sorrow. There is a newinmate there, one Sir Gottfried, since whose arrival the knight of thecastle has become a wretched man, having been taught to believe allevils of his wife, and of his child Otto, and a certain stranger, oneHildebrandt. Gottfried, we see with half an eye, has done it all. It isin vain that Ludwig de Hombourg tells his old friend Karl that thisGottfried is a thoroughly bad fellow, that he had been found to be acardsharper in the Holy Land, and had been drummed out of his regiment. "'Twas but some silly quarrel over the wine-cup, " says Karl. "Hugo deBrodenel would have no black bottle on the board. " We think we canremember the quarrel of "Brodenel" and the black bottle, though so manythings have taken place since that. 

There is a festival in the castle, and Hildebrandt comes with the otherguests. Then Ludwig's attention is called by poor Karl, the father, to acertain family likeness. Can it be that he is not the father of his ownchild? He is playing cards with his friend Ludwig when that traitorGottfried comes and whispers to him, and makes an appointment. "I willbe there too, " thought Count Ludwig, the good Knight of Hombourg. 

On the next morning, before the stranger knight had shaken off hisslumbers, all had been found out and everything done. The lady has beensent to a convent and her son to a monastery. The knight of the castlehas no comfort but in his friend Gottfried, a distant cousin who is toinherit everything. All this is told to Sir Ludwig, --who immediatelytakes steps to repair the mischief. "A cup of coffee straight, " says heto the servitors. "Bid the cook pack me a sausage and bread in paper, and the groom saddle Streithengst. We have far to ride. " So thisredresser of wrongs starts off, leaving the Margrave in his grief. 

Then there is a great fight between Sir Ludwig and Sir Gottfried, admirably told in the manner of the later chroniclers, --a hermit sittingby and describing everything almost as well as Rebecca did on the tower. Sir Ludwig being in the right, of course gains the day. But the escapeof the fallen knight's horse is the cream of this chapter. "Away, ay, away!--away amid the green vineyards and golden cornfields; away up thesteep mountains, where he frightened the eagles in their eyries; awaydown the clattering ravines, where the flashing cataracts tumble; awaythrough the dark pine-forests, where the hungry wolves are howling; awayover the dreary wolds, where the wild wind walks alone; away through thesplashing quagmires, where the will-o'-the wisp slunk frightened amongthe reeds; away through light and darkness, storm and sunshine; away bytower and town, highroad and hamlet. .. . Brave horse! gallant steed!snorting child of Araby! On went the horse, over mountains, rivers, turnpikes, applewomen; and never stopped until he reached alivery-stable in Cologne, where his master was accustomed to put himup!"

The conquered knight, Sir Gottfried, of course reveals the truth. ThisHildebrandt is no more than the lady's brother, --as it happened abrother in disguise, --and hence the likeness. Wicked knights when theydie always divulge their wicked secrets, and this knight Gottfried doesso now. Sir Ludwig carries the news home to the afflicted husband andfather; who of course instantly sends off messengers for his wife andson. The wife won't come. All she wants is to have her dresses andjewels sent to her. Of so cruel a husband she has had enough. As for theson, he has jumped out of a boat on the Rhine, as he was being carriedto his monastery, and was drowned!

But he was not drowned, but had only dived. "The gallant boy swam onbeneath the water, never lifting his head for a single moment betweenGodesberg and Cologne; the distance being twenty-five or thirty miles. "

Then he becomes an archer, dressed in green from head to foot. How itwas is all told in the story; and he goes to shoot for a prize at theCastle of Adolf the Duke of Cleeves. On his way he shoots a ravenmarvellously, --almost as marvellously as did Robin Hood the twig inIvanhoe. Then one of his companions is married, or nearly married, tothe mysterious "Lady of Windeck, "--would have been married but for Otto, and that the bishop and dean, who were dragged up from their long-agograves to perform the ghostly ceremony, were prevented by the ill-timedmirth of a certain old canon of the church named Schidnischmidt. Thereader has to read the name out long before he recognises an old friend. But this of the Lady of Windeck is an episode. 

How at the shooting-match, which of course ensued, Otto shot for and wonthe heart of a fair lady, the duke's daughter, need not be told here, nor how he quarrelled with the Rowski of Donnerblitz, --the hideous andsulky, but rich and powerful, nobleman who had come to take the hand, whether he could win the heart or not, of the daughter of the duke. Itis all arranged according to the proper and romantic order. Otto, thoughhe enlists in the duke's archer-guard as simple soldier, contrives tofight with the Rowski de Donnerblitz, Margrave of Eulenschrenkenstein, and of course kills him. "'Yield, yield, Sir Rowski!' shouted he in acalm voice. A blow dealt madly at his head was the reply. It was thelast blow that the count of Eulenschrenkenstein ever struck in battle. The curse was on his lips as the crashing steel descended into his brainand split it in two. He rolled like a dog from his horse, his enemy'sknee was in a moment on his chest, and the dagger of mercy at histhroat, as the knight once more called upon him to yield. " The knightwas of course the archer who had come forward as an unknown champion, and had touched the Rowski's shield with the point of his lance. Forthis story, as well as the rest, is a burlesque on our dear oldfavourite Ivanhoe. 

That everything goes right at last, that the wife comes back from hermonastery, and joins her jealous husband, and that the duke's daughterhas always, in truth, known that the poor archer was a nobleknight, --these things are all matters of course. 

But the best of the three burlesques is _Rebecca and Rowena, or ARomance upon Romance_, which I need not tell my readers is acontinuation of _Ivanhoe_. Of this burlesque it is the peculiarcharacteristic that, while it has been written to ridicule the personsand the incidents of that perhaps the most favourite novel in theEnglish language, it has been so written that it would not have offendedthe author had he lived to read it, nor does it disgust or annoy thosewho most love the original. There is not a word in it having anintention to belittle Scott. It has sprung from the genuine humourcreated in Thackeray's mind by his aspect of the romantic. We rememberhow reticent, how dignified was Rowena, --how cold we perhaps thoughther, whether there was so little of that billing and cooing, thatkissing and squeezing, between her and Ivanhoe which we used to thinknecessary to lovers' blisses. And there was left too on our minds, anidea that Ivanhoe had liked the Jewess almost as well as Rowena, andthat Rowena might possibly have become jealous. Thackeray's mind at oncewent to work and pictured to him a Rowena such as such a woman mightbecome after marriage; and as Ivanhoe was of a melancholy nature and aptto be hipped, and grave, and silent, as a matter of course Thackeraypresumes him to have been henpecked after his marriage. 

Our dear Wamba disturbs his mistress in some devotional conversationwith her chaplain, and the stern lady orders that the fool shall havethree-dozen lashes. "I got you out of Front de Boeuf's castle, " saidpoor Wamba, piteously, appealing to Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, "and canstthou not save me from the lash?"

"Yes; from Front de Boeuf's castle, _when you were locked up with theJewess in the tower_!" said Rowena, haughtily replying to the timidappeal of her husband. "Gurth, give him four-dozen, "--and this was allpoor Wamba got by applying for the mediation of his master. Then thesatirist moralises; "Did you ever know a right-minded woman pardonanother for being handsomer and more love-worthy than herself?" Rowenais "always flinging Rebecca into Ivanhoe's teeth;" and altogether lifeat Rotherwood, as described by the later chronicles, is not very happyeven when most domestic. Ivanhoe becomes sad and moody. He takes todrinking, and his lady does not forget to tell him of it. "Ah dear axe!"he exclaims, apostrophising his weapon, "ah gentle steel! that was amerry time when I sent thee crashing into the pate of the Emir AbdulMelek!" There was nothing left to him but his memories; and "in a word, his life was intolerable. " So he determines that he will go and lookafter king Richard, who of course was wandering abroad. He anticipates alittle difficulty with his wife; but she is only too happy to let himgo, comforting herself with the idea that Athelstane will look afterher. So her husband starts on his journey. "Then Ivanhoe's trumpet blew. Then Rowena waved her pocket-handkerchief. Then the household gave ashout. Then the pursuivant of the good knight, Sir Wilfrid the Crusader, flung out his banner, --which was argent, a gules cramoisy with threeMoors impaled, --then Wamba gave a lash on his mule's haunch, andIvanhoe, heaving a great sigh, turned the tail of his war-horse upon thecastle of his fathers. "

Ivanhoe finds Coeur de Leon besieging the Castle of Chalons, and therethey both do wondrous deeds, Ivanhoe always surpassing the king. Thejealousy of the courtiers, the ingratitude of the king, and themelancholy of the knight, who is never comforted except when he hasslaughtered some hundreds, are delightful. Roger de Backbite and Peterde Toadhole are intended to be quite real. Then his majesty sings, passing off as his own, a song of Charles Lever's. Sir Wilfrid declaresthe truth, and twits the king with his falsehood, whereupon he has theguitar thrown at his head for his pains. He catches the guitar, however, gracefully in his left hand, and sings his own immortal ballad of _KingCanute_, --than which Thackeray never did anything better. 

 "Might I stay the sun above us, good Sir Bishop?" Canute cried; "Could I bid the silver moon to pause upon her heavenly ride? If the moon obeys my orders, sure I can command the tide. 

 Will the advancing waves obey me, Bishop, if I make the sign?" Said the bishop, bowing lowly; "Land and sea, my lord, are thine. " Canute turned towards the ocean; "Back, " he said, "thou foaming brine. "

 But the sullen ocean answered with a louder deeper roar, And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling, sounding on the shore; Back the keeper and the bishop, back the king and courtiers bore. 

We must go to the book to look at the picture of the king as he iskilling the youngest of the sons of the Count of Chalons. Thoseillustrations of Doyle's are admirable. The size of the king's head, andthe size of his battle-axe as contrasted with the size of the child, areburlesque all over. But the king has been wounded by a bolt from the bowof Sir Bertrand de Gourdon while he is slaughtering the infant, andthere is an end of him. Ivanhoe, too, is killed at the siege, --Sir Rogerde Backbite having stabbed him in the back during the scene. Had he notbeen then killed, his widow Rowena could not have married Athelstane, which she soon did after hearing the sad news; nor could he have hadthat celebrated epitaph in Latin and English;

 Hie est Guilfridus, belli dum vixit avidus. Cum gladeo et lancea Normannia et quoque Francia Verbera dura dabat. Per Turcos multum equitabat. Guilbertum occidit;--atque Hyerosolyma vidit. Heu! nunc sub fossa sunt tanti militis ossa. Uxor Athelstani est conjux castissima Thani. [5]

The translation we are told was by Wamba;

 Under the stone you behold, Buried and coffined and cold, Lieth Sir Wilfrid the Bold. 

 Always he marched in advance, Warring in Flanders and France, Doughty with sword and with lance

 Famous in Saracen fight, Rode in his youth, the Good Knight, Scattering Paynims in flight. 

 Brian, the Templar untrue, Fairly in tourney he slew; Saw Hierusalem too. 

 Now he is buried and gone, Lying beneath the gray stone. Where shall you find such a one?

 Long time his widow deplored, Weeping, the fate of her lord, Sadly cut off by the sword. 

 When she was eased of her pain, Came the good lord Athelstane, When her ladyship married again. 

The next chapter begins naturally as follows; "I trust nobody willsuppose, from the events described in the last chapter, that our friendIvanhoe is really dead. " He is of course cured of his wounds, thoughthey take six years in the curing. And then he makes his way back toRotherwood, in a friar's disguise, much as he did on that formeroccasion when we first met him, and there is received by Athelstane andRowena, --and their boy!--while Wamba sings him a song:

 Then you know the worth of a lass, Once you have come to forty year!

No one, of course, but Wamba knows Ivanhoe, who roams about the country, melancholy, --as he of course would be, --charitable, --as he perhaps mightbe, --for we are specially told that he had a large fortune and nothingto do with it, and slaying robbers wherever he met them;--but sad atheart all the time. Then there comes a little burst of the author's ownfeelings, while he is burlesquing. "Ah my dear friends and Britishpublic, are there not others who are melancholy under a mask of gaiety, and who in the midst of crowds are lonely! Liston was a most melancholyman; Grimaldi had feelings; and then others I wot of. But psha!--let ushave the next chapter. " In all of which there was a touch ofearnestness. 

