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(gnglisl) ilTcn of Ccttcra 
 
 EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY 
 
THACKEEAY 
 
 BY 
 
 ANTHONY TROLLOPS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HAKPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 
 
 FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
CLA-ikJi^^ 
 
 ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Edited by John Morley. 
 
 Johnson Leslie Stephen. 
 
 Gibbon J. C. Morison. 
 
 Scott R- H. Hutton. 
 
 Shhlley J. A. Symonds. 
 
 Hume T. H. Huxley. 
 
 Goldsmith William Black. 
 
 Defoe William Minto. 
 
 Burns J C. Shairp. 
 
 Spenser R. W. Church. 
 
 Thackeray Anthony Trollope. 
 
 Burke John Morley. 
 
 Milton Mark Pattison. 
 
 Hawthorns Henry James, Jr. 
 
 SouTHHY E. Dowden. 
 
 Chaucer A. W. Ward. 
 
 Bunyan J. A. Froude. 
 
 CovvpER Goldwin Smith. 
 
 Pope Leslie Stephen. 
 
 Byron John Nichol. 
 
 Locke Thomas Fowler. 
 
 Wordsworth F. Myers. 
 
 Dryden G. Saintsbury. 
 
 Landor Sidney Colvin. 
 
 De Quincey David Masson. 
 
 Lamb Alfred Ainger- 
 
 Bentley R. C. Jebb. 
 
 Dickens ...A. W. Ward. 
 
 Gray E. W. Gosse. 
 
 Swift Leslie Stephen. 
 
 Sterne H. D. Traill. 
 
 Macaulay J. Cotter Morison. 
 
 Fielding Austin Dobson. 
 
 Sheridan Mrs. Oliphant. 
 
 Addison W J. Courthope. 
 
 Bacon R. W. Church. 
 
 Coleridge H. D. Traill. 
 
 SiK Philip Sid.ney. . .J. A. Symonds. 
 Keats Sidney Colvin. 
 
 i2mo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume. 
 Other volumes in preparation. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 ^~ Any of the ahcve 7Vorks will be sent by mail, fostnge prepaid, to any part 
 of the United States or Canada, on receipt o/ tlu price. 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGfl 
 BlOGRAPHICAI. . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Fraser's Magazizne and Punch 61 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Vanity Fair .89 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Pendennis and The Newcomes 106 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Esmond and The Virginians 119 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Thackeray's Burlesques 136 
 
 M6*d2VA}t . 
 
Ti CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 TAQK 
 
 Thackeray's Lectures 151 
 
 CHAPTER Vni. 
 Thackeray's Bali^vds 165 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Thackeray's Style and Manner of Work .... 181 
 
THACKERAY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 In the foregoing volumes of this series of English Men 
 of Letters^ and in other works of a similar nature which 
 have appeared lately as to the Ancient Classics and For- 
 eign Classics, biography has naturally been, if not the lead- 
 ing, at any rate a considerable element. The desire is 
 common 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 great work. As to all the 
 authors taken in hand before, there has been extant some 
 written record of the man's life. Biographical details 
 have been more or less known to the world, so that, 
 whether of a Cicero, or of a Goethe, or of our own John- 
 son, there has been a story to tell. Of Thackeray no life 
 has been written; and though they who knew him — and 
 possibly many who did not — are conversant with anec- 
 dotes of the man, who was one so well known in society as 
 to have created many anecdotes, yet there has been no me- 
 moir of his life sufficient to supply the wants of even so 
 small a work as this purports to be. For this the reason 
 
 1* 
 
2 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 may simply be told. Thackeray, not long before his 
 death, had had his taste offended by some fulsome biogra- 
 phy. -Paragraphs, of which the eulogy seemed to have 
 been the produce rather of personal love than of inquiry 
 or judgment, disgusted him, and he begged of his girls 
 that when he should 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 himself that, as by those loving hands into 
 which his letters, his notes, his little details — his literary 
 remains, as such documents used to be called — might nat- 
 urally fall, truth of his foibles and of his shortcomings 
 could not be told, so should not his praises be written, or 
 that flattering portrait be limned which biographers are 
 w^ont to produce. Acting upon these instructions, his 
 daughters — while there were two living, and since that the 
 one surviving — have carried out the order which has ap- 
 peared to them to be sacred. Such being the case, it cer- 
 tainly is not my purpose now to write what may be called 
 a life of Thackeray. In this preliminary chapter I will 
 give such incidents and anecdotes of his life as will tell 
 the reader perhaps all about him that a reader is entitled 
 to ask. I will tell how he became an author, and will say 
 how first he worked and struggled, and then how he work- 
 ed and prospered, and became a household word in Eng- 
 lish literature ; how, in this way, he passed through that 
 course of mingled failure and success which, though the 
 literary aspirant may suffer, is probably better both for the 
 writer and for the writings than unclouded early glory. 
 The suffering, no doubt, is acute, and a touch of melancholy, 
 perhaps of indignation, may be given to words which have 
 been written while the heart has been too full of its own 
 wrongs ; but this is better than the continued note of tri' 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 3 
 
 umph, which is still heard in the final voices of the spoilt 
 child of literature, even when they are losing their music. 
 Then I will tell how Thackeray died, early indeed, but still 
 having done a good life's work. Something of his man- 
 ner, something of his appearance I can say, something per- 
 haps of his condition of mind ; because for some years he 
 was known to me. But of the continual intercourse of 
 himself with the world, and of himself with his own works, 
 I can tell little, because no record of his life has been made 
 public. 
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Calcutta, on 
 July 18, 1811. His father was Eichmond Thackeray, son 
 of W. M. Thackeray of Hadley, near Barnet, 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 I believe to have been a second cousin of our Thack- 
 eray, but I think they had never met each other. Anoth- 
 er cousin was Provost of Kings at Cambridge, fifty years 
 ago, as Cambridge men will remember. Clergymen of the 
 family have been numerous in England during the century ; 
 and there was one, a Rev. Elias Thackeray, whom I also 
 knew in my youth, a dignitary, if I remember right, in the 
 diocese of Meath. The Thackerays seem to have affected 
 the Church ; but such was not at any period of his life the 
 bias of our novelist's mind. 
 
 His father and grandfather were Indian civil servants. 
 His mother was Anne Becher, whose father was also in 
 the Company's service. She married early in India, and 
 was only nineteen when her son was born. She was left 
 a widow in 1816, with only one child, and was married a 
 few years afterwards to Major Henry Carmichael Smyth, 
 with whom Thackeray lived on terms of affectionate inter- 
 course till the major died. All who knew "William Make- 
 
4 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 peace remember his raotlier well, a handsome, spare, gray- 
 haired lady, whom Thackeray treated with a courtly def- 
 erence as well as constant affection. There was, however, 
 something of discrepancy between them as to matters of 
 religion, Mrs. Carmichael Smyth was disposed to the 
 somewhat austere observance of the evangelical section of 
 the Church. Such, certainly, never became the case with 
 her son. There was disagreement on the subject, and 
 probably unhappiness at intervals, but never, I think, quar- 
 relling. Thackeray's house was his mother's home when- 
 ever she pleased it, and the home also of his stepfather. 
 
 He was brought a child from India, and was sent early to 
 the Charter House. Of his life and doings there his friend 
 and school-fellow George Yenables 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 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 5 
 
 kind. When I knew him better, in later years, I thought 
 I could recocrnize 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 to Trinity College, Cambridge, and 
 was, I think, removed in 1830. It may be presumed, 
 therefore, that his studies there were not very serviceable 
 to him. There are few, if any, records left of his doings 
 at the university — unless it be the fact that he did there 
 commence the literary work of his life. The line about 
 the cabbages, and the scheme of the school magazine, can 
 hardly be said to have amounted even to a commence- 
 ment. In 1829 a little periodical was brought out at 
 Cambridge, called The Snoh, with an assurance on the 
 title that it was not conducted by members of the univer- 
 sity. It is presumed that Thackeray took a hand in edit- 
 ing this. He certainly wrote, and published in the little 
 paper, some burlesque lines on the subject which was 
 given for the Chancellor's prize poem of the year. This 
 was Timbuctoo, and Tennyson was the victor on the occa- 
 sion. There is some good fun in the four first and foui 
 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. 
 « )K » * If * « 
 
6 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 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 merit beyond this. But then how many great 
 "writers have there been from whose early lucubrations no 
 future literary excellence could be prognosticated ? 
 
 There is something at any rate in the name of the pub- 
 lication which tells of work that did come. Thackeray's 
 mind was at all times peculiarly exercised with a sense of 
 snobbishness. His appreciation of the vice grew abnor- 
 mally, so that at last he had a morbid horror of a snob — 
 a morbid fear lest this or the other man should turn snob 
 on his hands. It is probable that the idea was taken from 
 the early Siiob at Cambridge, either from his own partici- 
 pation in the work or from his remembrance of it. The 
 Snob lived, I think, but nine weeks, and was followed at 
 an interval, in 1830, by The Gownsman, which lived to 
 the seventeenth number, and at the opening of which 
 Thackeray no doubt had a hand. It professed to be a 
 continuation of The Snob. It contains a dedication to all 
 proctors, which I should not be sorry to attribute to him. 
 " To all Proctors, past, present, and future — 
 
 Whose taste it is our privilege to follow, 
 Wliose 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 that Thackeray was the author of the dedication, 
 and I do not know that there is any evidence to show that 
 he was connected with The Snob beyond the writing of 
 Timbuctoo. 
 
l] biographical. 1 
 
 In 1830 he left Cambridge, and went to Weimar eithet 
 5n that year or in 1831. Between Weimar and Paris he 
 spent some portion of his earlier years, while his family — 
 his mother, that is, and his stepfather — were living in 
 Devonshire. It was then the purport of his life to be- 
 come an artist, and he studied drawing at Paris, affecting 
 especially Bonnington, the young English artist who had 
 himself painted at Paris, and who had died in 1828. He 
 never learned to draw — perhaps never could have learned. 
 That he was idle, and did not do his best, we may take 
 for granted. He was always idle, and only on some occa- 
 sions, when the spirit moved him thoroughly, did he do 
 his best even in after-life. But with drawing — or rather 
 without it — he did wonderfully well even when he did his 
 worst. He did illustrate his own books, and everyone 
 knows how incorrect were his delineations. But as illus- 
 trations they were excellent. How often have I wished 
 that characters of my own creating might be sketched as 
 faultily, if with the same appreciation of the intended pur- 
 pose. Let anyone look at the " plates," as they are called 
 in Vanity Fair^ and compare each with the scenes and 
 the characters intended to be displayed, and there see 
 whether the artist — if we may call him so — has not man- 
 aged to convey in the picture the exact feeling which he 
 has described in the text. I have a little sketch of his, in 
 which a cannon-ball is supposed to have just carried off 
 the head of an aide-de-camp — messenger I had perhaps 
 better say, lest I might affront military feelings — who is 
 kneeling on the field of battle and delivering a despatch 
 to Marlborough on horseback. The graceful ease w^ith 
 which the duke receives the message though the messen- 
 ger's head be gone, and the soldier-like precision with 
 which the headless hero finishes his last effort of militarjf 
 
8 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 obedience, may not have been portrayed with well-drawn 
 figures, but no finished illustration ever told its story bet- 
 ter. Dickens has informed us that he first met Thackeray 
 in 1835, on which occasion the young artist aspirant, look- 
 ing no doubt after profitable employment, " proposed to 
 become the illustrator of my earliest book." It is singu- 
 lar that such should have been the first interview between 
 the two great novelists. We may presume that the offer 
 was rejected. 
 