Ivanhoe's griefs were enhanced by the wickedness of king John, underwhom he would not serve. "It was Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, I need scarcelysay, who got the Barons of England to league together and extort fromthe king that famous instrument and palladium of our liberties, atpresent in the British Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, --TheMagna Charta. " Athelstane also quarrels with the king, whose orders hedisobeys, and Rotherwood is attacked by the royal army. No one was ofreal service in the way of fighting except Ivanhoe, --and how could hetake up that cause? "No; be hanged to me, " said the knight bitterly. "This is a quarrel in which I can't interfere. Common politenessforbids. Let yonder ale-swilling Athelstane defend his, --ha, ha!--_wife_; and my Lady Rowena guard her, --ha, ha!--_son_!" and helaughed wildly and madly. 

But Athelstane is killed, --this time in earnest, --and then Ivanhoerushes to the rescue. He finds Gurth dead at the park-lodge, and thoughhe is all alone, --having outridden his followers, --he rushes up thechestnut avenue to the house, which is being attacked. "An Ivanhoe! anIvanhoe!" he bellowed out with a shout that overcame all the din ofbattle;--"Notre Dame à la recousse?" and to hurl his lance through themidriff of Reginald de Bracy, who was commanding the assault, --who fellhowling with anguish, --to wave his battle-axe over his own head, and tocut off those of thirteen men-at-arms, was the work of an instant. "AnIvanhoe! an Ivanhoe!" he still shouted, and down went a man as sure ashe said "hoe!"

Nevertheless he is again killed by multitudes, or very nearly, --and hasagain to be cured by the tender nursing of Wamba. But Athelstane isreally dead, and Rowena and the boy have to be found. He does his dutyand finds them, --just in time to be present at Rowena's death. She hasbeen put in prison by king John, and is in extremis when her firsthusband gets to her. "Wilfrid, my early loved, "[6] slowly gasped sheremoving her gray hair from her furrowed temples, and gazing on her boyfondly as he nestled on Ivanhoe's knee, --"promise me by St. Waltheof ofTemplestowe, --promise me one boon!"

"I do, " said Ivanhoe, clasping the boy, and thinking that it was to thatlittle innocent that the promise was intended to apply. 

"By St. Waltheof?"

"By St. Waltheof!"

"Promise me then, " gasped Rowena, staring wildly at him, "that you willnever marry a Jewess!"

"By St. Waltheof!" cried Ivanhoe, "but this is too much, " and he did notmake the promise. 

"Having placed young Cedric at school at the Hall of Dotheboys, inYorkshire, and arranged his family affairs, Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoequitted a country which had no longer any charm for him, as there was nofighting to be done, and in which his stay was rendered less agreeableby the notion that king John would hang him. " So he goes forth andfights again, in league with the Knights of St. John, --the Templarsnaturally having a dislike to him because of Brian de Bois Guilbert. "The only fault that the great and gallant, though severe and asceticFolko of Heydenbraten, the chief of the Order of St. John, found withthe melancholy warrior whose lance did such service to the cause, wasthat he did not persecute the Jews as so religious a knight should. Sothe Jews, in cursing the Christians, always excepted the name of theDesdichado, --or the double disinherited, as he now was, --the DesdichadoDoblado. " Then came the battle of Alarcos, and the Moors were all but inpossession of the whole of Spain. Sir Wilfrid, like other goodChristians, cannot endure this, so he takes ship in Bohemia, where hehappens to be quartered, and has himself carried to Barcelona, andproceeds "to slaughter the Moors forthwith. " Then there is a scene inwhich Isaac of York comes on as a messenger, to ransom from a Spanishknight, Don Beltram de Cuchilla y Trabuco, y Espada, y Espelon, a littleMoorish girl. The Spanish knight of course murders the little girlinstead of taking the ransom. Two hundred thousand dirhems are offered, however much that may be; but the knight, who happens to be in funds atthe time, prefers to kill the little girl. All this is only necessary tothe story as introducing Isaac of York. Sir Wilfrid is of course intentupon finding Rebecca. Through all his troubles and triumphs, from hisgaining and his losing of Rowena, from the day on which he had been"_locked up with the Jewess in the tower_, " he had always been true toher. "Away from me!" said the old Jew, tottering. "Away, Rebeccais, --dead!" Then Ivanhoe goes out and kills fifty thousand Moors, andthere is the picture of him, --killing them. 

But Rebecca is not dead at all. Her father had said so because Rebeccahad behaved very badly to him. She had refused to marry the Moorishprince, or any of her own people, the Jews, and had gone as far as todeclare her passion for Ivanhoe and her resolution to be a Christian. All the Jews and Jewesses in Valencia turned against her, --so that shewas locked up in the back-kitchen and almost starved to death. ButIvanhoe found her of course, and makes her Mrs. Ivanhoe, or Lady Wilfridthe second. Then Thackeray tells us how for many years he, Thackeray, had not ceased to feel that it ought to be so. "Indeed I have thought ofit any time these five-and-twenty years, --ever since, as a boy atschool, I commenced the noble study of novels, --ever since the day when, lying on sunny slopes, of half-holidays, the fair chivalrous figuresand beautiful shapes of knights and ladies were visible to me, eversince I grew to love Rebecca, that sweetest creature of the poet'sfancy, and longed to see her righted. "

And so, no doubt, it had been. The very burlesque had grown from the wayin which his young imagination had been moved by Scott's romance. He hadfelt from the time of those happy half-holidays in which he had beenlucky enough to get hold of the novel, that according to all laws ofpoetic justice, Rebecca, as being the more beautiful and the moreinteresting of the heroines, was entitled to the possession of the hero. We have all of us felt the same. But to him had been present at the sametime all that is ludicrous in our ideas of middle-age chivalry; theabsurdity of its recorded deeds, the blood-thirstiness of itsrecreations, the selfishness of its men, the falseness of its honour, the cringing of its loyalty, the tyranny of its princes. And so therecame forth Rebecca and Rowena, all broad fun from beginning to end, butnever without a purpose, --the best burlesque, as I think, in ourlanguage. 

FOOTNOTES:

[5] I doubt that Thackeray did not write the Latin epitaph, but I hardlydare suggest the name of any author. The "vixit avidus" is quite worthyof Thackeray; but had he tried his hand at such mode of expression hewould have done more of it. I should like to know whether he had been incompany with Father Prout at the time. 

[6] There is something almost illnatured in his treatment of Rowena, whois very false in her declarations of love;--and it is to be feared thatby Rowena, the author intends the normal married lady of Englishsociety. 

CHAPTER VII. 

THACKERAY'S LECTURES. 

In speaking of Thackeray's life I have said why and how it was that hetook upon himself to lecture, and have also told the reader that he wasaltogether successful in carrying out the views proposed to himself. Ofhis peculiar manner of lecturing I have said but little, never havingheard him. "He pounded along, --very clearly, " I have been told; fromwhich I surmise that there was no special grace of eloquence, but thathe was always audible. I cannot imagine that he should have been evereloquent. He could not have taken the trouble necessary with his voice, with his cadences, or with his outward appearance. I imagine that theywho seem so naturally to fall into the proprieties of elocution havegenerally taken a great deal of trouble beyond that which the merefinding of their words has cost them. It is clearly to the matter ofwhat he then gave the world, and not to the manner, that we must lookfor what interest is to be found in the lectures. 

Those on _The English Humorists_ were given first. The second set was on_The Four Georges_. In the volume now before us _The Georges_ areprinted first, and the whole is produced simply as a part of Thackeray'sliterary work. Looked at, however, in that light the merit of the twosets of biographical essays is very different. In the one we have allthe anecdotes which could be brought together respecting four of ourkings, --who as men were not peculiar, though their reigns were, and willalways be, famous, because the country during the period was increasinggreatly in prosperity and was ever strengthening the hold it had uponits liberties. In the other set the lecturer was a man of lettersdealing with men of letters, and himself a prince among humorists isdealing with the humorists of his own country and language. One couldnot imagine a better subject for such discourses from Thackeray's mouththan the latter. The former was not, I think, so good. 

In discussing the lives of kings the biographer may trust to personaldetails or to historical facts. He may take the man, and say what goodor evil may be said of him as a man;--or he may take the period, andtell his readers what happened to the country while this or the otherking was on the throne. In the case with which we are dealing, thelecturer had not time enough or room enough for real history. His objectwas to let his audience know of what nature were the men; and we arebound to say that the pictures have not on the whole been flattering. Itwas almost necessary that with such a subject such should be the result. A story of family virtues, with princes and princesses well brought up, with happy family relations, all couleur de rose, --as it would of coursebecome us to write if we were dealing with the life of a livingsovereign, --would not be interesting. No one on going to hear Thackeraylecture on the Georges expected that. There must be some piquancy given, or the lecture would be dull;--and the eulogy of personal virtues canseldom be piquant. It is difficult to speak fittingly of a sovereign, either living or not, long since gone. You can hardly praise such aone without flattery. You can hardly censure him without injustice. We are either ignorant of his personal doings or we know them assecrets, which have been divulged for the most part either falsely ortreacherously, --often both falsely and treacherously. It is better, perhaps, that we should not deal with the personalities of princes. 

I believe that Thackeray fancied that he had spoken well of George III. , and am sure that it was his intention to do so. But the impression heleaves is poor. "He is said not to have cared for Shakespeare or tragedymuch; farces and pantomimes were his joy;--and especially when clownswallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, he would laugh sooutrageously that the lovely princess by his side would have to say, 'Mygracious monarch, do compose yourself. ' 'George, be a king!' were thewords which she, "--his mother, --"was ever croaking in the ears of herson; and a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried tobe. " "He did his best; he worked according to his lights; what virtueshe knew he tried to practise; what knowledge he could master he stroveto acquire. " If the lectures were to be popular, it was absolutelynecessary that they should be written in this strain. A lecture simplylaudatory on the life of St. Paul would not draw even the bench ofbishops to listen to it; but were a flaw found in the apostle's life, the whole Church of England would be bound to know all about it. I amquite sure that Thackeray believed every word that he said in thelectures, and that he intended to put in the good and the bad, honestly, as they might come to his hand. We may be quite sure that he did notintend to flatter the royal family;--equally sure that he would notcalumniate. There were, however, so many difficulties to be encounteredthat I cannot but think that the subject was ill-chosen. In making themso amusing as he did and so little offensive great ingenuity was shown. 