 In 1832, Thackeray came of age, and inherited his fort- 
 une — as to which various stories have been told. It 
 seems to have amounted to about five hundred 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 
 taken away from him at cards, but such w\is not the truth. 
 Some went in an Indian bank in which he invested it. 
 A portion was lost at cards. But with some of it — the 
 larger part, as I think — he endeavoured, in concert with 
 his stepfather, to float a newspaper, which failed. There 
 seem to have been two newspapers in which he was so 
 concerned. The National Standard and The Constitutional. 
 On the latter he was engaged with his stepfather, and in 
 carrying that on he lost the last of his money. The Na- 
 tional Standard had been running for some weeks when 
 Thackeray joined it, and lost his money in it. It ran only 
 for little more than twelve months, and then, the money 
 having gone, the periodical came 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 way more or less correct, often refers in his writings, 
 if not to the incidents, at any rate to the remembrances of 
 his own life, tells us much of the story of this newspaper 
 in Lovel the Widoivcr. " They are welcome," says the bach* 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL 9 
 
 elor, " to make merry at my charges in respect of a certain 
 bargain which I made on coming to London, and in which, 
 had I been Moses Primrose purchasing green spectacles, I 
 could scarcely have been more taken in. My Jenkinson was 
 an old college acquaintance, whom I was idiot enough to 
 imagine a respectable man. The fellow had a very smooth 
 tongue and sleek sanctified exterior. He was rather a 
 popular preacher, and used to cry a good deal in the pulpit 
 He and a queer wine-merchant and bill discounter, Sher- 
 rick by name, had somehow got possession of that neat lit- 
 tle literary paper. The Museum, which perhaps you remem- 
 ber, and this eligible literary property my friend Honey- 
 man, with his wheedling tongue, induced me to purchase." 
 Here is the history of Thackeray's money, told by himself 
 plainly enough, but with no intention on his part of nar- 
 rating an incident in his own life to the public. But the 
 drollery of the circumstances, his own mingled folly and 
 young ambition, struck him as being worth narration, and 
 the more forcibly as he remembered all the ins and outs of 
 his own reflections at the time — how he had meant to en- 
 chant the world, and make his fortune. There was liter- 
 ary capital in it of which he could make use after so many 
 years. Then he tells us of this ambition, and of the folly 
 of it; and at the same time puts forward the excuses to 
 be made for it. " I daresay I gave myself airs as editor 
 of that confounded Museum, and proposed to educate 
 the public taste, to diffuse morality and sound literature 
 throughout the nation, and to pocket a liberal salary in 
 return for my services. I daresay I printed my own son- 
 nets, my own 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 
 
10 THACKERAY. {chap. 
 
 sure thou wilt never be a wise man." Thackeray was 
 quite aware of his early weaknesses, and in the maturity 
 of life knew well that he had not been precociously wise. 
 He delighted so to tell his friends, and he delighted also 
 to tell the public, liot meaning that any but an inner cir- 
 cle should know that he was speaking of himself. But 
 the story now is plain to all who can read.* 
 
 It was thus that he lost his money ; and then, not hav- 
 ing prospered very wxll with his drawing lessons in Paris 
 or elsewhere, he was fain to take up literature as a pro- 
 fession. It is a business which has its allurements. 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 can command a table, a chair, a pen, paper, and 
 ink, he can commence his trade as literary man. It is 
 thus that aspirants generally do commence it. A man 
 may or may not have another employment to back him, 
 or means of his own ; or — as was the case with Thackeray, 
 when, after his first misadventure, he had to look about 
 him for the means of living — he may have nothing but 
 his intellect and liis friends. But the idea comes to the 
 man that as he has the pen and ink, and time on his hand, 
 why should he not write and make money ? 
 
 It is an idea that comes to very many men and women, 
 old as well as young — to many thousands who at last are 
 crushed by it, of whom the world knows nothing. A man 
 
 * The report that he had lost all his money and was going to live 
 by painting in Paris, was still prevalent in London in 1836, Maerea- 
 dy, on the 27th April of that year, says in his Diary: "At Garrick 
 Club, where I dined and eaw the papers. Met Thackeray, who has 
 spent all his fortune, and is now about to settle in Paris, I believe as 
 an artist." But at this time he was, in truth, turning to Utcraturo 
 as a profession. 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 11 
 
 can make the attempt tliougli he has not a coat fit to go 
 out into the street with ; or a woman, though she be almost 
 in rags. There is no apprenticeship wanted. Indeed, there 
 is no room for such apprenticeship. It is an art which no 
 one teaches ; there is no professor who, in a dozen lessons, 
 even pretends to show the aspirant how to write a book 
 or an article. If you would be a watchmaker, you must 
 learn ; or a lawyer, a cook, or even a housemaid. Before 
 you can clean a horse you must go into the stable, and be- 
 gin at the beginning. Even the cab-driving tiro must sit 
 for awhile on the box, and learn something of the streets, 
 before he can ply for a fare. But the literary beginner 
 rushes at once at the top rung of his ladder — as though a 
 youth, having made up his mind to be a clergyman, should 
 demand, without preliminary steps, to be appointed Bish- 
 op of London. That he should be able to read and write 
 is presumed, and that only. So much may be presumed 
 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 hav- 
 ing learned whether they possess them or not. Practice, 
 industry, study of literature, cultivation of taste, and the 
 rest, will of course lend their aid, will probably be neces- 
 sary before high excellence is attained. But the instances 
 are not to seek — are at the fingers of us all — in which the 
 first uninstructed effort has succeeded. A boy, almost, or 
 perhaps an old w^oman, has sat down and the book has 
 come, and the w^orld has read it, and the booksellers have 
 been civil and have written their cheques. When all 
 trades, all professions, all seats at offices, all employments 
 at which a crust can be earned, are so crowded that a 
 young man knows not where to look for the means of live^ 
 
 lihood, is there not an attraction in this which to the self* 
 B 
 
12 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 confident must be almost invincible ? The booksellers ara 
 courteous and write their cheques, but that is not half the 
 whole ? Monstrari digito ! That is obtained. The hap- 
 py aspirant is written of in newspapers, or, perhaps, better 
 still, he writes of others. When the barrister of forty-five 
 has hardly got a name beyond Chancery Lane, this glori- 
 ous young scribe, with the first down on his lips, has print- 
 ed his novel and been talked about. 
 
 The temptation is irresistible, and thousands fall into it. 
 How is a man to know that he is not the lucky one or the 
 gifted one ? There is the table, and there the pen and ink. 
 Among the unfortunate, he who fails altogether and from 
 the first start is not the most unfortunate. A short pe- 
 riod of life is wasted, and a sharp pang is endured. Then 
 the disappointed one is relegated to the condition of life 
 which he would otherwise have filled a little earlier. Ho 
 has been wounded, but not killed, or even maimed. But 
 he who has a little success, who succeeds in earning a few 
 halcyon, but ah ! so dangerous guineas, is drawn into a 
 trade from which he will hardly escape till he be driven 
 from it, if he come out alive, by sheer hunger. He hangs 
 on till the guineas become crowns and shillings — till some 
 sad record of his life, made when he applies for charity, 
 declares that he has worked hard for the last year or two, 
 and has earned less than a policeman in the streets or a 
 porter at a railway. It is to that that he is brought by 
 applying himself to a business which requires only, a table 
 and chair, with pen, ink, and paper ! It is to that which 
 lie is brought by venturing to believe that he has been 
 gifted with powers of imagination, creation, and expres- 
 sion. 
 
 The young man who makes the attempt knows that he 
 nmst run the chance. lie is well aware that nine must 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 13 
 
 fail where one will make his running good. So much as 
 that does reach his ears, and recommends itself to his com- 
 mon-sense. But why should it not be he as well as an- 
 other? There is always some lucky one winning the 
 prize. And this prize when it has been won is so well 
 worth the winning! He can endure starvation — so he 
 tells himself — as well as another. He will try. But yet 
 he knows that he has but one chance out of ten in his fa- 
 vour, and it is only in his happier moments that he flatters 
 himself that that remains to him. Then there falls upon 
 him — in the midst of that labour which for its success es- 
 pecially requires that a man's heart shall be light, and that 
 he be always at his best — doubt and despair. If there be 
 no chance, of what use is his labor ? 
 
 Were it not better done as others use, 
 To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
 
 and amuse himself after that fashion ? Thus the very in- 
 dustry which alone could give him a chance is discarded. 
 It is so that the vouno; man feels who, with some slia:ht 
 belief in himself and with many doubts, sits down to com- 
 mence the literary labor by which he hopes to live. 
 
 So it was, no doubt, with Thackeray. Such were his 
 hopes and his fears — with a resolution of which we can 
 well understand that it should have waned at times, of 
 earning his bread, if he did not make his fortune, in the 
 world of literature. One has not to look far for evidence 
 of the condition I have described — that it was so, Amaryl- 
 lis and all. How or when he made his very first attempt 
 in London, I have not learned ; but he had not probably 
 spent his money without forming "press" acquaintances, 
 and had thus formed an aperture for the tlin end of the 
 wedge. He wrote for The Constitutional , of which ho 
 
14 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 was part proprietor, beginning his work for that papci 
 as a correspondent from Paris. For awhile he was con- 
 nected with The Times newspaper, though his work there 
 did not, I think, amount to much. His first regular em- 
 ployment was on Fraser's Magazine^ when Mr. Fraser's 
 shop was in Regent Street, when Oliver Yorke was the 
 presumed editor, and among contributors, Carlyle was one 
 of the most notable. I imagine that the battle of life was 
 diflScult enough with him even after he had become one 
 of the leading props of that magazine. All that he wrote 
 was not taken, and all that was taken was not approved. 
 In 1837-38, the History of Samuel Titmarsh and the 
 Great Hoggarty Diamond appeared in the magazine. The 
 Great Hoggarty Diamond is now known to all readers of 
 Thackeray's works. It is not my purpose to speak spe- 
 cially of it here, except to assert that it has been thought 
 to be a great success. When it was being brought out, the 
 author told a friend of his — and of mine — that it was not 
 much thought of at Fraser's, and that he had been called 
 upon to shorten it. That is an incident disagreeable in its 
 nature to any literary gentleman, and likely to be specially 
 so when he knows that his provision of bread, certainly of 
 improved bread and butter, is at stake. The man who 
 thus darkens his literary brow with the frown of disap- 
 proval, has at his disposal all the loaves and all the fish- 
 es that are going. If the writer be successful, there will 
 come a time when he will be above such frowns; but, 
 when that opinion went forth, Thackeray had not yet 
 made his footing good, and the notice to him respecting it 
 must have been very bitter. It was in writing this Hog- 
 garty Diamond that Thackeray first invented the name 
 of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. Samuel Titmarsh was the 
 writer, whereas Michael Angelo was an intending illustra- 
 
1.] BIOGRAPniCAL. 15 
 
 tor. Thackeray's nose had been broken in a school fight, 
 while he was quite a little boy, by another little boy, at 
 the Charter House ; and there was probably some associa- 
 tion intended to be jocose with the name of the great art- 
 ist, whose nose was broken by his fellow-student Torrigi- 
 ano, and who, as it happened, died exactly three centuries 
 before Thackeray. 
 