I will now go back to the first series, in which the lecturer treated ofSwift, Congreve, Addison, Steele, Prior, Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett, Fielding, Sterne, and Goldsmith. All these Thackeray has put in theirproper order, placing the men from the date of their birth, exceptPrior, who was in truth the eldest of the lot, but whom it was necessaryto depose, in order that the great Swift might stand first on the list, and Smollett, who was not born till fourteen years after Fielding, eightyears after Sterne, and who has been moved up, I presume, simply fromcaprice. From the birth of the first to the death of the last, was aperiod of nearly a hundred years. They were never absolutely all alivetogether; but it was nearly so, Addison and Prior having died beforeSmollett was born. Whether we should accept as humorists the fullcatalogue, may be a question; though we shall hardly wish to eliminateany one from such a dozen of names. Pope we should hardly define as ahumorist, were we to be seeking for a definition specially fit for him, though we shall certainly not deny the gift of humour to the author of_The Rape of the Lock_, or to the translator of any portion of _TheOdyssey_. Nor should we have included Fielding or Smollett, in spite ofParson Adams and Tabitha Bramble, unless anxious to fill a good company. That Hogarth was specially a humorist no one will deny; but in speakingof humorists we should have presumed, unless otherwise notified, thathumorists in letters only had been intended. As Thackeray explainsclearly what he means by a humorist, I may as well here repeat thepassage: "If humour only meant laughter, you would scarcely feel moreinterest about humorous writers than about the private life of poorHarlequin just mentioned, who possesses in common with these the powerof making you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories yourkind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal toa great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense ofridicule. The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness, --your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture, --your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, theunhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all theordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself tobe the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, andspeaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem him, --sometimeslove him. And as his business is to mark other people's lives andpeculiarities, we moralise upon _his_ life when he is gone, --andyesterday's preacher becomes the text for to-day's sermon. "

Having thus explained his purpose, Thackeray begins his task, and putsSwift in his front rank as a humorist. The picture given of this greatman has very manifestly the look of truth, and if true, is terribleindeed. We do, in fact, know it to be true, --even though it be admittedthat there is still room left for a book to be written on the life ofthe fearful dean. Here was a man endued with an intellect pellucid aswell as brilliant; who could not only conceive but see also, --with somefine instincts too; whom fortune did not flout; whom circumstancesfairly served; but who, from first to last, was miserable himself, whomade others miserable, and who deserved misery. Our business, during thepage or two which we can give to the subject, is not with Swift butwith Thackeray's picture of Swift. It is painted with colours terriblystrong and with shadows fearfully deep. "Would you like to have livedwith him?" Thackeray asks. Then he says how pleasant it would have beento have passed some time with Fielding, Johnson, or Goldsmith. "I shouldlike to have been Shakespeare's shoeblack, " he says. "But Swift! If youhad been his inferior in parts, --and that, with a great respect for allpersons present, I fear is only very likely, --his equal in mere socialstation, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted you. If, undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him like a man, he wouldhave quailed before you and not had the pluck to reply, --and gone home, and years after written a foul epigram upon you. " There is a picture!"If you had been a lord with a blue riband, who flattered his vanity, orcould help his ambition, he would have been the most delightful companyin the world. .. . How he would have torn your enemies to pieces for you, and made fun of the Opposition! His servility was so boisterous that itlooked like independence. " He was a man whose mind was never fixed onhigh things, but was striving always after something which, little as itmight be, and successful as he was, should always be out of his reach. It had been his misfortune to become a clergyman, because the way tochurch preferment seemed to be the readiest. He became, as we all know, a dean, --but never a bishop, and was therefore wretched. Thackeraydescribes him as a clerical highwayman, seizing on all he could get. But"the great prize has not yet come. The coach with the mitre and crozierin it, which he intends to have for _his_ share, has been delayed on theway from St. James's; and he waits and waits till nightfall, when hisrunners come and tell him that the coach has taken a different way andescaped him. So he fires his pistol into the air with a curse, and ridesaway into his own country;"--or, in other words, takes a poor deanery inIreland. 

Thackeray explains very correctly, as I think, the nature of the weaponswhich the man used, --namely, the words and style with which he wrote. "That Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin, on November 30, 1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody will deny the sister-island thehonour and glory; but it seems to me he was no more an Irishman than aman born of English parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo. Goldsmith was anIrishman and always an Irishman; Steele was an Irishman and always anIrishman; Swift's heart was English and in England, his habits English, his logic eminently English; his statement is elaborately simple; heshuns tropes and metaphors, and uses his ideas and words with a wisethrift and economy, as he used his money;--with which he could begenerous and splendid upon great occasions, but which he husbanded whenthere was no need to spend it. He never indulges in needlessextravagance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, profuse imagery. He lays hisopinions before you with a grave simplicity and a perfect neatness. "This is quite true of him, and the result is that though you may denyhim sincerity, simplicity, humanity, or good taste, you can hardly findfault with his language. 

Swift was a clergyman, and this is what Thackeray says of him in regardto his sacred profession. "I know of few things more conclusive as tothe sincerity of Swift's religion, than his advice to poor John Gay toturn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the Bench! Gay, the author of_The Beggar's Opera_; Gay, the wildest of the wits about town! It wasthis man that Jonathan Swift advised to take orders, to mount in acassock and bands, --just as he advised him to husband his shillings, andput his thousand pounds out to interest. "

It was not that he was without religion, --or without, rather, hisreligious beliefs and doubts, "for Swift, " says Thackeray, "was areverent, was a pious spirit. For Swift could love and could pray. " Leftto himself and to the natural thoughts of his mind, without those"orders" to which he had bound himself as a necessary part of his trade, he could have turned to his God with questionings which need not thenhave been heartbreaking. "It is my belief, " says Thackeray, "that hesuffered frightfully from the consciousness of his own scepticism, andthat he had bent his pride so far down as to put his apostasy out tohire. " I doubt whether any of Swift's works are very much read now, butperhaps Gulliver's travels are oftener in the hands of modern readersthan any other. Of all the satires in our language it is probably themost cynical, the most absolutely illnatured, and therefore the falsest. Let those who care to form an opinion of Swift's mind from the bestknown of his works, turn to Thackeray's account of Gulliver. I canimagine no greater proof of misery than to have been able to write sucha book as that. 

It is thus that the lecturer concludes his lecture about Swift. "Heshrank away from all affections sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa bothdied near him, and away from him. He had not heart enough to see themdie. He broke from his fastest friend, Sheridan. He slunk away from hisfondest admirer, Pope. His laugh jars on one's ear after seven-scoreyears. He was always alone, --alone and gnashing in the darkness, exceptwhen Stella's sweet smile came and shone on him. When that went, silenceand utter night closed over him. An immense genius, an awful downfalland ruin! So great a man he seems to me, that thinking of him is likethinking of an empire falling. We have other great names tomention, --none I think, however, so great or so gloomy. " And so we passon from Swift, feeling that though the man was certainly a humorist, wehave had as yet but little to do with humour. 

Congreve is the next who, however truly he may have been a humorist, isdescribed here rather as a man of fashion. A man of fashion he certainlywas, but is best known in our literature as a comedian, --worshippingthat comic Muse to whom Thackeray hesitates to introduce his audience, because she is not only merry but shameless also. Congreve's muse wasabout as bad as any muse that ever misbehaved herself, --and I think, aslittle amusing. "Reading in these plays now, " says Thackeray, "is likeshutting your ears and looking at people dancing. What does itmean?--the measures, the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling, andretreating, the cavaliers seuls advancing upon their ladies, then ladiesand men twirling round at the end in a mad galop, after which everybodybows and the quaint rite is celebrated?" It is always so with Congreve'splays, and Etherege's and Wycherley's. The world we meet there is notour world, and as we read the plays we have no sympathy with theseunknown people. It was not that they lived so long ago. They are muchnearer to us in time than the men and women who figured on the stage inthe reign of James I. But their nature is farther from our nature. Theysparkle but never warm. They are witty but leave no impression. I mightalmost go further, and say that they are wicked but never allure. "WhenVoltaire came to visit the Great Congreve, " says Thackeray, "the latterrather affected to despise his literary reputation; and in this, perhaps, the great Congreve was not far wrong. A touch of Steele'stenderness is worth all his finery; a flash of Swift's lightning, a beamof Addison's pure sunshine, and his tawdry playhouse taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him, and he was undoubtedly a pretty fellow. "

There is no doubt as to the true humour of Addison, who next comes upbefore us, but I think that he makes hardly so good a subject for alecturer as the great gloomy man of intellect, or the frivolous man ofpleasure. Thackeray tells us all that is to be said about him as ahumorist in so few lines that I may almost insert them on this page:"But it is not for his reputation as the great author of _Cato_ and _TheCampaign_, or for his merits as Secretary of State, or for his rank andhigh distinction as Lady Warwick's husband, or for his eminence as anexaminer of political questions on the Whig side, or a guardian ofBritish liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tattler ofsmall talk and a Spectator of mankind that we cherish and love him, andowe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. Hecame in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble naturalvoice. He came the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kindjudge, who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about hangingand ruthless, a literary Jeffreys, in Addison's kind court only minorcases were tried;--only peccadilloes and small sins against society, only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and hoops, or a nuisance in theabuse of beaux canes and snuffboxes. " Steele set _The Tatler_ a going. "But with his friend's discovery of _The Tatler_, Addison's calling wasfound, and the most delightful Tattler in the world began to speak. Hedoes not go very deep. Let gentlemen of a profound genius, criticsaccustomed to the plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinkingthat he couldn't go very deep. There is no trace of suffering in hiswriting. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfullyselfish, --if I must use the word!"

Such was Addison as a humorist; and when the hearer shall have heardalso, --or the reader read, --that this most charming Tattler also wrote_Cato_, became a Secretary of State, and married a countess, he willhave learned all that Thackeray had to tell of him. 

Steele was one who stood much less high in the world's esteem, and wholeft behind him a much smaller name, --but was quite Addison's equal as ahumorist and a wit. Addison, though he had the reputation of a toper, was respectability itself. Steele was almost always disreputable. He wasbrought from Ireland, placed at the Charter House, and then transferredto Oxford, where he became acquainted with Addison. Thackeray says that"Steele found Addison a stately college don at Oxford. " The statelinessand the don's rank were attributable no doubt to the more sobercharacter of the English lad, for, in fact, the two men were born in thesame year, 1672. Steele, who during his life was affected by variousdifferent tastes, first turned himself to literature, but early in lifewas bitten by the hue of a red coat and became a trooper in the HorseGuards. To the end he vacillated in the same way. "In that charmingpaper in _The Tatler_, in which he records his father's death, hismother's griefs, his own most solemn and tender emotions, he says he isinterrupted by the arrival of a hamper of wine, 'the same as is to besold at Garraway's next week;' upon the receipt of which he sends forthree friends, and they fall to instantly, drinking two bottles apiece, with great benefit to themselves, and not separating till two o'clock inthe morning. "

He had two wives, whom he loved dearly and treated badly. He hired grandhouses, and bought fine horses for which he could never pay. He wasoften religious, but more often drunk. As a man of letters, other men ofletters who followed him, such as Thackeray, could not be very proud ofhim. But everybody loved him; and he seems to have been the inventor ofthat flying literature which, with many changes in form and manner, hasdone so much for the amusement and edification of readers ever since histime. He was always commencing, or carrying on, --often editing, --someone of the numerous periodicals which appeared during his time. Thackeray mentions seven: _The Tatler_, _The Spectator_, _The Guardian_, _The Englishman_, _The Lover_, _The Reader_, and _The Theatre_; thatthree of them are well known to this day, --the three first named, --andare to be found in all libraries, is proof that his life was not thrownaway. 

I almost question Prior's right to be in the list, unless indeed themastery over well-turned conceits is to be included within the border ofhumour. But Thackeray had a strong liking for Prior, and in his ownhumorous way rebukes his audience for not being familiar with _The Townand Country Mouse_. He says that Prior's epigrams have the genuinesparkle, and compares Prior to Horace. "His song, his philosophy, hisgood sense, his happy easy turns and melody, his loves and hisepicureanism bear a great resemblance to that most delightful andaccomplished master. " I cannot say that I agree with this. Prior isgenerally neat in his expression. Horace is happy, --which is surely agreat deal more. 

All that is said of Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett, and Fielding is worthreading, and may be of great value both to those who have not time tostudy the authors, and to those who desire to have their own judgmentssomewhat guided, somewhat assisted. That they were all men of humourthere can be no doubt. Whether either of them, except perhaps Gay, wouldhave been specially ranked as a humorist among men of letters, may be aquestion. 

Sterne was a humorist, and employed his pen in that line, if ever awriter did so, and so was Goldsmith. Of the excellence and largeness ofthe disposition of the one, and the meanness and littleness of theother, it is not necessary that I should here say much. But I will givea short passage from our author as to each. He has been quoting somewhatat length from Sterne, and thus he ends; "And with this pretty dance andchorus the volume artfully concludes. Even here one can't give the wholedescription. There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has somethingthat were better away, a latent corruption, --a hint as of an impurepresence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freertimes and manners than ours, --but not all. The foul satyr's eyes leerout of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrotewere bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned werefor pity and pardon. " Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I will thenlet my reader go to the volume and study the lectures for himself. "Thepoor fellow was never so friendless but that he could befriend someone; never so pinched and wretched but he could give of his crust, andspeak his word of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he wouldgive that, and make the children happy in the dreary London courts. "

Of this too I will remind my readers, --those who have bookshelveswell-filled to adorn their houses, --that Goldsmith stands in the frontwhere all the young people see the volumes. There are few among theyoung people who do not refresh their sense of humour occasionally fromthat shelf, Sterne is relegated to some distant and high corner. Theless often that he is taken down the better. Thackeray makes some halfexcuse for him because of the greater freedom of the times. But "thetimes" were the same for the two. Both Sterne and Goldsmith wrote in thereign of George II. ; both died in the reign of George III. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THACKERAY'S BALLADS. 