 I can understand all the disquietude of his heart when 
 that warning, as to the too great length of his story, was 
 given to him. He was not a man capable of feeling at 
 any time quite assured in his position, and when that oc- 
 curred he was very far from assurance. I think that at 
 no time did he doubt the sufficiency of his own mental 
 qualification for the work he had taken in hand ; but he 
 doubted all else. He doubted the appreciation of the 
 world ; he doubted his fitness for turning his intellect 
 to valuable account; he doubted his physical capacity — 
 dreading his own lack of industry ; he doubted his luck ; 
 he doubted the continual absence of some of those mis- 
 fortunes on which the works of literary men are ship- 
 wrecked. Though he was aware of his own power, he 
 always, to the last, was afraid that his own deficiencies 
 should be too strong against him. It was his nature to 
 be idle — to put off 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 the world were strong 
 upon him. To find on Monday morning an excuse why 
 he should not on Monday do Monday's work was, at the 
 time, an inexpressible relief to him, but had become a deep 
 regret — almost a remorse — before the Monday was over. 
 To such a one it was not given to believe in himself with 
 that sturdy rock-bound foundation which we see to have 
 belonged to some men from the earliest struggles of their 
 
16 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 career. To him, then, must have come an inexpressible 
 pang when he was told that his story must be curtailed. 
 
 Who else would have told such a story of himself to 
 the first acquaintance he chanced to meet ? Of Thackeray 
 it might be predicted that he certainly would do so. No 
 little wound of the kind ever came to him but what he 
 disclosed it at once. " They have only bought so many 
 of my new book." " Have you seen the abuse of my last 
 number ?" " What am I to turn my hand to ? They are 
 getting tired of my novels." " They don't read it," ho 
 said to me of Esmond. " So you don't mean to publish 
 my work?" he said once to a publisher in an open com- 
 pany. Other men keep their little troubles to themselves. 
 I have heard even of authors who have declared how all 
 the publishers were running after their books ; I have 
 heard some discourse freely of their fourth and fifth edi- 
 tions; I have known an author to boast of his thousands 
 sold in this country, and his tens of thousands in Amer- 
 ica; but I never heard anyone else declare that no one 
 would read his chef-d'oeuvre, and that the world was be- 
 coming tired of him. It was he who said, when he was 
 fifty, that a man past fifty should never write a novel. 
 
 And yet, as I have said, he was from an early age fully 
 conscious of his own ability. That he was so is to be 
 seen in the handling of many of his early works — in Bar- 
 ry Lyndon, for instance, and the Memoirs of Mr. C. James 
 Yelloivplush. The sound is too certain for doubt of that 
 kind. But he had not then, nor did he ever achieve that 
 assurance of public favour which makes a man confident 
 that his work will be successful. During the years of 
 which we are now speaking Thackeray was a literary 
 Bohemian in this sense — that he never regarded his own 
 status as certain. While pcrforminjr much of the best 
 
3.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 17 
 
 of his life's work he was not sure of his market, not cer- 
 tain of his readers, his publishers, or his price ; nor was he 
 certain of himself. 
 
 It is impossible not to form some contrast between him 
 and Dickens as to this period of his life — a comparison 
 not as to their literary merits, but literary position. Dick- 
 ens was one year his junior in age, and at this time, viz., 
 1837-38, had reached almost the zenith of his reputation. 
 Pickwick had been published, and Oliver Twist and Nich- 
 olas Nicklehy w^cre being published. All the w^orld was 
 talking about the young author who was assuming his po- 
 sition with a confidence in his own powers which was fully 
 justified both by his present and future success. It was 
 manifest that he could make, not only his own fortune, 
 but that of his publishers, and that he was a literary hero 
 bound to be worshipped by all literary grades of men, 
 down to the "devils" of the printing - oflBce. At that 
 time Thackeray, the older man, was still doubting, still 
 hesitating, still struggling. Everyone then had accepted 
 the name of Charles Dickens. That of William Thack- 
 eray was hardly known beyond the circle of those who are 
 careful to make themselves acquainted with such matters. 
 It was then the custom, more generally than it is at pres- 
 ent, to maintain anonymous writing in magazines. Now, 
 if anything of special merit be brought out, the name of 
 the author, if not published, is known. It was much less 
 so at the period in question ; and as the world of readers 
 began to be acquainted with Jeames Yellowplush, Cath- 
 erine Hayes, and other heroes and heroines, the names of 
 the author had to be inquired for. I remember myself, 
 when I was already well acquainted with the immortal 
 Jeames, asking who was the writer. The works of Charles 
 Dickens were at that time as well known to be his, 
 
 2 
 
18 THACKERAY. [chap, 
 
 and as widely read in England, as those almost of Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 It will be said, of course, that this came from the earlier 
 popularity of Dickens. That is of course ; but why should 
 it have been so? They had begun to make their effort 
 much at the same time ; and if there was any advantage 
 in point of position as they commenced, it was with Thack- 
 eray. It might be said that the genius of the one was 
 brighter than that of the other, or, at any rate, that it was 
 more precocious. But after- judgment has, I think, not 
 declared either of the suggestions to be true, I will make 
 no comparison between two such rivals, who were so dis- 
 tinctly different from each, and each of whom, within so 
 very short a period, has come to stand on a pedestal so 
 high — the two exalted to so equal a vocation. And if 
 Dickens showed the best of his power early in life, so did 
 Thackeray the best of his intellect. In no display of 
 mental force did he rise above Barry Lyndon. I hardly 
 know how the teller of a narrative shall hope to mount 
 in simply intellectual faculty above the effort there made. 
 In what, then, was the difference ? Why was Dickens 
 already a great man when Thackeray was still a literary 
 Bohemian ? 
 
 The answer is to be found not in the extent or in the 
 nature of the genius of cither man, but in the condition of 
 mind — which indeed may be read plainly in their works 
 by those who have eyes to see. The one was steadfast, 
 industrious, full of purpose, never doubting of himself, al- 
 ways putting his best foot foremost and standing firmly 
 on it when he got it there ; with no inward trepidation, 
 with no moments in which he was half inclined to think 
 that this race was not for his winning, this goal not to 
 be reached by his struggles. The sympathy of friends 
 
I.] BIOGR.VPIIICAL. 19 
 
 was good to him, but he could have done without it. The 
 good opinion which he had of himself was never shaken 
 by adverse criticism ; and the criticism on the other side, 
 by which it was exalted, came from the enumeration of 
 the number of copies sold. He was a firm, reliant man, 
 very little prone to change, who, when he had discovered 
 the nature of his own talent, knew how to do the very 
 best with it. 
 
 It may almost be said that Thackeray was the very op- 
 posite of this. Unsteadfast, idle, changeable of purpose, 
 aware of his own intellect but not trusting it, no man ever 
 failed more generally than he to put his best foot fore- 
 most. Full as his works are of pathos, full of humour, 
 full of love and charity, tending, as they always do, to 
 truth and honour, and manly worth and womanly modes- 
 ty, excelling, as they seem to me to do, most other written 
 precepts that I know, they always seem to lack something 
 that might have been there. There is a touch of vague- 
 ness which indicates that his pen was not firm while he 
 was using it. He seems to me to have been dreaming ever 
 of some high flight, and then to have told himself, with a 
 half-broken heart, that it was beyond his power to soar up 
 into those bright regions. I can fancy, as the sheets went 
 from him every day, he told himself, in regard to every 
 sheet, that it was a failure. Dickens was quite sure of his 
 sheets. 
 
 " I have got to make it shorter !" Then he would put 
 his hands in his pockets, and stretch himself, and straight- 
 en the lines of his face, over which a smile would come, 
 as though this intimation from his editor were the best 
 joke in the world ; and he would walk away, with his heart 
 bleeding, and every nerve in an agony. There are none of 
 us who want to have much of his work shortened now. 
 
20 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 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 so 
 closely in her father's steps, is a household word to the 
 world of novel readers ; the second died as a child ; the 
 younger lived to marry Leslie Stephen, 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 need be said shall be contained in a very 
 few words. It was grievously unhappy ; but the misery 
 of it came from God, and was in no wise due to human 
 fault. She became ill, and her mind failed her. There 
 was a period during which he would not believe that her 
 illness was more than illness, and then he clung to her and 
 waited on her with an assiduity of affection which only 
 made his task the more painful to him. At last it became 
 evident that she should live in the companionship of some 
 one with whom her life might be altogether quiet, and' she 
 has since been domiciled with a lady with whom she has 
 been happy. Thus she was, after but a few years of mar- 
 ried life, taken away from him, and he became, as it were, 
 n widower till the end of his days. 
 
 At this period, and indeed for some years after his mar- 
 riage, his chief literary dependence was on Fraser^s Maga- 
 zine. He wrote also at this time in the Ncio Monthly 
 Magazine. In 1840 he brought out his Paris Sketch 
 Book, as to which he tells us, by a notice printed with the 
 first edition, that half of the sketches had already been 
 published in various periodicals. Here he used the name 
 Michael Angelo Titmarsh, as he did also with the Journey 
 from Cornhill to Cairo. Dickens had called himself Boz, 
 
i.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 21 
 
 and clang to the name with persistency as long as the 
 public would permit it. Thackeray's affection for assumed 
 names was more intermittent, though I doubt whether 
 he used his own name altogether till it appeared on the 
 title-page of Vanity Fair. About this time began his 
 connection with Punch, in which much of his best work 
 appeared. Looking back at our old friend as he used to 
 come out from week to week at this time, we can hardly 
 boast that we used to recognise how good the literary 
 pabulum was that was then given for our consumption. 
 We have to admit that the ordinary reader, as the ordinary 
 picture-seer, requires to be gniided by a name. We are 
 moved to absolute admiration by a Raphael or a Hobbema, 
 but hardly till we have learned the name of the painter, 
 or, at any rate, the manner of his painting. I am not sure 
 that all lovers of poetry would recognise a Lycidas com- 
 ing from some hitherto unknown Milton. Gradually the 
 good picture or the fine 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 of readers began to know that there was a speciality 
 of humour to be found in its pages — fun and sense, satire 
 and good-humour, compressed together in small literary 
 morsels as the nature of its columns required. Gradually 
 the name of Thackeray as one of the band of brethren was 
 buzzed about, and gradually became known as that of the 
 chief of the literary brothers. But during the years in 
 which he did much for Punch, say from 1843 to 1853, 
 he was still struggling to make good his footing in litera- 
 ture. They knew him well in the Punch office, and no 
 doubt the amount and regularity of the cheques from 
 Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, the then and still owners of 
 
22 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 that happy periodical, made him aware that he had found 
 for himself a satisfactory career. In " a good day for 
 himself, the journal, and the world, Thackeray found 
 Punchy This was said by his old friend Shirley Brooks, 
 who himself lived to be editor of the paper and died in 
 harness, and was said most truly. Punch was more con- 
 genial 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 for some higher career, not altogether satisfied 
 to be no more than one of an anonymous band of broth- 
 ers, even though the brothers were the brothers of Punch. 
 We can only imagine what were his thoughts as to him- 
 self and that other man, who was then known as the 
 great novelist of the day — of a rivalry with whom he 
 was certainly conscious. Punch was very much to him, 
 but was not quite enough. That must have been very 
 clear to himself as he meditated the beginning of Vanity 
 Fair. 
 