We have a volume of Thackeray's poems, republished under the name of_Ballads_, which is, I think, to a great extent a misnomer. They are allreadable, almost all good, full of humour, and with some fine touches ofpathos, most happy in their versification, and, with a few exceptions, hitting well on the head the nail which he intended to hit. But they arenot on that account ballads. Literally, a ballad is a song, but it hascome to signify a short chronicle in verse, which may be political, orpathetic, or grotesque, --or it may have all three characteristics or anytwo of them; but not on that account is any grotesque poem aballad, --nor, of course, any pathetic or any political poem. _JacobOmnium's Hoss_ may fairly be called a ballad, containing as it does achronicle of a certain well-defined transaction; and the story of _KingCanute_ is a ballad, --one of the best that has been produced in ourlanguage in modern years. But such pieces as those called _The End ofthe Play_ and _Vanitas Vanitatum_, which are didactic as well aspathetic, are not ballads in the common sense; nor are such songs as_The Mahogany Tree_, or the little collection called _Love Songs madeEasy_. The majority of the pieces are not ballads, but if they be goodof the kind we should be ungrateful to quarrel much with the name. 

How very good most of them are, I did not know till I re-read them forthe purpose of writing this chapter. There is a manifest falling off insome few, --which has come from that source of literary failure which isnow so common. If a man write a book or a poem because it is in him towrite it, --the motive power being altogether in himself and coming fromhis desire to express himself, --he will write it well, presuming him tobe capable of the effort. But if he write his book or poem simplybecause a book or poem is required from him, let his capability be whatit may, it is not unlikely that he will do it badly. Thackerayoccasionally suffered from the weakness thus produced. A ballad from_Policeman X_, --_Bow Street Ballads_ they were first called, --wasrequired by _Punch_, and had to be forthcoming, whatever might be thepoet's humour, by a certain time. _Jacob Omnium's Hoss_ is excellent. His heart and feeling were all there, on behalf of his friend, andagainst that obsolete old court of justice. But we can tell well when hewas looking through the police reports for a subject, and taking whatchance might send him, without any special interest in the matter. _TheKnight and the Lady of Bath_, and the _Damages Two Hundred Pounds_, asthey were demanded at Guildford, taste as though they were written toorder. 

Here, in his verses as in his prose, the charm of Thackeray's work liesin the mingling of humour with pathos and indignation. There is hardly apiece that is not more or less funny, hardly a piece that is notsatirical;--and in most of them, for those who will look a little belowthe surface, there is something that will touch them. Thackeray, thoughhe rarely uttered a word, either with his pen or his mouth, in whichthere was not an intention to reach our sense of humour, never was onlyfunny. When he was most determined to make us laugh, he had always afurther purpose;--some pity was to be extracted from us on behalf of thesorrows of men, or some indignation at the evil done by them. 

This is the beginning of that story as to the _Two Hundred Pounds_, forwhich as a ballad I do not care very much:

 Special jurymen of England who admire your country's laws, And proclaim a British jury worthy of the nation's applause, Gaily compliment each other at the issue of a cause, Which was tried at Guildford 'sizes, this day week as ever was. 

Here he is indignant, not only in regard to some miscarriage of justiceon that special occasion, but at the general unfitness of jurymen forthe work confided to them. "Gaily compliment yourselves, " he says, "onyour beautiful constitution, from which come such beautiful results asthose I am going to tell you!" When he reminded us that Ivanhoe hadproduced Magna Charta, there was a purpose of irony even there in regardto our vaunted freedom. With all your Magna Charta and your juries, whatare you but snobs! There is nothing so often misguided as generalindignation, and I think that in his judgment of outside things, in themeasure which he usually took of them, Thackeray was very frequentlymisguided. A satirist by trade will learn to satirise everything, tillthe light of the sun and the moon's loveliness will become evil and meanto him. I think that he was mistaken in his views of things. But we haveto do with him as a writer, not as a political economist or apolitician. His indignation was all true, and the expression of it wasoften perfect. The lines in which he addresses that Pallis Court, atthe end of Jacob Omnium's Hoss, are almost sublime. 

 O Pallis Court, you move My pity most profound. A most amusing sport You thought it, I'll be bound, To saddle hup a three-pound debt, With two-and-twenty pound. 

 Good sport it is to you To grind the honest poor, To pay their just or unjust debts With eight hundred per cent, for Lor; Make haste and get your costes in, They will not last much mor!

 Come down from that tribewn, Thou shameless and unjust; Thou swindle, picking pockets in The name of Truth august; Come down, thou hoary Blasphemy, For die thou shalt and must. 

 And go it, Jacob Homnium, And ply your iron pen, And rise up, Sir John Jervis, And shut me up that den; That sty for fattening lawyers in, On the bones of honest men. 

"Come down from that tribewn, thou shameless and unjust!" It isimpossible not to feel that he felt this as he wrote it. 

There is a branch of his poetry which he calls, --or which at any rate isnow called, _Lyra Hybernica_, for which no doubt _The Groves of Blarney_was his model. There have been many imitations since, of which perhapsBarham's ballad on the coronation was the best, "When to Westminster theRoyal Spinster and the Duke of Leinster all in order did repair!"Thackeray in some of his attempts has been equally droll and equallygraphic. That on _The Cristal Palace_, --not that at Sydenham, but itsforerunner, the palace of the Great Exhibition, --is very good, as thefollowing catalogue of its contents will show;

 There's holy saints And window paints, By Maydiayval Pugin; Alhamborough Jones Did paint the tones Of yellow and gambouge in. 

 There's fountains there And crosses fair; There's water-gods with urns; There's organs three, To play, d'ye see? "God save the Queen, " by turns. 

 There's statues bright Of marble white, Of silver, and of copper; And some in zinc, And some, I think, That isn't over proper. 

 There's staym ingynes, That stands in lines, Enormous and amazing, That squeal and snort Like whales in sport, Or elephants a grazing. 

 There's carts and gigs, And pins for pigs, There's dibblers and there's harrows, And ploughs like toys For little boys, And ilegant wheel-barrows. 

 For thim genteels Who ride on wheels, There's plenty to indulge 'em There's droskys snug From Paytersbug, And vayhycles from Bulgium. 

 There's cabs on stands And shandthry danns; There's waggons from New York here; There's Lapland sleighs Have cross'd the seas, And jaunting cyars from Cork here. 

In writing this Thackeray was a little late with his copy for _Punch_;not, we should say, altogether an uncommon accident to him. It shouldhave been with the editor early on Saturday, if not before, but did notcome till late on Saturday evening. The editor, who was among men themost good-natured and I should think the most forbearing, either couldnot, or in this case would not, insert it in the next week's issue, andThackeray, angry and disgusted, sent it to _The Times_. In _The Times_of next Monday it appeared, --very much I should think to the delight ofthe readers of that august newspaper. 

Mr. Molony's account of the ball given to the Nepaulese ambassadors bythe Peninsular and Oriental Company, is so like Barham's coronation inthe account it gives of the guests, that one would fancy it must be bythe same hand. 

 The noble Chair[7] stud at the stair And bade the dhrums to thump; and he Did thus evince to that Black Prince The welcome of his Company. [8]

 O fair the girls and rich the curls, And bright the oys you saw there was; And fixed each oye you then could spoi On General Jung Bahawther was!

 This gineral great then tuck his sate, With all the other ginerals, Bedad his troat, his belt, his coat, All bleezed with precious minerals; And as he there, with princely air, Recloinin on his cushion was, All round about his royal chair The squeezin and the pushin was. 

 O Pat, such girls, such jukes and earls, Such fashion and nobilitee! Just think of Tim, and fancy him Amidst the high gentilitee! There was the Lord de L'Huys, and the Portygeese Ministher and his lady there, And I recognised, with much surprise, Our messmate, Bob O'Grady, there. 

All these are very good fun, --so good in humour and so good inexpression, that it would be needless to criticise their peculiardialect, were it not that Thackeray has made for himself a reputation byhis writing of Irish. In this he has been so entirely successful thatfor many English readers he has established a new language which maynot improperly be called Hybernico-Thackerayan. If comedy is to be gotfrom peculiarities of dialect, as no doubt it is, one form will do aswell as another, so long as those who read it know no better. So it hasbeen with Thackeray's Irish, for in truth he was not familiar with themodes of pronunciation which make up Irish brogue. Therefore, though heis always droll, he is not true to nature. Many an Irishman coming toLondon, not unnaturally tries to imitate the talk of Londoners. You orI, reader, were we from the West, and were the dear County Galway tosend either of us to Parliament, would probably endeavour to drop thedear brogue of our country, and in doing so we should make somemistakes. It was these mistakes which Thackeray took for the naturalIrish tone. He was amused to hear a major called "Meejor, " but wasunaware that the sound arose from Pat's affection of English softness ofspeech. The expression natural to the unadulterated Irishman wouldrather be "Ma-ajor. " He discovers his own provincialism, and trying tobe polite and urbane, he says "Meejor. " In one of the lines I havequoted there occurs the word "troat. " Such a sound never came naturallyfrom the mouth of an Irishman. He puts in an h instead of omitting it, and says "dhrink. " He comes to London, and finding out that he is wrongwith his "dhrink, " he leaves out all the h's he can, and thus comes to"troat. " It is this which Thackeray has heard. There is a little piececalled the _Last Irish Grievance_, to which Thackeray adds a still latergrievance, by the false sounds which he elicits from the calumniatedmouth of the pretended Irish poet. Slaves are "sleeves, " places are"pleeces, " Lord John is "Lard Jahn, " fatal is "fetal, " danger is"deenger, " and native is "neetive. " All these are unintended slanders. Tea, Hibernicé, is "tay, " please is "plaise, " sea is "say, " and ease is"aise. " The softer sound of e is broadened out by the naturalIrishman, --not, to my ear, without a certain euphony;--but no one inIreland says or hears the reverse. The Irishman who in London might talkof his "neetive" race, would be mincing his words to please the ear ofthe cockney. 

_The Chronicle of the Drum_ would be a true ballad all through, were itnot that there is tacked on to it a long moral in an altered metre. I donot much value the moral, but the ballad is excellent, not only in muchof its versification and in the turns of its language, but in the quaintand true picture it gives of the French nation. The drummer, either byhimself or by some of his family, has drummed through a century ofFrench battling, caring much for his country and its glory, butunderstanding nothing of the causes for which he is enthusiastic. Whether for King, Republic, or Emperor, whether fighting and conqueringor fighting and conquered, he is happy as long as he can beat his drumon a field of glory. But throughout his adventures there is a touch ofchivalry about our drummer. In all the episodes of his country's careerhe feels much of patriotism and something of tenderness. It is thus hesings during the days of the Revolution:

 We had taken the head of King Capet, We called for the blood of his wife; Undaunted she came to the scaffold, And bared her fair neck to the knife. As she felt the foul fingers that touched her, She shrank, but she deigned not to speak; She looked with a royal disdain, And died with a blush on her cheek!

 'Twas thus that our country was saved! So told us the Safety Committee! But, psha, I've the heart of a soldier, -- All gentleness, mercy, and pity. I loathed to assist at such deeds, And my drum beat its loudest of tunes, As we offered to justice offended, The blood of the bloody tribunes. 

 Away with such foul recollections! No more of the axe and the block. I saw the last fight of the sections, As they fell 'neath our guns at St. Rock. Young Bonaparte led us that day. 

And so it goes on. I will not continue the stanza, because it containsthe worst rhyme that Thackeray ever permitted himself to use. _TheChronicle of the Drum_ has not the finish which he achieved afterwards, but it is full of national feeling, and carries on its purpose to theend with an admirable persistency;

 A curse on those British assassins Who ordered the slaughter of Ney; A curse on Sir Hudson who tortured The life of our hero away. A curse on all Russians, --I hate them; On all Prussian and Austrian fry; And, oh, but I pray we may meet them And fight them again ere I die. 

_The White Squall_, --which I can hardly call a ballad, unless anydescription of a scene in verse may be included in the name, --is surelyone of the most graphic descriptions ever put into verse. Nothingwritten by Thackeray shows more plainly his power over words and rhymes. He draws his picture without a line omitted or a line too much, sayingwith apparent facility all that he has to say, and so saying it thatevery word conveys its natural meaning. 

 When a squall, upon a sudden, Came o'er the waters scudding; And the clouds began to gather, And the sea was lashed to lather, And the lowering thunder grumbled, And the lightning jumped and tumbled, And the ship and all the ocean Woke up in wild commotion. Then the wind set up a howling, And the poodle dog a yowling, And the cocks began a crowing, And the old cow raised a lowing, As she heard the tempest blowing; And fowls and geese did cackle, And the cordage and the tackle Began to shriek and crackle; And the spray dashed o'er the funnels, And down the deck in runnels; And the rushing water soaks all, From the seamen in the fo'ksal To the stokers whose black faces Peer out of their bed-places; And the captain, he was bawling, And the sailors pulling, hauling, And the quarter-deck tarpauling Was shivered in the squalling; And the passengers awaken, Most pitifully shaken; And the steward jumps up and hastens For the necessary basins. 

 Then the Greeks they groaned and quivered, And they knelt, and moaned, and shivered, As the plunging waters met them, And splashed and overset them; And they call in their emergence Upon countless saints and virgins; And their marrowbones are bended, And they think the world is ended. 

 And the Turkish women for'ard Were frightened and behorror'd; And shrieking and bewildering, The mothers clutched their children; The men sang "Allah! Illah! Mashallah Bis-millah!" As the warning waters doused them, And splashed them and soused them And they called upon the Prophet, And thought but little of it. 

 Then all the fleas in Jewry Jumped up and bit like fury; And the progeny of Jacob Did on the main-deck wake up. (I wot these greasy Rabbins Would never pay for cabins); And each man moaned and jabbered in His filthy Jewish gaberdine, In woe and lamentation, And howling consternation. And the splashing water drenches Their dirty brats and wenches; And they crawl from bales and benches, In a hundred thousand stenches. This was the White Squall famous, Which latterly o'ercame us. 

_Peg of Limavaddy_ has always been very popular, and the public havenot, I think, been generally aware that the young lady in question livedin truth at Newton Limavady (with one d). But with the correct nameThackeray would hardly have been so successful with his rhymes. 

 Citizen or Squire Tory, Whig, or Radi- Cal would all desire Peg of Limavaddy. Had I Homer's fire Or that of Sergeant Taddy Meetly I'd admire Peg of Limavaddy. And till I expire Or till I go mad I Will sing unto my lyre Peg of Limavaddy. 

_The Cane-bottomed Chair_ is another, better, I think, than _Peg ofLimavaddy_, as containing that mixture of burlesque with the patheticwhich belonged so peculiarly to Thackeray, and which was indeed the veryessence of his genius. 

 But of all the cheap treasures that garnish my nest, There's one that I love and I cherish the best. For the finest of couches that's padded with hair I never would change thee, my cane-bottomed chair. 

 'Tis a bandy-legged, high-bottomed, worm-eaten seat, With a creaking old back and twisted old feet; But since the fair morning when Fanny sat there, I bless thee and love thee, old cane-bottomed chair. 

 * * * * *

 She comes from the past and revisits my room, She looks as she then did all beauty and bloom; So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair, And yonder she sits in my cane-bottomed chair. 

This, in the volume which I have now before me, is followed by a pictureof Fanny in the chair, to which I cannot but take exception. I am quitesure that when Fanny graced the room and seated herself in the chair ofher old bachelor friend, she had not on a low dress and loosely-flowingdrawing-room shawl, nor was there a footstool ready for her feet. Idoubt also the headgear. Fanny on that occasion was dressed in hermorning apparel, and had walked through the streets, carried no fan, and wore no brooch but one that might be necessary for pinning hershawl. 

_The Great Cossack Epic_ is the longest of the ballads. It is a legendof St. Sophia of Kioff, telling how Father Hyacinth, by the aid of St. Sophia, whose wooden statue he carried with him, escaped across theBorysthenes with all the Cossacks at his tail. It is very good fun; butnot equal to many of the others. Nor is the _Carmen Lilliense_ quite tomy taste. I should not have declared at once that it had come fromThackeray's hand, had I not known it. 

But who could doubt the _Bouillabaisse_? Who else could have writtenthat? Who at the same moment could have been so merry and somelancholy, --could have gone so deep into the regrets of life, withwords so appropriate to its jollities? I do not know how far my readerswill agree with me that to read it always must be a fresh pleasure; butin order that they may agree with me, if they can, I will give it tothem entire. If there be one whom it does not please, he will likenothing that Thackeray ever wrote in verse. 

 THE BALLAD OF BOUILLABAISSE. 

 A street there is in Paris famous, For which no rhyme our language yields, Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is-- The New Street of the Little Fields; And here's an inn, not rich and splendid, But still in comfortable case; The which in youth I oft attended, To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse. 

 This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is, -- A sort of soup, or broth, or brew Or hotch-potch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo; Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace: All these you eat at Terré's tavern, In that one dish of Bouillabaisse. 

 Indeed, a rich and savoury stew 'tis; And true philosophers, methinks, Who love all sorts of natural beauties, Should love good victuals and good drinks. And Cordelier or Benedictine Might gladly sure his lot embrace, Nor find a fast-day too afflicting Which served him up a Bouillabaisse. 

 I wonder if the house still there is? Yes, here the lamp is, as before; The smiling red-cheeked écaillère is Still opening oysters at the door. Is Terré still alive and able? I recollect his droll grimace; He'd come and smile before your table, And hope you liked your Bouillabaisse. 

 We enter, --nothing's changed or older. "How's Monsieur Terré, waiter, pray?" The waiter stares and shrugs his shoulder, -- "Monsieur is dead this many a day. " "It is the lot of saint and sinner; So honest Terré's run his race. " "What will Monsieur require for dinner?" "Say, do you still cook Bouillabaisse?"

 "Oh, oui, Monsieur, " 's the waiter's answer, "Quel vin Monsieur desire-t-il?" "Tell me a good one. " "That I can, sir: The chambertin with yellow seal. " "So Terré's gone, " I say, and sink in My old accustom'd corner-place; "He's done with feasting and with drinking, With Burgundy and Bouillabaisse. "

 My old accustomed corner here is, The table still is in the nook; Ah! vanish'd many a busy year is This well-known chair since last I took. When first I saw ye, cari luoghi, I'd scarce a beard upon my face, And now a grizzled, grim old fogy, I sit and wait for Bouillabaisse. 

 Where are you, old companions trusty, Of early days here met to dine? Come, waiter! quick, a flagon crusty; I'll pledge them in the good old wine. The kind old voices and old faces My memory can quick retrace; Around the board they take their places, And share the wine and Bouillabaisse. 

 There's Jack has made a wondrous marriage; There's laughing Tom is laughing yet; There's brave Augustus drives his carriage; There's poor old Fred in the _Gazette_; O'er James's head the grass is growing. Good Lord! the world has wagged apace Since here we set the claret flowing, And drank, and ate the Bouillabaisse. 

 Ah me! how quick the days are flitting! I mind me of a time that's gone, When here I'd sit, as now I'm sitting, In this same place, --but not alone. A fair young face was nestled near me, A dear, dear face looked fondly up, And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me! There's no one now to share my cup. 

 * * * * *

 I drink it as the Fates ordain it. Come fill it, and have done with rhymes; Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it In memory of dear old times. Welcome the wine, whate'er the seal is; And sit you down and say your grace With thankful heart, whate'er the meal is. Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse. 

I am not disposed to say that Thackeray will hold a high place amongEnglish poets. He would have been the first to ridicule such anassumption made on his behalf. But I think that his verses will be morepopular than those of many highly reputed poets, and that as years rollon they will gain rather than lose in public estimation. 

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Chair--_i. E. _ Chairman. 

[8] _I. E. _ The P. And O. Company. 

CHAPTER IX. 

THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 

A novel in style should be easy, lucid, and of course grammatical. Thesame may be said of any book; but that which is intended to recreateshould be easily understood, --for which purpose lucid narration is anessential. In matter it should be moral and amusing. In manner it may berealistic, or sublime, or ludicrous;--or it may be all these if theauthor can combine them. As to Thackeray's performance in style andmatter I will say something further on. His manner was mainly realistic, and I will therefore speak first of that mode of expression which waspeculiarly his own. 

Realism in style has not all the ease which seems to belong to it. It isthe object of the author who affects it so to communicate with hisreader that all his words shall seem to be natural to the occasion. Wedo not think the language of Dogberry natural, when he tells neighbourSeacole that "to write and read comes by nature. " That is ludicrous. Noris the language of Hamlet natural when he shows to his mother theportrait of his father;

 See what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command. 

That is sublime. Constance is natural when she turns away from theCardinal, declaring that

 He talks to me that never had a son. 

In one respect both the sublime and ludicrous are easier than therealistic. They are not required to be true. A man with an imaginationand culture may feign either of them without knowing the ways of men. Tobe realistic you must know accurately that which you describe. How oftendo we find in novels that the author makes an attempt at realism andfalls into a bathos of absurdity, because he cannot use appropriatelanguage? "No human being ever spoke like that, " we say toourselves, --while we should not question the naturalness of theproduction, either in the grand or the ridiculous. 

And yet in very truth the realistic must not be true, --but just so farremoved from truth as to suit the erroneous idea of truth which thereader may be supposed to entertain. For were a novelist to narrate aconversation between two persons of fair but not high education, and touse the ill-arranged words and fragments of speech which are reallycommon in such conversations, he would seem to have sunk to theludicrous, and to be attributing to the interlocutors a mode of languagemuch beneath them. Though in fact true, it would seem to be far fromnatural. But on the other hand, were he to put words grammaticallycorrect into the mouths of his personages, and to round off and tocomplete the spoken sentences, the ordinary reader would instantly feelsuch a style to be stilted and unreal. This reader would not analyse it, but would in some dim but sufficiently critical manner be aware that hisauthor was not providing him with a naturally spoken dialogue. Toproduce the desired effect the narrator must go between the two. He mustmount somewhat above the ordinary conversational powers of such personsas are to be represented, --lest he disgust. But he must by no means soarinto correct phraseology, --lest he offend. The realistic, --by which wemean that which shall seem to be real, --lies between the two, and inreaching it the writer has not only to keep his proper distance on bothsides, but has to maintain varying distances in accordance with theposition, mode of life, and education of the speakers. Lady Castlewoodin _Esmond_ would not have been properly made to speak with absoluteprecision; but she goes nearer to the mark than her more ignorant lord, the viscount; less near, however, than her better-educated kinsman, Henry Esmond. He, however, is not made to speak altogether by the card, or he would be unnatural. Nor would each of them speak always in thesame strain, but they would alter their language according to theircompanion, --according even to the hour of the day. All this the readerunconsciously perceives, and will not think the language to be naturalunless the proper variations be there. 

In simple narrative the rule is the same as in dialogue, though it doesnot admit of the same palpable deviation from correct construction. Thestory of any incident, to be realistic, will admit neither ofsesquipedalian grandeur nor of grotesque images. The one gives an ideaof romance and the other of burlesque, to neither of which is truthsupposed to appertain. We desire to soar frequently, and then we tryromance. We desire to recreate ourselves with the easy and droll. Dulceest desipere in loco. Then we have recourse to burlesque. But in neitherdo we expect human nature. 

I cannot but think that in the hands of the novelist the middle courseis the most powerful. Much as we may delight in burlesque, we cannotclaim for it the power of achieving great results. So much I think willbe granted. For the sublime we look rather to poetry than to prose, andthough I will give one or two instances just now in which it has beenused with great effect in prose fiction, it does not come home to theheart, teaching a lesson, as does the realistic. The girl who reads istouched by Lucy Ashton, but she feels herself to be convinced of thefacts as to Jeanie Deans, and asks herself whether she might not emulatethem. 