 Of the contributions to the periodical, the best known 
 now arc The Snob PajMrs and The Ballads of Police- 
 man X. But they were very numerous. Of Thackeray 
 as a poet, or maker of verses, I will say a few words in a 
 chapter which will be devoted to his own so-called ballads. 
 Here it seems only necessary to remark that there was not 
 apparently any time in his career at which he began to 
 think seriously of appearing before the public as a poet. 
 Such was the intention early in their career with many of 
 our best known prose writers, with Milton, and Goldsmith, 
 and Samuel Johnson, with Scott, Macaulay, and more lately 
 with Matthew Arnold ; writers of verse and prose who 
 ultimately prevailed some in one direction, and others in 
 the other. Milton and Goldsmith have been known best 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 23 
 
 as poets, Jolmson and Macaulay as writers of prose. But 
 with all of them there has been a distinct effort in each 
 art. Thackeray seems to have tumbled into versification 
 by accident; writing it as amateurs do, a little now and 
 again for his own delectation, and to catch the taste of 
 partial friends. The reader feels that Thackeray would 
 not have begun to print his verses unless the opportunity 
 of doing so had been brought in his way by his doings in 
 prose. And yet he had begun to write verses when he 
 was very young ; — at Cambridge, as we have seen, when he 
 contributed more to the fame of Timbuctoo than I think 
 even Tennyson has done — and in his early years at Paris. 
 Here again, though he must have felt the strength of his 
 own mingled humour and pathos, he always struck with an 
 uncertain note till he had gathered strength and confi- 
 dence by popularity. Good as they generally were, his 
 verses were accidents, written not as a writer writes who 
 claims to be a poet, but as though they might have been 
 the relaxation of a doctor or a barrister. 
 
 And so they were. When Thackeray first settled him- 
 self in London, to make his living among the magazines 
 and newspapers, I do not imagine that he counted much 
 on his poetic powers. He describes it all in his own dia- 
 logue 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 wi'itten many a line and page. 
 
 " Caricatures I scribbled have, and rhymes. 
 And dinner^ards, and picture pantomimes, 
 And many little children's books at times. 
 
24 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 " 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 lie thought of his work. There had been 
 caricatures, and rhymes, and many little children's books ; 
 and then the lines written for his bread, which, except that 
 they were written for Punchy was hardly undertaken with 
 a more serious purpose. In all of it there was ample se- 
 riousness, had he known it himself. What a tale of the 
 restlessness, of the ambition, of the glory, of the misfort- 
 unes of a great country is given in the ballads of Peter 
 the French drummer ! Of that brain so full of fancy the 
 pen had lightly written all the fancies. He did not know 
 it when he was doing so, but with that word fancy he 
 has described exactly the gift with which his brain was 
 specially endowed. If a writer be accurate, or sonorous, 
 or witty, or simply pathetic, he may, I think, gauge his 
 own powers. He may do so after experience with some- 
 thing of certainty. But fancy is a gift which the owner 
 of it cannot measure, and the power of which, when he is 
 using it, he cannot himself understand. There is the same 
 lambent flame flickering over everything he did, even the 
 dinner - cards and the picture pantomimes. He did not 
 in the least know what he put into those things. So it 
 was with his verses. It was only by degrees, when he was 
 told of it by others, that he found that they too were of 
 infinite value to him in his profession. 
 
 The Irish Sketch Book came out in 1843, in which he 
 used, but only half used, the name of Michael Angelo Tit- 
 marsh. He dedicates it to Charles Lever, and in signing 
 the dedication gave his own name. " Laying aside," he 
 
i.j BIOGRAPHICAL. 25 
 
 says, " for a moment the travelling title of Mr. Titmarsh, 
 let me acknowledge these favours in my own name, and 
 subscribe myself, &c., &c., W. M. Thackeray." So he grad- 
 ually fell into the declaration of his own identity. In 
 1844 he made his journey to Turkey and Egypt — From 
 Cornhill to Grand Cairo, as he called it, still using the old 
 nom de illume, but again signing the dedication with his 
 own name. It was now made to the captain of the vessel 
 in which he encountered that famous white squall, in de- 
 scribing which he has shown the wonderful power he had 
 over words. 
 
 In 1846 was commenced, in numbers, the novel which 
 first made his name well knowm to the world. This was 
 Vanity Fair, a work to which it is evident that he de- 
 voted all his mind. Up to this time his writings had 
 consisted of short contributions, chiefly of sketches, each 
 intended to stand by itself in the periodical to w^hich it 
 was sent. Barry Lyndon had hitherto been the longest ; 
 but that and Catherine Hays, and the Iloggarty Diamond, 
 though stories continued through various numbers, had 
 not as yet reached the dignity — or at any rate the length 
 — of a three-volume novel. But of late novels had grown 
 to be much longer than those of the old well-known 
 measure. Dickens had stretched his to nearly double the 
 length, and had published them in twenty numbers. The 
 attempt had caught the public taste, and had been pre-em- 
 inently successful. The nature of the tale as originated 
 by him was altogether unlike that to which the readers of 
 modern novels had been used. No plot, with an arranged 
 catastrophe or denoument, was necessary. Some untying 
 of the various knots of the narrative no doubt were expe- 
 dient, but these were of the simplest kind, done with the 
 view of giving an end to that which might otherwise be 
 
26 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 endless. The adventures of a Pickwick or a Nicklehy re- 
 quired very little of a plot, and this mode of telling a sto- 
 ry, which might be continued on through any number of 
 pages, as long as the characters were interesting, met with 
 approval. Thackeray, who had never depended much on 
 his plot in the shorter tales which he had hitherto told, 
 determined to adopt the same form in his first great work 
 but with these changes : — That as the central character 
 with Dickens had always been made beautiful with unnat- 
 ural virtue — for who was ever so unselfish as Pickwick, so 
 maul}'- and modest as Nicholas, or so good a boy as Oli- 
 ver? — so should his centre of interest be in every respect 
 abnormally bad. 
 
 As to Thackeray's reason for this — or rather as to that 
 condition of mind which brouofht about this result — I 
 will say something in a final chapter, in which I will en- 
 deavor to describe the nature and effect of his work gen- 
 erally. Here it will be necessary only to declare that, 
 such was the choice he now made of a subject in his fi'*st 
 attempt to rise out of a world of small literary contribu- 
 tions, into the more assured position of the author of a 
 work of importance. Wc are aware that the monthly 
 nurses of periodical literature did not at first smile on the 
 effort. The proprietors of magazines did not see their 
 way to undertake Vanity Fair, and the publishers are said 
 to have generally looked shy upon it. At last it was 
 brought out in numbers — twenty-four numbers instead of 
 twenty, as with those by Dickens — under the guardian 
 hands of Messrs. Bradbury and Evans. This was com- 
 pleted in 1848, and then it was that, at the age of thirty- 
 seven, Thackeray first achieved for himself a name and 
 reputation through the country. Before this he had been 
 known at Fraser'^s and at the Punch office. He was 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 21 
 
 known at the Garrick Club, and had become individually 
 popular among literary men in London. He had made 
 many fast friends, and had been, as it were, found out by 
 persons of distinction. But Jones, and Smith, and Robin- 
 son, in Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, did not 
 know him as they knew Dickens, Carlyle, Tennyson, and 
 Macaulay — not as they knew Landseer, or Stansfeld, or 
 Turner; not as they knew Macready, Charles Kean, or 
 Miss Faucit. In that year, 1848, his name became com- 
 mon in the memoirs of the time. On the 5th of June I 
 find him dining with Macready, to meet Sir J. Wilson, 
 Panizzi, Landseer, and others. A few days afterwards 
 Macready dined with him. " Dined with. Thackeray, met 
 the Gordons, Kenyons, Procters, Reeve, Villiers, Evans, 
 Stansfeld, and saw Mrs. Sartoris and S. C. Dance, White, 
 H. Goldsmid, in the evening." Again: "Dined with For- 
 ater, having called and taken up Brookfield, met Rintoul, 
 Kenyon, Procter, Kinglake, Alfred Tennyson, Thackeray." 
 Macready was very accurate in jotting down the names of 
 those he entertained, who entertained him, or were en- 
 tertained with him. Vanity Fair was coming out, and 
 Thackeray had become one of the personages in literary 
 society. In the January number of 1848 the Edinburgh 
 Mevieiu had an article on Thackeray's w'orks generally as 
 they were then known. It purports to combine the Irish 
 Sketch Book, the Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, 
 and Vanity Fair as far as it had then gone ; but it does 
 in truth deal chiefly with the literary merits of the latter. 
 I will quote a passage from the article, as proving in re- 
 gard to Thackeray's work an opinion which was well 
 founded, and as telling the story of his life as far as it 
 was then known : 
 
 "Full many a valuable truth," says the reviewer, "has 
 C 
 
28 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 been sent undulating through the air by men who have 
 lived and died unknown. At this moment the rising 
 generation are supplied with the best of their mental 
 aliment by writers whose names are a dead letter to the 
 mass ; and among the most remarkable of these is Michael 
 Angelo Titmarsh, alias William Makepeace Thackeray, 
 author of the Irish Sketch Book, of A Journey from 
 Cornhill to Grand Cairo, of Jeames's Diary, of The Snob 
 Papers in Punch, of Vanity Fair, &c., (fee. 
 
 "Mr. Thackeray is now about thirty -seven y^ars of 
 age, of a good family, and originally intended for the bar. 
 He kept sevgn or eight terms at Cambridge, but left the 
 university without taking a degree, with the view of be- 
 coming an artist ; and we well remember, ten or twelve 
 years ago, finding him day after day engaged in copying 
 pictures in the Louvre, in order to qualify himself for 
 his intended profession. It may be doubted, however, 
 whether any degree of assiduity would have enabled him 
 to excel in the money-making branches, for his talent was 
 altogether of the Hogarth kind, and was principally 
 remarkable in the pen-and-ink sketches of character and 
 situation, which he dashed off for the amusement of his 
 friends. At the end of two or three years of desultory 
 application he gave up the notion of becoming a painter, 
 and took to literature. He set up and edited with marked 
 ability a weekly journal, on the plan of The Athenceum 
 and Literary Gazette, but was unable to compete success- 
 fully with such long-established rivals. He then became 
 a regular man of letters — that is, he wrote for respectable 
 magfizines and newspapers, until the attention attracted to 
 his contributions in Frase/s Magazine and Punch em- 
 boldened him to start on his own account, and risk an 
 independent publication." Then follows a eulogistic and^ 
 
1.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 29 
 
 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 of his minor writings, The Snob 
 Papers in particular ; and at the end there is a statement 
 with which I think we shall all now agree: "A writer 
 with such a pen and pencil as Mr. Thackeray's is an 
 acquisition of real and high value in our literature." 
 
 The reviewer has done his work in a tone friendly to 
 the author, whom he knew^ — as indeed it may be said 
 that this little book will be written with the same feeling 
 — but the public has already recognised the truth of the 
 review generally. There can be no doubt thajt Thackeray, 
 though he had hitherto been but a contributor of anony- 
 mous pieces to periodicals — to what is generally consid- 
 ered as merely the ephemeral literature of the month — 
 had already become effective on the tastes and morals of 
 readers. Affectation of finery ; the vulgarity which apes 
 good breeding but never approaches it; dishonest gam- 
 bling, whether with dice or with railway shares; and that 
 low taste for literary excitement which is gratified by 
 mysterious murders and Old Bailey executions, had already 
 received condign punishment from Yellowplush, Titmarsh, 
 Fitzboodle, and Ikey Solomon. Under all those names 
 Thackeray had plied his trade as a satirist. Though the 
 truths, as the reviewer said, had been merely sent undulat- 
 ing through the air, they had already become effective. 
 
 Thackeray had now become a personage — one of the 
 recognised stars of the literary heaven of the day. It 
 was an honour to know him ; and we may well believe 
 that the givers of dinners were proud to have him among 
 
 * The article was written by Abraham Hayward, who is still with 
 us, and was no doubt instigated by a desire to assist Thackeray in 
 his struggle upwards, in which it succeeded. 
 
30 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 their giiests. He had opened his oyster with his pen — 
 an achievement which he cannot be said to have accom- 
 plished until Vanity Fair had come out. In inquiring 
 about him from those who survive him, and knew him 
 well in those days, I always hear the same account. " If 
 I could only tell you the impromptu lines which fell from 
 him !" " If I had only kept the drawings from his pen, 
 which used to be chucked about as though they were 
 worth nothing !" " If I could only remember the droll- 
 eries !" Had they been kept, there might now be many 
 volumes of these sketches, as to which the reviewer says 
 that their talent was "altogether of the Hogarth kind." 
 Could there be any kind more valuable? Like Hogarth, 
 he could always make his picture tell his story ; though, 
 unlike Hogarth, he had not learned to draw. I have had 
 sent to me for my inspection an album of drawings and 
 letters, which, in the course of twenty years, from 1829 to 
 1849, were despatched from Thackeray to his old friend 
 Edward Fitzgerald. Looking at the wit displayed in the 
 drawings, I feel inclined to say that had he persisted he 
 would have been a second Hoo-arth. There is a series 
 of ballet scenes, in which "Flore et Zephyr" are the two 
 chief performers, which for expression and drollery exceed 
 anything that I know of the kind. The set in this book 
 are lithographs, which were published, but I do" not re- 
 member to have seen them elsewjiere. There are still 
 among us many who knew him well — Edward Fitzgerald 
 and George Yenables, James Spedding and Kinglake, Mrs. 
 Procter — the widow of Barry Cornwall, who loved him 
 well — and Monckton Milnes, as he used to be, whose 
 touching lines written just after Thackeray's death will 
 close this volume, Frederick Pollock and Frank Fladgatc, 
 John Blackwood and William Russell — and they all tell 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 31 
 
 the same story. Thongli he so rarely talked, as good 
 talkers do, and was averse to sit down to w^ork, 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 of his stragglings he once mentioned 
 three to me — Matthew Higgins, or Jacob Omnium, as he 
 was more popularly called ; William Stirling, who became 
 Sir William Maxwell ; and Russell Sturgis, who is now the 
 senior partner in the great house of Barings. Alas, only 
 the last of these three is left among us ! Thackeray was 
 a man of no great power of conversation. I doubt 
 whether he ever shone in what is called general society. 
 He was not a man to be valuable at a dinner-table as a 
 good talker. It was when there were but two or three to- 
 gether that he was happy himself and made others happy ; 
 and then it would rather be from some special piece of 
 drollery that the joy of the moment would come, than 
 from the discussion of ordinary topics. After so many 
 years his old friends remember the fag-ends of the dog- 
 gerel lines which used to drop from him without any 
 effort on all occasions of jollity. And though he could 
 be very sad — laden with melancholy, as I think must 
 have been the case with him always — the feeling of fun 
 would quickly come to him, and the queer rhymes would 
 be poured out as plentifully as the sketches were made. 
 Here is a contribution which I find hanging in the mem- 
 ory of an old friend, the serious nature of whose literary 
 labours would certainly have driven such lines from his 
 mind, had they not at the time caught fast 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. 
 
32 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 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 cultivatiu' every kind of po'try." 
 
 There may, perhaps, have been a mistake in a line, but 
 the poem has been handed down with fair correctness over 
 a period of forty years. He was always versifying. He 
 once owed me five pounds seventeen shillings and six- 
 pence, his share of a dinner bill at Richmond. He sent 
 me a cheque for the amount in rhyme, giving the proper 
 financial document on the second half of a sheet of note- 
 paper. I gave the poem away as an autograph, and now 
 forget the lines. This was all trifling, the reader will say. 
 No doubt. Thackeray was always trifling, and yet always 
 serious. In attempting to understand his character it is 
 necessary for you to bear within your own mind the idea 
 that he was always, within his own bosom, encountering 
 melancholy with buffoonery, and meanness with satire. 
 The very spirit of burlesque dwelt within him — a spirit 
 which does not see the grand the less because of the trav- 
 esties which it is always engendering. 
 
 In his youthful — all but boyish — days in London, he 
 delighted to " put himself up " at the Bedford, in Covent 
 Garden. Then, in his early married days, he lived in Al- 
 bion Street, and from thence went to Great Coram Street, 
 till his household there was broken up by his wife's ilhiess. 
 He afterwards took lodgings in St. James's Chambers, and 
 then a house in Young Street, Kensington. Here he lived 
 from 1847, when he was achieving his great triumph with 
 Vanity Fair, down to 1853, when he removed to a house 
 which he bought in Onslow Square. In Young Street 
 
1.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 33 
 
 there had come to lodge opposite to him an Irish gentle- 
 man, who, on the part of his injured country, felt very- 
 angry with Thackeray. The Irish Sketch Book had not 
 been complimentary, nor were the descriptions which 
 Thackeray had given generally of Irishmen ; and there 
 was extant an absurd idea that in his abominable heroine 
 Catherine Hayes he had alluded to Miss Catherine Hayes, 
 the Irish singer. Word was taken to Thackeray that this 
 Irishman intended to come across the street and avenge 
 his country on the calumniator's person. Thackeray im- 
 mediately called upon the gentleman, 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 makino* for him- 
 self a standing as a man of letters, and an income. What 
 was the extent of his income I have no means of saying ; 
 nor is it a subject on which, as I think, inquiry should be 
 made. But he was not satisfied with his position. He 
 felt it to be precarious, and he was always thinking of 
 what he owed to his two girls. That arbitrium pojyularis 
 aur(B on which he depended for his daily bread was not 
 regarded by him with the confidence which it deserved. 
 He did not, probably, know how firm was the hold he had 
 obtained of the public ear. At any rate he was anxious, 
 and endeavoured to secure for himself a permanent income 
 in the public service. He had become by this time ac- 
 quainted, probably intimate, with the Marquis of Clanri- 
 carde, who was then Postmaster-General. In 1848 there 
 fell a vacancy in the situation of Assistant-Secretary at the 
 General Post-Ofiice, and Lord Clanricarde either offered it 
 to him or promised to give it to him. The Postmaster- 
 General had the disposal of the place, but was not alto- 
 gether free from control in the matter. When he made 
 
34 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 known Ins purpose at the Post-Office, lie was met by an 
 assurance from the ofBcer next under him that the thing 
 could not be done. The services were w^anted of a man 
 who had had experience in the Post-OfBce ; and, more- 
 over, it was necessary that the feelings of other gentlemen 
 should be consulted. Men who have been serving: in an 
 office many years do 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. Lord Clanricarde, who 
 in a matter of patronage w^as not scrupulous, was still a 
 good-natured man and amenable. He attempted to be- 
 fiicnd his friend till he found that it was impossible, and 
 then, with the best grace in the world, accepted the official 
 nominee that was offered to him. 
 
 It may be said that had Thackeray succeeded in that 
 attempt he would surely have ruined himself. No man 
 can be fit for the management and performance of special 
 work who has learned nothing of it before his thirty - 
 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 their lesson and make themselves as 
 fit as possible. Such cannot be said to have been the case 
 with this man. For the special duties which he would 
 have been called upon to perform, consisting to a great 
 extent of the maintenance of discipline over a large body 
 of men, training is required, and the service would have 
 suffered for awhile under any untried elderly tiro. An- 
 other man might have put himself into harness. Thack- 
 eray never would have done so. The details of his work 
 after the first month would have been inexpressibly weari- 
 some to him. To have gone into the city, and to have re- 
 mained there every day from eleven till five, would have 
 been all but impossible to him. lie would not have done 
 
1.J BIOGRAPHICAL. 35 
 
 it. And then he would have been tormented by the feel- 
 ing that he was taking the pay and not doing the work. 
 There is a belief current, not confined to a few, that a man 
 may be a Government Secretary with a generous salary, 
 and have nothing to do. The idea is something that re- 
 mains to us from the old days of sinecures. If there be 
 now remaining places so pleasant, or gentlemen so happy, 
 I do not know them. Thackeray's notion of his future 
 duties was probably very vague. He would have repudi- 
 ated the notion that he was looking for a sinecure, but no 
 doubt considered that the duties would be easy and light. 
 It is not too much to assert, that he who could drop his 
 pearls as I have said above, throwing them wide cast with- 
 out an effort, would have found his work as Assistant- 
 Secretary at the General Post-Office to be altogether too 
 much for him. And then it was no doubt his intention 
 to join literature with the Civil Service. He had been 
 taught to regard the Civil Service as easy, and had count- 
 ed upon himself as able to add it to his novels, and his 
 work with his Punch brethren, and to his contributions 
 generally to the literature of the day. He might have 
 done so, could he have risen at five, and have sat at his 
 private desk for three hours before he began his official 
 routine at the public one. A capability for grinding, an 
 aptitude for continuous task work, a disposition to sit in 
 one's chair as though fixed to it by cobbler's wax, will en- 
 able a man in the prime of life to go through the tedium 
 of a second day's work every day ; but of all men Thack- 
 eray was the last to bear the wearisome perseverance of 
 such a life. Some more or less continuous attendance at 
 his oflBce he must have given, and with it would have gone 
 Punch and the novels, the ballads, the burlesques, the es- 
 says, the lectures, and the monthly papers full of mingled 
 
36 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 satire and tenderness, which have left to us that Thack- 
 eray which we could so ill aSord to lose out of the liter- 
 ature of the nineteenth century. And there would have 
 remained to the Civil Service the memory of a disgraceful 
 job. 
 
 He did not, however, give up the idea of the Civil Ser- 
 vice. In a letter to his American friend, Mr. Reed, dated 
 8th November, 1854, he says: "The secretaryship of our 
 Legation at Washington was vacant the other day, and I 
 instantly asked for it ; but in the very kindest letter Lord 
 Clarendon showed how the petition was impossible. First, 
 the place was given 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 validity of the second 
 was probably not so apparent to him as it is to one who 
 has himself waited long for promotion. " So if ever I 
 come," he continues, " as I hope and trust to do this time 
 next year, it must be in my own coat, and not the Queen's." 
 Certainly in his own coat, and not in the Queen's, must 
 Thackeray do anything by which he could mend his for- 
 tune or make his reputation. There never was a man less 
 fit for the Queen's coat. 
 