Now as to the realism of Thackeray, I must rather appeal to my readersthan attempt to prove it by quotation. Whoever it is that speaks in hispages, does it not seem that such a person would certainly have usedsuch words on such an occasion? If there be need of examination to learnwhether it be so or not, let the reader study all that falls from themouth of Lady Castlewood through the novel called _Esmond_, or all thatfalls from the mouth of Beatrix. They are persons peculiarlysituated, --noble women, but who have still lived much out of the world. The former is always conscious of a sorrow; the latter is alwaysstriving after an effect;--and both on this account are difficult ofmanagement. A period for the story has been chosen which is strange andunknown to us, and which has required a peculiar language. One wouldhave said beforehand that whatever might be the charms of the book, itwould not be natural. And yet the ear is never wounded by a tone that isfalse. It is not always the case that in novel reading the ear should bewounded because the words spoken are unnatural. Bulwer does not wound, though he never puts into the mouth of any of his persons words such aswould have been spoken. They are not expected from him. It is somethingelse that he provides. From Thackeray they are expected, --and from manyothers. But Thackeray never disappoints. Whether it be a great duke, such as he who was to have married Beatrix, or a mean chaplain, such asTusher, or Captain Steele the humorist, they talk, --not as they wouldhave talked probably, of which I am no judge, --but as we feel that theymight have talked. We find ourselves willing to take it as provedbecause it is there, which is the strongest possible evidence of therealistic capacity of the writer. 

As to the sublime in novels, it is not to be supposed that any very highrank of sublimity is required to put such works within the pale of thatdefinition. I allude to those in which an attempt is made to soar abovethe ordinary actions and ordinary language of life. We may take as aninstance _The Mysteries of Udolpho_. That is intended to be sublimethroughout. Even the writer never for a moment thought of descending toreal life. She must have been untrue to her own idea of her own businesshad she done so. It is all stilted, --all of a certain altitude among theclouds. It has been in its time a popular book, and has had its world ofreaders. Those readers no doubt preferred the diluted romance of Mrs. Radcliff to the condensed realism of Fielding. At any rate they did notlook for realism. _Pelham_ may be taken as another instance of thesublime, though there is so much in it that is of the world worldly, though an intentional fall to the ludicrous is often made in it. Thepersonages talk in glittering dialogues, throwing about philosophy, science, and the classics, in a manner which is always suggestive andoften amusing. The book is brilliant with intellect. But no word isever spoken as it would have been spoken;--no detail is ever narrated asit would have occurred. Bulwer no doubt regarded novels as romantic, andwould have looked with contempt on any junction of realism and romance, though, in varying his work, he did not think it beneath him to vary hissublimity with the ludicrous. The sublime in novels is no doubt mosteffective when it breaks out, as though by some burst of nature, in themidst of a story true to life. "If, " said Evan Maccombich, "the Saxongentlemen are laughing because a poor man such as me thinks my life, orthe life of six of my degree, is worth that of Vich Ian Vohr, it's likeenough they may be very right; but if they laugh because they think Iwould not keep my word and come back to redeem him, I can tell them theyken neither the heart of a Hielandman nor the honour of a gentleman. "That is sublime. And, again, when Balfour of Burley slaughters Bothwell, the death scene is sublime. "Die, bloodthirsty dog!" said Burley. "Dieas thou hast lived! Die like the beasts that perish--hoping nothing, believing nothing!"----"And fearing nothing, " said Bothwell. Horrible asis the picture, it is sublime. As is also that speech of Meg Merrilies, as she addresses Mr. Bertram, standing on the bank. "Ride your ways, "said the gipsy; "ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan; ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram. This day have ye quenched seven smoking hearths; see ifthe fire in your ain parlour burn the blyther for that. Ye have riventhe thack off seven cottar houses; look if your ain rooftree stand thefaster. Ye may stable your stirks in the shealings at Derncleugh; seethat the hare does not couch on the hearthstane at Ellangowan. " That isromance, and reaches the very height of the sublime. That does notoffend, impossible though it be that any old woman should have spokensuch words, because it does in truth lift the reader up among the brightstars. It is thus that the sublime may be mingled with the realistic, ifthe writer has the power. Thackeray also rises in that way to a highpitch, though not in many instances. Romance does not often justify tohim an absence of truth. The scene between Lady Castlewood and the Dukeof Hamilton is one, when she explains to her child's suitor who HenryEsmond is. "My daughter may receive presents from the head of ourhouse, " says the lady, speaking up for her kinsman. "My daughter maythankfully take kindness from her father's, her mother's, her brother'sdearest friend. " The whole scene is of the same nature, and is evidenceof Thackeray's capacity for the sublime. And again, when the same ladywelcomes the same kinsman on his return from the wars, she rises ashigh. But as I have already quoted a part of the passage in the chapteron this novel, I will not repeat it here. 

It may perhaps be said of the sublime in novels, --which I haveendeavoured to describe as not being generally of a high order, --that itis apt to become cold, stilted, and unsatisfactory. What may be done byimpossible castles among impossible mountains, peopled by impossibleheroes and heroines, and fraught with impossible horrors, _The Mysteriesof Udolpho_ have shown us. But they require a patient reader, and onewho can content himself with a long protracted and most unemotionalexcitement. The sublimity which is effected by sparkling speeches isbetter, if the speeches really have something in them beneath thesparkles. Those of Bulwer generally have. Those of his imitators areoften without anything, the sparkles even hardly sparkling. At the bestthey fatigue; and a novel, if it fatigues, is unpardonable. Its onlyexcuse is to be found in the amusement it affords. It should instructalso, no doubt, but it never will do so unless it hides its instructionand amuses. Scott understood all this, when he allowed himself only suchsudden bursts as I have described. Even in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, which I do not regard as among the best of his performances, as he soarshigh into the sublime, so does he descend low into the ludicrous. 

In this latter division of pure fiction, --the burlesque, as it iscommonly called, or the ludicrous, --Thackeray is quite as much at homeas in the realistic, though, the vehicle being less powerful, he hasachieved smaller results by it. Manifest as are the objects in his viewwhen he wrote _The Hoggarty Diamond_ or _The Legend of the Rhine_, theywere less important and less evidently effected than those attempted by_Vanity Fair_ and _Pendennis_. Captain Shindy, the Snob, does not tellus so plainly what is not a gentleman as does Colonel Newcome what is. Nevertheless the ludicrous has, with Thackeray, been very powerful, andvery delightful. 

In trying to describe what is done by literature of this class, it isespecially necessary to remember that different readers are affected ina different way. That which is one man's meat is another man's poison. In the sublime, when the really grand has been reached, it is thereader's own fault if he be not touched. We know that many areindifferent to the soliloquies of Hamlet, but we do not hesitate todeclare to ourselves that they are so because they lack the power ofappreciating grand language. We do not scruple to attribute to those whoare indifferent some inferiority of intelligence. And in regard to therealistic, when the truth of a well-told story or life-like characterdoes not come home, we think that then, too, there is deficiency in thecritical ability. But there is nothing necessarily lacking to a manbecause he does not enjoy _The Heathen Chinee_ or _The Biglow Papers_;and the man to whom these delights of American humour are leather andprunello may be of all the most enraptured by the wit of Sam Weller orthe mock piety of Pecksniff. It is a matter of taste and not ofintellect, as one man likes caviare after his dinner, while anotherprefers apple-pie; and the man himself cannot, or, as far as we can see, does not direct his own taste in the one matter more than in the other. 

Therefore I cannot ask others to share with me the delight which I havein the various and peculiar expressions of the ludicrous which arecommon to Thackeray. Some considerable portion of it consists in badspelling. We may say that Charles James Harrington Fitzroy Yellowplush, or C. FitzJeames De La Pluche, as he is afterwards called, would benothing but for his "orthogwaphy so carefully inaccuwate. " As I havebefore said, Mrs. Malaprop had seemed to have reached the height of thishumour, and in having done so to have made any repetition unpalatable. But Thackeray's studied blundering is altogether different from that ofSheridan. Mrs. Malaprop uses her words in a delightfully wrong sense. Yellowplush would be a very intelligible, if not quite an accuratewriter, had he not made for himself special forms of English wordsaltogether new to the eye. 

"My ma wrapped up my buth in a mistry. I may be illygitmit; I may havebeen changed at nus; but I've always had gen'l'm'nly tastes throughlife, and have no doubt that I come of a gen'l'm'nly origum. " We cannotadmit that there is wit, or even humour, in bad spelling alone. Were itnot that Yellowplush, with his bad spelling, had so much to say forhimself, there would be nothing in it; but there is always a sting ofsatire directed against some real vice, or some growing vulgarity, whichis made sharper by the absurdity of the language. In _The Diary ofGeorge IV. _ there are the following reflections on a certaincorrespondence; "Wooden you phansy, now, that the author of such aletter, instead of writun about pipple of tip-top quality, wasdescribin' Vinegar Yard? Would you beleave that the lady he was a-ritin'to was a chased modist lady of honour and mother of a family? _Otrumpery! o morris!_ as Homer says. This is a higeous pictur of manners, such as I weap to think of, as every morl man must weap. " We do notwonder that when he makes his "ajew" he should have been calledup to be congratulated on the score of his literary performances byhis master, before the Duke, and Lord Bagwig, and Dr. Larner, and"Sawedwadgeorgeearllittnbulwig. " All that Yellowplush says or writes areamong the pearls which Thackeray was continually scattering abroad. 

But this of the distinguished footman was only one of the forms of theludicrous which he was accustomed to use in the furtherance of somepurpose which he had at heart. It was his practice to clothe things mostrevolting with an assumed grace and dignity, and to add to the weight ofhis condemnation by the astounding mendacity of the parody thus drawn. There was a grim humour in this which has been displeasing to some, asseeming to hold out to vice a hand which has appeared for too long atime to be friendly. As we are disposed to be not altogether sympatheticwith a detective policeman who shall have spent a jolly night with adelinquent, for the sake of tracing home the suspected guilt to hislate comrade, so are some disposed to be almost angry with our author, who seems to be too much at home with his rascals, and to live with themon familiar terms till we doubt whether he does not forget theirrascality. _Barry Lyndon_ is the strongest example we have of this styleof the ludicrous, and the critics of whom I speak have thought that ourfriendly relations with Barry have been too genial, too apparentlygenuine, so that it might almost be doubtful whether during thenarrative we might not, at this or the other crisis, be rather with himthan against him. "After all, " the reader might say, on coming to thatpassage in which Barry defends his trade as a gambler, --a passage whichI have quoted in speaking of the novel, --"after all, this man is morehero than scoundrel;" so well is the burlesque humour maintained, sowell does the scoundrel hide his own villany. I can easily understandthat to some it should seem too long drawn out. To me it seems to be theperfection of humour, --and of philosophy. If such a one as Barry Lyndon, a man full of intellect, can be made thus to love and cherish his vice, and to believe in its beauty, how much more necessary is it to avoid thefootsteps which lead to it? But, as I have said above, there is nostandard by which to judge of the excellence of the ludicrous as thereis of the sublime, and even the realistic. 

No writer ever had a stronger proclivity towards parody than Thackeray;and we may, I think, confess that there is no form of literary drollerymore dangerous. The parody will often mar the gem of which it coarselyreproduces the outward semblance. The word "damaged, " used instead of"damask, " has destroyed to my ear for ever the music of one of thesweetest passages in Shakespeare. But it must be acknowledged ofThackeray that, fond as he is of this branch of humour, he has donelittle or no injury by his parodies. They run over with fun, but are socontrived that they do not lessen the flavour of the original. I havegiven in one of the preceding chapters a little set of verses of hisown, called _The Willow Tree_, and his own parody on his own work. Therethe reader may see how effective a parody may be in destroying thesentiment of the piece parodied. But in dealing with other authors hehas been grotesque without being severely critical, and has been verylike, without making ugly or distasteful that which he has imitated. Noone who has admired _Coningsby_ will admire it the less because of_Codlingsby_. Nor will the undoubted romance of _Eugene Aram_ belessened in the estimation of any reader of novels by the well-toldcareer of _George de Barnwell_. One may say that to laugh _Ivanhoe_ outof face, or to lessen the glory of that immortal story, would be beyondthe power of any farcical effect. Thackeray in his _Rowena and Rebecca_certainly had no such purpose. Nothing of _Ivanhoe_ is injured, nothingmade less valuable than it was before, yet, of all prose parodies in thelanguage, it is perhaps the most perfect. Every character is maintained, every incident has a taste of Scott. It has the twang of _Ivanhoe_ frombeginning to end, and yet there is not a word in it by which the authorof _Ivanhoe_ could have been offended. But then there is the purposebeyond that of the mere parody. Prudish women have to be laughed at, anddespotic kings, and parasite lords and bishops. The ludicrous alone isbut poor fun; but when the ludicrous has a meaning, it can be veryeffective in the hands of such a master as this. 

 "He to die!" resumed the bishop. "He a mortal like to us! Death was not for him intended, though _communis omnibus_. Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus!"

So much I have said of the manner in which Thackeray did his work, endeavouring to represent human nature as he saw it, so that his readersshould learn to love what is good, and to hate what is evil. As to themerits of his style, it will be necessary to insist on them the less, because it has been generally admitted to be easy, lucid, andgrammatical. I call that style easy by which the writer has succeeded inconveying to the reader that which the reader is intended to receivewith the least possible amount of trouble to him. I call that stylelucid which conveys to the reader most accurately all that the writerwishes to convey on any subject. The two virtues will, I think, be seento be very different. An author may wish to give an idea that a certainflavour is bitter. He shall leave a conviction that it is simplydisagreeable. Then he is not lucid. But he shall convey so much as that, in such a manner as to give the reader no trouble in arriving at theconclusion. Therefore he is easy. The subject here suggested is aslittle complicated as possible; but in the intercourse which is going oncontinually between writers and readers, affairs of all degrees ofcomplication are continually being discussed, of a nature so complicatedthat the inexperienced writer is puzzled at every turn to expresshimself, and the altogether inartistic writer fails to do so. Who amongwriters has not to acknowledge that he is often unable to tell all thathe has to tell? Words refuse to do it for him. He struggles and stumblesand alters and adds, but finds at last that he has gone either too faror not quite far enough. Then there comes upon him the necessity ofchoosing between two evils. He must either give up the fulness of histhought, and content himself with presenting some fragment of it in thatlucid arrangement of words which he affects; or he must bring out histhought with ambages; he must mass his sentences inconsequentially; hemust struggle up hill almost hopelessly with his phrases, --so that atthe end the reader will have to labour as he himself has laboured, orelse to leave behind much of the fruit which it has been intended thathe should garner. It is the ill-fortune of some to be neither easy orlucid; and there is nothing more wonderful in the history of lettersthan the patience of readers when called upon to suffer under the doublecalamity. It is as though a man were reading a dialogue of Plato, understanding neither the subject nor the language. But it is often thecase that one has to be sacrificed to the other. The pregnant writerwill sometimes solace himself by declaring that it is not his businessto supply intelligence to the reader; and then, in throwing out theentirety of his thought, will not stop to remember that he cannot hopeto scatter his ideas far and wide unless he can make them easilyintelligible. Then the writer who is determined that his book shall notbe put down because it is troublesome, is too apt to avoid the knottybits and shirk the rocky turns, because he cannot with ease to himselfmake them easy to others. If this be acknowledged, I shall be held to beright in saying not only that ease and lucidity in style are differentvirtues, but that they are often opposed to each other. They may, however, be combined, and then the writer will have really learned theart of writing. Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. It is to bedone, I believe, in all languages. A man by art and practice shall atleast obtain such a masterhood over words as to express all that hethinks, in phrases that shall be easily understood. 

In such a small space as can here be allowed, I cannot give instances toprove that this has been achieved by Thackeray. Nor would instancesprove the existence of the virtue, though instances might the absence. The proof lies in the work of the man's life, and can only become plainto those who have read his writings. I must refer readers to their ownexperiences, and ask them whether they have found themselves compelledto study passages in Thackeray in order that they might find a reconditemeaning, or whether they have not been sure that they and the authorhave together understood all that there was to understand in the matter. Have they run backward over the passages, and then gone on, not quitesure what the author has meant? If not, then he has been easy and lucid. We have not had it so easy with all modern writers, nor with all thatare old. I may best perhaps explain my meaning by taking somethingwritten long ago; something very valuable, in order that I may notdamage my argument by comparing the easiness of Thackeray with theharshness of some author who has in other respects failed of obtainingapprobation. If you take the play of _Cymbeline_ you will, I think, findit to be anything but easy reading. Nor is Shakespeare always lucid. Forpurposes of his own he will sometimes force his readers to doubt hismeaning, even after prolonged study. It has ever been so with _Hamlet_. My readers will not, I think, be so crossgrained with me as to supposethat I am putting Thackeray as a master of style above Shakespeare. I amonly endeavouring to explain by reference to the great master thecondition of literary production which he attained. Whatever Thackeraysays, the reader cannot fail to understand; and whatever Thackerayattempts to communicate, he succeeds in conveying. 

That he is grammatical I must leave to my readers' judgment, with asimple assertion in his favour. There are some who say that grammar, --bywhich I mean accuracy of composition, in accordance with certainacknowledged rules, --is only a means to an end; and that, if a writercan absolutely achieve the end by some other mode of his own, he neednot regard the prescribed means. If a man can so write as to be easilyunderstood, and to convey lucidly that which he has to convey withoutaccuracy of grammar, why should he subject himself to unnecessarytrammels? Why not make a path for himself, if the path so made willcertainly lead him whither he wishes to go? The answer is, that no otherpath will lead others whither he wishes to carry them but that which iscommon to him and to those others. It is necessary that there should bea ground equally familiar to the writer and to his readers. If there beno such common ground, they will certainly not come into full accord. There have been recusants who, by a certain acuteness of their own, havepartly done so, --wilful recusants; but they have been recusants, not tothe extent of discarding grammar, --which no writer could do and not bealtogether in the dark, --but so far as to have created for themselves aphraseology which has been picturesque by reason of its illicitvagaries; as a woman will sometimes please ill-instructed eyes and earsby little departures from feminine propriety. They have probablylaboured in their vocation as sedulously as though they had striven tobe correct, and have achieved at the best but a short-livedsuccess;--as is the case also with the unconventional female. The charmof the disorderly soon loses itself in the ugliness of disorder. Andthere are others rebellious from grammar, who are, however, hardly to becalled rebels, because the laws which they break have never beenaltogether known to them. Among those very dear to me in Englishliterature, one or two might be named of either sort, whose works, though they have that in them which will insure to them a long life, will become from year to year less valuable and less venerable, becausetheir authors have either scorned or have not known that common groundof language on which the author and his readers should stand together. My purport here is only with Thackeray, and I say that he stands alwayson that common ground. He quarrels with none of the laws. As the ladywho is most attentive to conventional propriety may still have her ownfashion of dress and her own mode of speech, so had Thackeray verymanifestly his own style; but it is one the correctness of which hasnever been impugned. 

I hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose dress no oneobserves. I am not sure but that the same may be said of an author'swritten language. Only, where shall we find an example of suchperfection? Always easy, always lucid, always correct, we may find them;but who is the writer, easy, lucid, and correct, who has not impregnatedhis writing with something of that personal flavour which we callmannerism? To speak of authors well known to all readers--Does not _TheRambler_ taste of Johnson; _The Decline and Fall_, of Gibbon; _TheMiddle Ages_, of Hallam; _The History of England_, of Macaulay; and _TheInvasion of the Crimea_, of Kinglake? Do we not know the elephantinetread of _The Saturday_, and the precise toe of _The Spectator_? I havesometimes thought that Swift has been nearest to the mark ofany, --writing English and not writing Swift. But I doubt whether anaccurate observer would not trace even here the "mark of the beast. "Thackeray, too, has a strong flavour of Thackeray. I am inclined tothink that his most besetting sin in style, --the little earmark by whichhe is most conspicuous, --is a certain affected familiarity. He indulgestoo frequently in little confidences with individual readers, in whichpretended allusions to himself are frequent. "What would you do? whatwould you say now, if you were in such a position?" he asks. Hedescribes this practice of his in the preface to _Pendennis_. "It is asort of confidential talk between writer and reader. .. . In the course ofhis volubility the perpetual speaker must of necessity lay bare his ownweaknesses, vanities, peculiarities. " In the short contributions toperiodicals on which he tried his 'prentice hand, such addresses andconversations were natural and efficacious; but in a larger work offiction they cause an absence of that dignity to which even a novel mayaspire. You feel that each morsel as you read it is a detached bit, andthat it has all been written in detachments. The book is robbed of itsintegrity by a certain good-humoured geniality of language, which causesthe reader to be almost too much at home with his author. There is asaying that familiarity breeds contempt, and I have been sometimesinclined to think that our author has sometimes failed to stand up forhimself with sufficiency of "personal deportment. "

In other respects Thackeray's style is excellent. As I have said before, the reader always understands his words without an effort, and receivesall that the author has to give. 

There now remains to be discussed the matter of our author's work. Themanner and the style are but the natural wrappings in which the goodshave been prepared for the market. Of these goods it is no doubt truethat unless the wrappings be in some degree meritorious the article willnot be accepted at all; but it is the kernel which we seek, which, if itbe not of itself sweet and digestible, cannot be made serviceable by anyshell however pretty or easy to be cracked. I have said previously thatit is the business of a novel to instruct in morals and to amuse. I willgo further, and will add, having been for many years a most prolificwriter of novels myself, that I regard him who can put himself intoclose communication with young people year after year without makingsome attempt to do them good, as a very sorry fellow indeed. Howeverpoor your matter may be, however near you may come to that "foolishestof existing mortals, " as Carlyle presumes some unfortunate novelist tobe, still, if there be those who read your works, they will undoubtedlybe more or less influenced by what they find there. And it is becausethe novelist amuses that he is thus influential. The sermon too oftenhas no such effect, because it is applied with the declared intention ofhaving it. The palpable and overt dose the child rejects; but that whichis cunningly insinuated by the aid of jam or honey is acceptedunconsciously, and goes on upon its curative mission. So it is with thenovel. It is taken because of its jam and honey. But, unlike the honestsimple jam and honey of the household cupboard, it is never unmixed withphysic. There will be the dose within it, either curative or poisonous. The girl will be taught modesty or immodesty, truth or falsehood; thelad will be taught honour or dishonour, simplicity or affectation. Without the lesson the amusement will not be there. There are novelswhich certainly can teach nothing; but then neither can they amuse anyone. 

I should be said to insist absurdly on the power of my own confraternityif I were to declare that the bulk of the young people in the upper andmiddle classes receive their moral teaching chiefly from the novels theyread. Mothers would no doubt think of their own sweet teaching; fathersof the examples which they set; and schoolmasters of the excellence oftheir instructions. Happy is the country that has such mothers, fathers, and schoolmasters! But the novelist creeps in closer than theschoolmaster, closer than the father, closer almost than the mother. Heis the chosen guide, the tutor whom the young pupil chooses for herself. She retires with him, suspecting no lesson, safe against rebuke, throwing herself head and heart into the narration as she can hardly dointo her task-work; and there she is taught, --how she shall learn tolove; how she shall receive the lover when he comes; how far she shouldadvance to meet the joy; why she should be reticent, and not throwherself at once into this new delight. It is the same with the youngman, though he would be more prone even than she to reject the suspicionof such tutorship. But he too will there learn either to speak thetruth, or to lie; and will receive from his novel lessons either of realmanliness, or of that affected apishness and tailor-begotten demeanourwhich too many professors of the craft give out as their dearestprecepts. 

At any rate the close intercourse is admitted. Where is the house nowfrom which novels are tabooed? Is it not common to allow them almostindiscriminately, so that young and old each chooses his own novel?Shall he, then, to whom this close fellowship is allowed, --this innerconfidence, --shall he not be careful what words he uses, and whatthoughts he expresses, when he sits in council with his young friend?This, which it will certainly be his duty to consider with so much care, will be the matter of his work. We know what was thought of such matter, when Lydia in the play was driven to the necessity of flinging"_Peregrine Pickle_ under the toilet, " and thrusting "_Lord Aimwell_under the sofa. " We have got beyond that now, and are tolerably surethat our girls do not hide their novels. The more freely they areallowed, the more necessary is it that he who supplies shall take carethat they are worthy of the trust that is given to them. 