 Nevertheless he held strong ideas that much was due by 
 the Queen's ministers to men of letters, and no doubt had 
 his feelings of slighted merit, because no part of the debt 
 due was paid to him. In 1850 he wrote a letter to The 
 Morning Chronicle, which has since been republished, in 
 which he alludes to certain opinions which had been put 
 forth in The Examiner. " I don't see," he says, " why 
 men of letters should not very cheerfully coincide with 
 Mr. Examiner in accepting all the honours, places, and 
 prizes which they can get. The amount of such as will 
 be awarded to them will not, we may be pretty sure, im- 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 37 
 
 povcrish the country much ; and if it is the custom of the 
 State to reward by money, or titles of honour, or stars and 
 garters of any sort, individuals who do the country service 
 — and if individuals are gratified at having *Sir' or 'My 
 lord ' appended to their names, or stars and ribbons hooked 
 on to their coats and waistcoats, as men most undoubtedly 
 are, and as their wives, families, and relations are — there 
 can be no reason why men of letters should not have the 
 chance, as well as men of the robe or the sword ; or why, 
 if honour and money are good for one profession, they 
 should not be good for another. No man in other call- 
 ings thinks himself degraded by receiving a reward from 
 his Government; nor, surely, need the literary man be 
 more squeamish about pensions, and ribbons, and titles, 
 than the ambassador, or general, or judge. Every Eu- 
 ropean state but ours rewards its men of letters. The 
 American Government gives them their full share of its 
 small patronage ; and if Americans, why not Englishmen ?" 
 In this a great subject is discussed which would be too 
 long for these pages ; but I think that there now exists a 
 feeling that literature can herself, for herself, produce a 
 rank as effective as any that a Queen's minister can be- 
 stow. Surely it would be a repainting of the lily, an add- 
 ing a flavour to the rose, a gilding of refined gold to create 
 to-morrow a Lord Viscount Tennyson, a Baron Carlyle, or 
 a Right Honourable Sir Robert Browning. And as for pay 
 and pension, the less the better of it for any profession, 
 unless so far as it may be payment made for work done. 
 Then the higher the payment the better, in literature as 
 in all other trades. It may be doubted even whether a 
 special rank of its own be good for literature, such as that 
 which is achieved by the happy possessors of the forty 
 chairs of the Academy in France. Even though they had 
 
38 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 an angel to make the choice — which they have not — that 
 angel would do more harm to the excluded than good to 
 the selected. 
 
 Pendenriis, Esmond, and The Newcomes followed Vani- 
 ty Fair — not very 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 a chapter, to 
 each of these, I need say nothing here of their special 
 merits or demerits. Esmond was brought out as a whole. 
 The others appeared in numbers. " He lisped in numbers, 
 for the numbers came." It is a mode of pronunciation in 
 literature by no means very articulate, but easy of produc- 
 tion and lucrative. But though easy it is seductive, and 
 leads to idleness. An author by means of it can raise 
 money and reputation on his book before he has written 
 it, and when the pang of parturition is over in regard to 
 one part, he feels himself entitled to a period of ease be- 
 cause the amount required for the next division will occu- 
 py him only half the month. This to Thackeray was so 
 alluring that the entirety of the final half was not always 
 given to the task. His self-reproaches and bemoanings 
 when sometimes the day for reappearing would come ter- 
 ribly nigh, while yet the necessary amount of copy was 
 far from being ready, were often very ludicrous and very 
 sad — ludicrous because he never told of his distress with- 
 out adding to it something of ridicule which was irre- 
 sistible, and sad because those who loved him best were 
 aware that physical suffering had already fallen upon him, 
 and that he was deterred by illness from the exercise of 
 continuous energy. I myself did not know him till after 
 the time now in question. My acquaintance with him 
 was quite late in his life. But he has told me something 
 of it, and I have heard from those who lived with him 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 39 
 
 how continua] were his sufferings. In 1854, he says in 
 one of his letters to Mr. Reed — the only private letters 
 of his which I know to have been published: "I am 
 to-day just out of bed after another, about the dozenth, 
 severe fit of spasms which I have had this year. My book 
 would have been written but for them." His work was 
 always going on, but though not fuller of matter — that 
 would have been almost impossible — would have been 
 better in manner had he been delayed neither by suffer- 
 ing nor by that palsying of the energies which suffering 
 produces. 
 
 This ought to have been the happiest period of his life, 
 and should have been very happy. He had become fairly 
 easy in his circumstances. He had succeeded in his work, 
 and had made for himself a great name. He was fond of 
 popularity, and especially anxious to be loved by a small 
 circle of friends. These good things he had thoroughly 
 achieved. Immediately after the publication of Vanity 
 Fair he stood high among the literary heroes of his coun- 
 try, and had endeared himself especially to a special knot 
 of friends. His face and figure, his six feet four in height, 
 with his flowing hair, already nearly gray, and his broken 
 nose, his broad forehead and ample chest, encountered 
 everywhere either love or respect ; and his daughters to 
 him were all the world — the bairns of whom he says, 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." 
 
 Nothino; could have been more tender or endearins: than 
 his relations with his children. But still there was a 
 
40 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 skeleton in his cupboard — or rather two skeletons. His 
 home had been broken up by his wife's malady, and his 
 own health was shattered. When he was writing Pen- 
 dermis, in 1849, he had a severe fever, and then those 
 spasms came, of which four or five years 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 life at which a man generally makes a happy exchange 
 in taking his wife's drawing-room in lieu of the smoking- 
 room of his club, and assumes those domestic ways of 
 living which are becoming and pleasant for matured years, 
 that drawing-room and those domestic ways were closed 
 against him. The children were then no more than ba- 
 bies, as far as society was concerned — things to kiss and 
 play with, and make a home happy if they could only 
 have had their mother with them. I have no doubt there 
 were those 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 continual playfulness which 
 was natural to him, lying over a melancholy which was as 
 continual, be compatible with jollity. He laughed, and 
 ate, and drank, and threw his pearls about with miraculous 
 profusion. But I fancy that he was far from happy. I 
 remember once, when I was young, receiving advice as to 
 the manner in which I had better spend my evenings ; I 
 was told that I ought to go home, drink tea, and read 
 good books. It was excellent advice, but I found that the 
 reading of good books in solitude was not an occupation 
 congenial to me. It was so, I take it, with Thackeray. 
 He did not like his lonely drawing-room, and went back 
 to his life among the clubs by no means with content- 
 ment. 
 
 In 1853, Thackeray having then his own two girls to 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 41 
 
 provide for, added a third to his family, and adopted Amy 
 Crowe, the daugliter of an old friend, and sister of the 
 well-known artist now among us. How it came to pass 
 that she wanted a home, or that this special home suited 
 her, it would be unnecessary here to tell even if I knew. 
 But that he did give a home to this young lady, making 
 her in all respects the same as another daughter, should 
 be told of him. He was a man who liked to broaden his 
 back for the support of others, and to make himself easy 
 under such burdens. In 1862, she married a Thackeray 
 cousin, a young officer with the Victoria Cross, Edward 
 Thackeray, and went out to India, where she died. 
 
 In 1854, the year in which The Newcomes came out, 
 Thackeray had broken his close alliance with Punch. In 
 December of that year there appeared from his pen an 
 article in The Quarterly on John Leeches Pictures of Life 
 and Character. It is a rambling discourse on picture-illus- 
 tration in general, full of interest, but hardly good as a 
 criticism — a portion of literary work for which he was 
 not specially fitted. In it he tells us how Richard Doyle, 
 the artist, had given up his work for Punch, not having 
 been able, as a Roman Catholic, to endure the skits which, 
 at that time, were appearing in one number after another 
 against what was then called Papal aggression. The re- 
 viewer — Thackeray himself — then tells us of the seces- 
 sion of himself from the board of brethren. "Another 
 member of Mr. Punch's cabinet, the biographer of Jeames^ 
 the author of The Snob Papers, resigned his functions, on 
 account of Mr. Punch's assaults upon the present Emperor 
 of the French nation, whose anger Jeamcs thought it was 
 unpatriotic to arouse.'^ How hard it must be for Cabinets 
 to agree ! This man or that is sure to have some pet con- 
 viction of his own, and the better the man the stronger 
 
 3 
 
42 THACKERAY. [chat. 
 
 the conviction ! Then the reviewer went on in favour of 
 the artist of whom he was specially speaking, making a 
 comparison which must at the time have been odious 
 enough to some of the brethren. "There can be no 
 blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's Cabinet John Leech 
 is the right-hand man. Fancy a number of Punch with- 
 out Leech's pictures! What would you give for it?" 
 Then he breaks out into strong admiration of that one 
 friend — perhaps with a little disregard as to the feelings 
 of other friends.* This Critical Review, if it may prop- 
 erly be so called — at any rate it is so named as now pub- 
 lished — is to be found in our author's collected works, in 
 the same volume with Catherine. It is there preceded by 
 another, from The Westminster Review, written fourteen 
 years earlier, on The Genius of CruikshanJc. This con- 
 tains a descriptive catalogue of Cruikshank's works up to 
 that period, and is interesting, from the piquant style in 
 which it is written. I fancy that these two are the only 
 efforts of the kind which he made — and in both he dealt 
 with the two great caricaturists of his time, he himself be- 
 ing, in the imaginative part of a caricaturist's work, equal 
 in power to either of them. 
 
 We now come to a phase of Thackeray's life in which 
 he achieved a remarkable success, attributable rather to 
 his fame as a writer than to any particular excellence in 
 the art which he then exercised. lie took upon himself 
 
 ^ For a week there existed at the Punch office a grudge against 
 Thackeray in reference to this awkward question : " What would 
 you give for your Punch without John Leech ?" Then he asked the 
 confraternity to dinner — more Thackerayano — and the confraternity 
 came. Who can doubt but they were very jolly over the little blun- 
 der? For years afterwards Thackeray was a guest at the well- 
 known Punch dinner, though he was no longer one of the contributors. 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 43 
 
 the functions of a lecturer, being moved to do so by a 
 hope tliat he might thus provide a sum of money for the 
 future sustenance of his children. No doubt he had been 
 advised to this course, though I do not know from whom 
 specially the advice may have come. Dickens had already 
 considered the subject, but had not yet consented to read 
 in public for money on his own account. John Forster, 
 writing of the year 1846, says of Dickens and the then 
 only thought-of exercise of a new profession : " I contin- 
 ued to oppose, for reasonP) to be stated in their place, that 
 which he had set his heart upon too strongly to abandon, 
 and which I still can wish he had preferred to surrender 
 with all that seemed to be its enormous gain." And 
 again he says, speaking of a proposition which had been 
 made to Dickens from the to^\n of Bradford: "At first 
 this was entertained, but was abandoned, with some reluc- 
 tance, upon the argument that to become publicly a reader 
 must alter, without improving, his position publicly as a 
 writer, and that it was a change to be justified only when 
 the higher calling should have failed of the old success." 
 The meaning of this was that the money to be made 
 would be sweet, but that the descent to a profession 
 which was considered to be lower than that of literature 
 itself would carry with it something that was bitter. It 
 was as thouo-h one who had sat on the Woolsack as Lord 
 Chancellor should raise the question whether, for the sake 
 of the income attached to it, he might, without disgrace, 
 occupy a seat on a lower bench ; as though an architect 
 should consider with himself the propriety of making his 
 fortune as a contractor ; or the head of a college lower his 
 dignity, while he increased his finances, by taking pupils. 
 When such discussions arise, money generally carries the 
 
 day — and should do so. When convinced that money 
 D 
 
44 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 may be earned without disgrace, we ought to allow money 
 to carry the day. When we talk of sordid gain and filthy 
 lucre, we are generally hypocrites. If gains be sordid 
 and lucre filthy, where is the priest, the lawyer, the doc- 
 tor, or the man of literature, who does not wish for dirty 
 hands ? An income, and the power of putting by some- 
 thing for old age, something for those who are to come 
 after, is the wholesome and acknowledged desire of all 
 professional men. Thackeray having children, and being 
 gifted with no power of making his money go very far, 
 was anxious enough on the subject. We may say now, 
 that had he confined himself to his pen, he would not 
 have wanted while he lived, but would have left but little 
 behind him. That he was anxious we have seen, by his 
 attempts to subsidise his literary gains by a Government 
 oflSce. I cannot but think that had he undertaken public 
 duties for which he was ill qualified, and received a salary 
 which he could hardly have earned, he ^vould have done 
 less for his fame than by reading to the public. Whether 
 he did that well or ill, he did it well enough for the mon- 
 ey. The people who heard him, and who paid for their 
 seats, were satisfied with their bargain — as they were also 
 in the case of Dickens ; and I venture to say that in be- 
 coming publicly a reader, neither did Dickens or Thack- 
 eray "alter his position as a writer," and "that it was a 
 change to be justified," though the success of the old call- 
 ing had in no degree waned. What Thackeray did ena- 
 bled him to leave a comfortable income for his children, 
 and one earned honestly, with the full approval of the 
 world around him. 
 
 Having saturated his mind with the literature of Queen 
 Anne's time — not probably, in the first instance, as a prep- 
 aration for Esmond, but in such a way as to induce him 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 45 
 
 to create an Esmond — he took the authors whom he knew 
 so well as the subject for his first series of lectures. He 
 wrote The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century 
 in 1851, while he must have been at work on Esmond, 
 and first delivered the course at Willis's Rooms in that 
 year. He afterwards went with these through many of 
 our provincial towns, and then carried them to the United 
 States, where he delivered them to large audiences in the 
 winter of 1852 and 1853. Some few words as to the 
 merits of the composition I will endeavour to say in an- 
 other place. I myself never heard him lecture, and can 
 therefore give no opinion of the performance. That which 
 I have heard from others has been very various. It is, I 
 think, certain that he had none of those wonderful gifts 
 of elocution which made it a pleasure to listen to Dickens, 
 whatever he read or w^hatever he said ; nor had he that 
 powder of application by using which his rival taught him- 
 self with accuracy the exact effect to be given to every 
 word. The rendering of a piece by Dickens was com- 
 posed as an oratorio is composed, and was then studied 
 by heart as music is studied. And the piece was all giv- 
 en by memory, without any looking at the notes or words. 
 There w^as nothing of this with Thackeray. But the 
 thing read was in itself of great interest to educated peo- 
 ple. The words were given clearly, with sufficient into- 
 nation for easy understanding, so that they who were will- 
 ing to hear something from him felt on hearing that they 
 had received full value for their money. At any rate, the 
 lectures were successful. The money was made — and was 
 kept. 
 
 He came from nis first trip to America to his new house 
 in Onslow Square, and then published The Newcomes. 
 This, too, was one of his great works, as to which I shall 
 
46 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 have to speak hereafter. Then, having enjoyed his suc- 
 cess in the first attempt to lecture, he prepared a second 
 series. He never essayed the kind of reading which with 
 Dickens became so wonderfully popular. Dickens recited 
 portions from his well-known works. Thackeray wrote 
 his lectures expressly for the purpose. They have since 
 been added to his other literature, but they were prepared 
 as lectures. The second series were The Four Georges. 
 In a lucrative point of view they were even more success- 
 ful 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 subject chosen 
 having been distasteful to many. There arose the ques- 
 tion whether too much freedom had not been taken with 
 an office which, though it be no longer considered to be 
 founded on divine right, is still as sacred as can be any- 
 thing that is human. If there is to remain among us a 
 sovereign, that sovereign, even though divested of political 
 power, should be endowed with all that personal respect 
 can give. If we wish ourselves to be high, we should treat 
 that which is over us as high. And this should not de- 
 pend altogether on personal character, though we know 
 — as we have reason to know — how much may be added 
 to the firmness of the feeling by personal merit. The re- 
 spect of which we speak should, in the strongest degree, 
 be a possession of the immediate occupant, and will natu- 
 rally become dim — or perhaps be exaggerated — in regard 
 to the past, as history or fable may tell of them. No one 
 need hesitate to speak his mind of King John, let him 
 be ever so strong a stickler for the privileges of majesty. 
 But there are degrees of distance, and the throne of which 
 we wish to preserve the dignity seems to be assailed when 
 unmeasured evil is said of one who has sat there within 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 47 
 
 our own memory. There would seem to each of us to be 
 a personal affront were a departed relative delineated with 
 all those faults by which we must own that even our near 
 relatives have been made imperfect. It is a general con- 
 viction as to this which so frequently turns the biography 
 of those recently dead into mere eulogy. The fictitious 
 charity which is enjoined by the de mortuis nil nisi honum 
 banishes truth. The feeling of which I speak almost leads 
 me at this moment to put down my pen. And, if so much 
 be due to all subjects, is less due to a sovereign ? 
 
 Considerations such as these diminished, I think, the 
 popularity of Thackeray's second series of lectures; or, 
 rather, not their popularity, but the estimation in which 
 they were held. On this head he defended himself more 
 than once very gallantly, and had a great deal to say on 
 his side of the question. " Suppose, for example, in Amer- 
 ica — in Philadelphia or in New York — that I had spoken 
 about George IV. in terms of praise and affected rever- 
 ence, do you believe they would have hailed his name with 
 cheers, or have heard it with anything of respect?" And 
 again: "We degrade our own honour and the sovereign's 
 by unduly and unjustly praising him ; and the mere slav- 
 erer and flatterer is one who comes forward, as it were, 
 with flash notes, and pays with false coin his tribute to 
 Caesar. I don't disguise that I feel somehow on my trial 
 here for loyalty — for honest English feeling." This was 
 said by Thackeray at a dinner at Edinburgh, in 1857, and 
 shows how the matter rested on his mind. Thackeray's 
 loyalty was no doubt true enough, but was mixed with 
 but little of reverence. He was one who revered modesty 
 and innocence rather than power, against which he had in 
 the bottom of his heart something of republican tendency. 
 His leaning was no doubt of the more manly kind. But 
 
48 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 in what he said at Edinburgh he hardly hit the nail on 
 the head. No one had suggested that he should have said 
 good things of a king which he did not believe to be true. 
 The question was whether it may not be well sometimes 
 for us to hold our tongues. An American literary man, 
 here in England, would not lecture on the morals of Ham- 
 ilton, on the manners of General Jackson, on the general 
 amenities of President Johnson. 
 
 In 1857 Thackeray stood for Oxford, in the Liberal in- 
 terest, in opposition to Mr. Cardwell. He had been in- 
 duced to do this by his old friend Charles Neate, who him- 
 self twice sat for Oxford, and died now not many months 
 since. He polled 1,017 votes, against 1,070 by Mr. Card- 
 well ; and was thus again saved by his good fortune from 
 attempting to fill a situation in which he would not have 
 shone. There are, no doubt, many to whom a seat in Par- 
 liament comes almost as the birthright of a well-born and 
 well-to-do English gentleman. They go there with no 
 more idea of shining than they do when they are elected 
 to a first-class club — hardly with more idea of being use- 
 ful. It is the thing to do, and the House of Commons is 
 the place where a man ought to be — for a certain number 
 of hours. Such men neither succeed nor fail, for nothing 
 is expected of them. From such a one as Thackeray some- 
 thing would have been expected, which would not have 
 been forthcoming. He was too desultory for regular work 
 — full of thought, but too vague for practical questions. 
 He could not have endured to sit for two or three hours at 
 a time with his hat over his eyes, pretending to listen, as 
 is the duty of a good legislator. He was a man intolerant 
 of tedium, and in the best of his time impatient of slow 
 work. Nor, though his liberal feelings were very strong, 
 were his political convictions definite or accurate. He was 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 49 
 
 a man wLo mentally drank in much, feeding his fancy 
 hourly with what he saw, what he heard, what he read, 
 and then pouring it all out with an immense power of am- 
 plification. But it would have been impossible for him to 
 study and bring home to himself the various points of a 
 complicated bill with a hundred and fifty clauses. In be- 
 coming a man of letters, and taking that branch of letters 
 which fell to him, he obtained the special place that was 
 fitted for him. He was a round peg in a round hole. 
 There was no other hole which he would have fitted near- 
 ly so well. But he had his moment of political ambition, 
 like others — and paid a thousand pounds for his attempt. 
 In 1857 the first number of The Virginians appeared; 
 and the last — the twenty-fourth — in October, 1859. This 
 novel, as all my readers are aware, is a continuance of Es- 
 mond^ and will be spoken of in its proper place. He was 
 then forty-eight years old, very gray, with much of age 
 upon him, which had come from suffering — age shown by 
 dislike of activity and by an old man's way of thinking 
 about many things — speaking as though the world were 
 all behind him instead of before ; but still with a stalwart 
 outward bearing, very erect in his gait, and a countenance 
 peculiarly expressive and capable of much dignity. I speak 
 of his personal appearance at this time, because it was then 
 only that I became acquainted with him. In 1859 he un- 
 dertook the last 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 and Elder, with an 
 amount of energy greater than has generally been bestowed 
 upon such enterprises. It will be well remembered still 
 how much The Cornhill was talked about and thought of 
 before it first appeared, and how much of that thinking 
 and talking was due to the fact that Mr. Thackeray w\is to 
 
 3-^ 
 
50 THACKERAY. [cHA^. 
 
 edit it. Macmillanh, I think, was the first of the shilling 
 magazines, having preceded The Cornhill by a month, and 
 it would ill become me, who have been a humble servant 
 to each of them, to give to either any preference. But it 
 must be acknowledged that a great deal was expected from 
 The Cornhill^ and I think it will be confessed that it was 
 the general opinion that a great deal was given by it. 
 Thackeray had become big enough to give a special eclat 
 to any literary exploit to which he attached himself. Since 
 the days of The Constitutional he had fought his way up 
 the ladder, and knew how to take his stand there with an 
 assurance of success. When it became known to the 
 world of readers that a new magazine was to appear under 
 Thackeray's editorship, the world of readers was quite sure 
 that there would be a large sale. Of the first number over 
 one hundred and ten thousand were sold, and of the sec- 
 ond and third over one hundred thousand. It is in the 
 nature of such things that the sale should fall off when 
 the novelty is 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 they had expected. 
 But the commencement of such enterprises may be taken 
 as a measure of what will follow. The magazine, either 
 by Thackeray's name or by its intrinsic merits — proba- 
 bly by both — achieved a great success. My acquaintance 
 with him grew from my having been one of his staff from 
 the first. 
 