Now let the reader ask himself what are the lessons which Thackeray hastaught. Let him send his memory running back over all those charactersof whom we have just been speaking, and ask himself whether any girl hasbeen taught to be immodest, or any man unmanly, by what Thackeray haswritten. A novelist has two modes of teaching, --by good example or bad. It is not to be supposed that because the person treated of be evil, therefore the precept will be evil. If so, some personages with whom wehave been made well acquainted from our youth upwards, would have beenomitted in our early lessons. It may be a question whether the teachingis not more efficacious which comes from the evil example. What storywas ever more powerful in showing the beauty of feminine reticence, andthe horrors of feminine evil-doing, than the fate of Effie Deans? TheTemplar would have betrayed a woman to his lust, but has not encouragedothers by the freedom of his life. Varney was utterly bad, --but though agay courtier, he has enticed no others to go the way that he went. Soit has been with Thackeray. His examples have been generally of thatkind, --but they have all been efficacious in their teaching on the sideof modesty and manliness, truth and simplicity. When some girl shallhave traced from first to last the character of Beatrix, what, let usask, will be the result on her mind? Beatrix was born noble, clever, beautiful, with certain material advantages, which it was within hercompass to improve by her nobility, wit, and beauty. She was quite aliveto that fact, and thought of those material advantages, to the utterexclusion, in our mind, of any idea of moral goodness. She realised itall, and told herself that that was the game she would play. "Twenty-five!" says she; "and in eight years no man has ever touched myheart!" That is her boast when she is about to be married, --her onlyboast of herself. "A most detestable young woman!" some will say. "Anawful example!" others will add. Not a doubt of it. She proves themisery of her own career so fully that no one will follow it. Theexample is so awful that it will surely deter. The girl will declare toherself that not in that way will she look for the happiness which shehopes to enjoy; and the young man will say as he reads it, that noBeatrix shall touch his heart. 

You may go through all his characters with the same effect. Pendenniswill be scorned because he is light; Warrington loved because he isstrong and merciful; Dobbin will be honoured because he is unselfish;and the old colonel, though he be foolish, vain, and weak, almostworshipped because he is so true a gentleman. It is in the handling ofquestions such as these that we have to look for the matter of thenovelist, --those moral lessons which he mixes up with his jam and hishoney. I say that with Thackeray the physic is always curative andnever poisonous. He may he admitted safely into that close fellowship, and be allowed to accompany the dear ones to their retreats. The girlwill never become bold under his preaching, or taught to throw herselfat men's heads. Nor will the lad receive a false flashy idea of whatbecomes a youth, when he is first about to take his place among men. 

As to that other question, whether Thackeray be amusing as well assalutary, I must leave it to public opinion. There is now being broughtout of his works a more splendid edition than has ever been produced inany age or any country of the writings of such an author. A certainfixed number of copies only is being issued, and each copy will cost £3312s. When completed. It is understood that a very large proportion ofthe edition has been already bought or ordered. Cost, it will be said, is a bad test of excellence. It will not prove the merit of a book anymore than it will of a horse. But it is proof of the popularity of thebook. Print and illustrate and bind up some novels how you will, no onewill buy them. Previous to these costly volumes, there have been twoentire editions of his works since the author's death, one comparativelycheap and the other dear. Before his death his stories had beenscattered in all imaginable forms. I may therefore assert that theircharm has been proved by their popularity. 

There remains for us only this question, --whether the nature ofThackeray's works entitle him to be called a cynic. The word is onewhich is always used in a bad sense. "Of a dog; currish, " is thedefinition which we get from Johnson, --quite correctly, and inaccordance with its etymology. And he gives us examples. "How vilelydoes this cynic rhyme, " he takes from Shakespeare; and Addison speaks ofa man degenerating into a cynic. That Thackeray's nature was soft andkindly, --gentle almost to a fault, --has been shown elsewhere. But theywho have called him a cynic have spoken of him merely as a writer, --andas writer he has certainly taken upon himself the special task ofbarking at the vices and follies of the world around him. Any satiristmight in the same way be called a cynic in so far as his satire goes. Swift was a cynic certainly. Pope was cynical when he was a satirist. Juvenal was all cynical, because he was all satirist. If that be what ismeant, Thackeray was certainly a cynic. But that is not all that theword implies. It intends to go back beyond the work of the man, and todescribe his heart. It says of any satirist so described that he hasgiven himself up to satire, not because things have been evil, butbecause he himself has been evil. Hamlet is a satirist, whereasThersites is a cynic. If Thackeray be judged after this fashion, theword is as inappropriate to the writer as to the man. 

But it has to be confessed that Thackeray did allow his intellect to betoo thoroughly saturated with the aspect of the ill side of things. Wecan trace the operation of his mind from his earliest days, when hecommenced his parodies at school; when he brought out _The Snob_ atCambridge, when he sent _Yellowplush_ out upon the world as a satiriston the doings of gentlemen generally; when he wrote his _Catherine_, toshow the vileness of the taste for what he would have called Newgateliterature; and _The Hoggarty Diamond_, to attack bubble companies; and_Barry Lyndon_, to expose the pride which a rascal may take in hisrascality. Becky Sharp, Major Pendennis, Beatrix, both as a young andas an old woman, were written with the same purpose. There is a touch ofsatire in every drawing that he made. A jeer is needed for somethingthat is ridiculous, scorn has to be thrown on something that is vile. The same feeling is to be found in every line of every ballad. 

 VANITAS VANITATUM. 

 Methinks the text is never stale, And life is every day renewing Fresh comments on the old old tale, Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin. 

 Hark to the preacher, preaching still! He lifts his voice and cries his sermon, Here at St. Peter's of Cornhill, As yonder on the Mount of Hermon--

 For you and me to heart to take (O dear beloved brother readers), To-day, --as when the good king spake Beneath the solemn Syrian cedars. 

It was just so with him always. He was "crying his sermon, " hoping, ifit might be so, to do something towards lessening the evils he sawaround him. We all preach our sermon, but not always with the sameearnestness. He had become so urgent in the cause, so loud in hisdenunciations, that he did not stop often to speak of the good thingsaround him. Now and again he paused and blessed amid the torrent of hisanathemas. There are Dobbin, and Esmond, and Colonel Newcome. But hisanathemas are the loudest. It has been so I think nearly always with theeloquent preachers. 

I will insert here, --especially here at the end of this chapter, inwhich I have spoken of Thackeray's matter and manner of writing, becauseof the justice of the criticism conveyed, --the lines which Lord Houghtonwrote on his death, and which are to be found in the February number of_The Cornhill_ of 1864. It was the first number printed after his death. I would add that, though no Dean applied for permission to buryThackeray in Westminster Abbey, his bust was placed there without delay. What is needed by the nation in such a case is simply a lasting memorialthere, where such memorials are most often seen and most highlyhonoured. But we can all of us sympathise with the feeling of the poet, writing immediately on the loss of such a friend:

 When one, whose nervous English verse Public and party hates defied, Who bore and bandied many a curse Of angry times, --when Dryden died, Our royal abbey's Bishop-Dean Waited for no suggestive prayer, But, ere one day closed o'er the scene, Craved, as a boon, to lay him there. 

 The wayward faith, the faulty life, Vanished before a nation's pain. Panther and Hind forgot their strife, And rival statesmen thronged the fane. 

 O gentle censor of our age! Prime master of our ampler tongue! Whose word of wit and generous page Were never wrath, except with wrong, --

 Fielding--without the manner's dross, Scott--with a spirit's larger room, What Prelate deems thy grave his loss? What Halifax erects thy tomb?

 But, may be, he, --who so could draw The hidden great, --the humble wise, Yielding with them to God's good law, Makes the Pantheon where he lies. 

THE END. 

 * * * * *

CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS. 

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. 

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. 

These Short Books are addressed to the general public with a view bothto stirring and satisfying an interest in literature and its greattopics in the minds of those who have to run as they read. An immenseclass is growing up, and must every year increase, whose education willhave made them alive to the importance of the masters of our literature, and capable of intelligent curiosity as to their performances. TheSeries is intended to give the means of nourishing this curiosity, to anextent that shall be copious enough to be profitable for knowledge andlife, and yet be brief enough to serve those whose leisure is scanty. 

The following are arranged for:

SPENSER The Dean of St. Paul's. [In the Press. 

HUME Professor Huxley. [Ready. 

BUNYAN James Anthony Froude. 

JOHNSON Leslie Stephen. [Ready. 

GOLDSMITH William Black. [Ready. 

MILTON Mark Pattison. 

COWPER Goldwin Smith. 

SWIFT John Morley. 

BURNS Principal Shairp. [Ready. 

SCOTT Richard H. Hutton. [Ready. 

SHELLEY J. A. Symonds. [Ready. 

GIBBON J. C. Morison. [Ready. 

BYRON Professor Nichol. 

DEFOE W. Minto. [Ready. 

BURKE John Morley. 

HAWTHORNE Henry James, Jnr. 

CHAUCER A. W. Ward. 

THACKERAY Anthony Trollope. [Ready. 

ADAM SMITH Leonard H. Courtney, M. P. 

BENTLEY Professor R. C. Jebb. 

LANDOR Professor Sidney Colvin. 

POPE Leslie Stephen. 

WORDSWORTH F. W. H. Myers. 

SOUTHEY Professor E. Dowden. 

[OTHERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED. ]

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 

"The new series opens well with Mr. Leslie Stephen's sketch of Dr. Johnson. It could hardly have been done better; and it will convey tothe readers for whom it is intended a juster estimate of Johnson thaneither of the two essays of Lord Macaulay. "--_Pall Mall Gazette. _

"We have come across few writers who have had a clearer insight intoJohnson's character, or who have brought to the study of it a betterknowledge of the time in which Johnson lived and the men whom heknew. "--_Saturday Review. _

"We could not wish for a more suggestive introduction to Scott and hispoems and novels. "--_Examiner. _

"The tone of the volume is excellent throughout. "--_Athenĉum_ Review of"Scott. "

"As a clear, thoughtful, and attractive record of the life and works ofthe greatest among the world's historians, it deserves the highestpraise. "--_Examiner_ Review of "Gibbon. "

"The lovers of this great poet (Shelley) are to be congratulated athaving at their command so fresh, clear, and intelligent a presentmentof the subject, written by a man of adequate and wideculture. "--_Athenĉum. _

"It may fairly be said that no one now living could have expounded Humewith more sympathy or with equal perspicuity. "--_Athenĉum. _

"The story of Defoe's adventurous life may be followed with keeninterest in Mr. Minto's attractive book. "--_Academy. _

 * * * * *

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

 The poems WILLOW TREE No. I and WILLOW TREE No. II were side by side in the original. 

 There are variant spellings of the following name:

 Jeames Yellowplush Mr. C. James Yellowplush

 Spellings were left as in the original. 

 The following changes were made to the text:

 page 5--Thackeray's version was 'Cabbages, bright green cabbages, '{added missing ending quotation mark} and we thought it very witty. 

 page 78--Then there are "Jeames on Time Bargings, " "Jeames on the Gauge{original had Guage} Question, " "Mr. Jeames again. "

 page 131--"I knew you would come back, " she said; "and to-day, Harry{original has Henry}, in the anthem when they sang

 page 143--The wife won't{original has wo'n't} come. 

 page 143--On his way he{original has be} shoots a raven marvellously

 page 158--As Thackeray explains clearly what he means by a humorist, I may as well here repeat the passage:{punctuation missing in original} "If humour only meant laughter

 page 166--I will then let my reader go to the volume and study the lectures for himself. {no punctuation in original} "The poor fellow was never

 page 212--[Ready. {original is missing period--this occurred in the line referencing DEFOE and the line referencing THACKERAY}

 The following words used an "oe" ligature in the original:

 Boeuf chef-d'oevre Coeur manoeuvres