 About two months before the opening day I wrote to 
 him suggesting that he should accept from me a series of 
 four short stories on which I was engaged. I got back a 
 long letter in which he said nothing about my short sto- 
 ries, but asking whether I could go to work at once and 
 let him have a long novel, so that it might begin with the 
 
I. J BIOGRAPHICAL. 51 
 
 first number. At the same time I heard from the pub- 
 lisher, who suggested some interesting little details as to 
 honorarium. The little details were very interesting, but 
 absolutely no time was allowed to me. It was required 
 that the first portion of my book should be in the printer's 
 hands within a month. Now it was my theory — and ever 
 since this occurrence has been my practice — to see the 
 end of my own work before the public should see the com- 
 mencement.^ If I did this thing I must not only abandon 
 my theory, but instantly contrive a story, or begin to write 
 it before it was contrived. That was what I did, urged by 
 the interestino* nature of the details. A novelist cannot 
 always at the spur of the moment make his plot and cre- 
 ate his characters who shall, with an arranged sequence 
 of events, live with a certain degree of eventful decorum, 
 through that portion of their lives which is to be portray- 
 ed. I hesitated, 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 wear and 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 or have written since. I think that almost any- 
 thing would have been then accepted coming under Thack- 
 eray's editorship. 
 
 I was astonished that work should be required in such 
 haste, knowing that much preparation had been made, and 
 
 ^ I had begim an Irish story and half finished it, which would 
 reach just the required length. Would that do ? I asked. 1 was civil- 
 ly told that my Irish story would no doubt be charming, but was not 
 quite the thing that was wanted. Could I not begin a new one — 
 English — and if possible about clerg}Tnen ? The details were so in- 
 teresting that had a couple of archbishops been demanded, I should 
 have produced them. 
 
52 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 that the service of almost any English novelist might have 
 been obtained if asked for in due time. It was my readi- 
 ness that was needed, rather than any other gift ! The 
 riddle was read to me after a time. Thackeray had him- 
 self intended to begin with one of his own great novels, 
 but had put it off till it w\as too late. Lovel the Widower 
 was commenced at the same time with my own story, but 
 Lovel the Widower was not substantial enough to appear 
 as the principal joint at the banquet. Though your guests 
 will undoubtedly dine off the little delicacies you provide 
 for them, there must be a heavy saddle of mutton among 
 the viands prepared. I was the saddle of mutton, Thack- 
 eray having omitted to get his joint down to the fire in time 
 enough. My fitness lay in my capacity for quick roasting. 
 It may be interesting to give a list of the contributors 
 to the first number. My novel called Framley Parsonage 
 came first. At this banquet the saddle of mutton was 
 served before the delicacies. Then there was a paper by 
 Sir John Bowring on The Chinese and Outer Barbarians. 
 The commencing number of Lovel the Widower followed. 
 George Lewes came next with his first chapters of Studies 
 in Animal Life. Then there was Father Front's Inaugu- 
 ration Ode, dedicated to the author of Vanity Fair — 
 which should have led the way. I need hardly say that 
 Father Prout was the Rev. F. Mahony. Then followed Our 
 Volunteers, by Sir John Burgoyne ; A Man of Letters of the 
 Last Generation, by Thornton Hunt ; The Search for Sir 
 John Franklin, from a private journal of an officer of the 
 Fox, now Sir Allen Young; and The First Morning of 
 1860, by Mrs. Archer Clive. The number was concluded 
 by the first of those Roundabout Papers by Thackeray 
 himself, which became so delightful a portion of the litera' 
 ture of The Cornhill Magazine. 
 
L] BIOGRAPHICAL. 53 
 
 It would be out of my power, and hardly interesting, to 
 give an entire list of those who wrote for The Cornhill 
 under Thackeray's editorial direction. But I may name 
 a- few, to show how strong was the support which he re- 
 ceived. Those who contributed to the first number I have 
 named. Among those who followed were Alfred Tenny- 
 son, Jacob Omnium, Lord Houghton, William Russell, Mrs. 
 Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Browning, Robert Bell, George Au- 
 gustus Sala, Mrs. Gaskell, James Ilinton, Mary Howitt, John 
 Kaye, Cliarlcs Lever, Frederick Locker, Laurence Oliphant, 
 John Ruskin, Fitzjames Stephen, T. A. Trollope, Henry 
 Thompson, Herman Merivale, Adelaide Proctor, -Matthew 
 Arnold, the present Lord Lytton, and Miss Thackeray, now 
 Mrs. Ritchie. Thackeray continued the editorship for two 
 years and four months, namely, up to April, 1862 ; but, as 
 all readers will remember, he continued to write for it till 
 he died, the day before Christmas Day, in 1863. His last 
 contribution was, I think, a paper written for and publish- 
 ed in the November number, called ''^Strange to say on 
 Club Pai^er^'' in which he vindicated Lord Clyde from the 
 accusation of having taken the club stationery home with 
 him. It was not a great subject, for no one could or did 
 believe that the Field - Marshal had been guilty of any 
 meanness; but the handling of it has made it interesting, 
 and his indignation has made it beautiful. 
 
 The magazine was a great success, but justice compels 
 me to say that Thackeray w\as not a good editor. As he 
 would have been an indifferent civil servant, an indifferent 
 member of Parliament, so was he perfunctory as an editor. 
 It has sometimes been thought well to select a popular lit- 
 erary man as an editor ; first, because his name will at- 
 tract, and then with an idea that he who can write well 
 himself will be a competent judge of the w't.ngs of oth- 
 
54 THACKERAY. [chai., 
 
 ers. The first may sell a magazine, but will hardly mate 
 it good ; and the second will not avail much, unless the 
 editor so situated be patient enough to read wbat is sent 
 to him. Of a magazine editor it is required that he should 
 be patient, scrupulous, judicious, but above all things hard- 
 hearted. I think it may be doubted whether Thackeray 
 did bring himself to read the basketfuls of manuscripts 
 with which he was deluged, but he probably did, sooner or 
 later, read the touching little private notes by which they 
 were accompanied — the heartrending appeals, in which he 
 was told that 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 tells us how he felt on 
 receiving such letters in one of his Roundabout Pcqyers, 
 which he calls " Thorns in the cushion.''^ " How am I to 
 know," he says — " though to be sure I begin to know now 
 — ras I take the letters off the tray, which of those enve- 
 lopes contains a real bona fide letter, and which a thorn ? 
 One of the best invitations this year I mistook for a thorn 
 letter, and kept it without opening." Then he gives the 
 sample of a thorn letter. It is from a governess with 
 a poem, and with a prayer for insertion and payment. 
 "We have known better days, sir. I have a sick and 
 widowed mother to maintain, and little brothers and sis- 
 ters who look to me." He could not stand this, and the 
 money would be sent, out of his own pocket, though the 
 poem might be — postponed, till happily it should be lost. 
 
 From such material a good editor could not be made. 
 Nor, in truth, do I think that he did much of the editorial 
 work. I had once made an arrangement, not with Thack- 
 eray, but with the proprietors, as to some little story. The 
 story was sent back to me by Thackeray — rejected. Vir- 
 ginibus puerisque f That was the gist of his objection. 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 65 
 
 There was a project in a gentleman's mind — as told in 
 my story — to run away with a married woman ! Thack- 
 eray's letter was very kind, very regretful — full of apology 
 for such treatment to such a contributor. But — Virgini- 
 bus puerisque ! I was quite sure that Thackeray had not 
 taken the trouble to read the story himself. Some moral 
 deputy had read it, and disapproving, no doubt properly, 
 of the little project to which I have alluded, had incited 
 the editor to use his authority. That Thackeray had suf- 
 fered when he wrote it was easy to see, fearing that he 
 was giving pain to one he would fain have pleased. I 
 wrote him a long letter in return, as full of drollery as I 
 knew how to make it. In four or five days there came a 
 reply in the same spirit — boiling over with fun. He had 
 kept my letter by him, not daring to open it — as he says 
 that he did with that eligible invitation. At last he had 
 given it to one of his girls to examine — to see whether 
 the thorn would be too sharp, whether I had turned upon 
 him with reproaches. A man so susceptible, so prone to 
 work by fits and starts, so- unmethodical, could not have 
 been a good editor. 
 
 In 1862 he went into the new bouse which he had built 
 for himself at Palace Green. I remember well, while this 
 was still being built, how his friends used to discuss his 
 imprudence in building it. Though he had done well 
 with himself, and had made and was makino- a larire in- 
 come, was he entitled to live in a house the rent of which 
 could not be counted at less than from five hundred to six 
 hundred pounds a year? Before he had been there two 
 years, he solved the question by dying — when the house 
 was sold for two thousand pounds more than it had cost. 
 He himself, in speaking of his project, was wont to declare 
 that he was laying out his money in the best way he could 
 
56 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 for tho interest of his cMldren; and it turned out that 
 he was right. 
 
 In 1863 he died in the house which he had built, and 
 at the period of his death was writing a new novel in 
 numbers, called Denis Duval. In The Cornhill^ The Ad- 
 ventures of Philip had appeared. This new enterprise 
 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 a fourth, appeared. It 
 may be seen, therefore, that he by no means held to my 
 theory, that the author should see the end of his work be- 
 fore the public 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 the neces- 
 sity of such precaution. Nevertheless, were I giving ad- 
 vice to a tiro in novel writing, I should recommend it. 
 
 With the last chapter of Denis Duval was published in 
 the magazine a set of notes on the book, taken for the 
 most part from Thackeray's own papers, and showing how 
 much collateral work he had given to the fabrication of 
 his novel. No doubt in preparing other tales, especially 
 Esmond, a very large amount of such collateral labour was 
 found necessary. lie was a man who did very much of 
 such work, delighting to deal in little historical incidents. 
 Tlicy will be found in almost everything that he did, and 
 I do not know that he was ever accused of gross mistakes. 
 But I doubt whether on that account he should be called 
 a laborious man. He could go down to AVinchelsea, when 
 writing about the little town, to see in which way the 
 streets lay, and to provide himself with what we call local 
 colouring. lie could jot down the suggestions, as they 
 
I.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 57 
 
 came to his mind, of his future story. There was an ir- 
 regularity in such work which was to his taste. His very 
 notes would be delightful to read, partaking of the nature 
 of pearls when prepared only for his own use. But he 
 could not bring himself to sit at his desk and do an allot- 
 ted task day after day. He accomplished what must be 
 considered as quite a sufficient life's work. He had about 
 twenty-five years for the purpose, 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 in his 
 early years drilled to method, never achieved it in his career. 
 He died on the day before Christmas Day, as has been 
 said above, very suddenly, in his bed, early in the morning, 
 in the fifty-third year of his life. To those who saw him 
 about in the world there seemed to be no reason why he 
 should not continue his career for the next twenty years. 
 But those who knew him were so well aware of his con- 
 stant sufferings, that, though they expected no sudden ca- 
 tastrophe, they were hardly surprised when it came. His 
 death w-as probably caused by those spasms of which he 
 had complained ten years before, in his letter to Mr. Reed. 
 On the last day but one of the year, a crowd of sorrowing 
 friends stood over his grave as he was laid to rest in Ken- 
 sal Green ; and, as quickly afterwards as it could be exe- 
 cuted, a bust to his memory was put up in Westminster 
 Abbey. It is a fine work of art, by Marochetti ; but, as a 
 likeness, is, I think, less effective than that which was mod- 
 elled, and then given to the Garrick Club, by Durham, and 
 has lately been put into marble, and now stands in the up- 
 per vestibule of the club. Neither of them, in my opinion, 
 give so accurate an idea of the man as a statuette in bronze, 
 by Boehm, of which two or three copies were made. One 
 of them is in my possession. It has been alleged, in refer* 
 
58 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 ence to this, that there is something of a caricature in the 
 Icngthiness of the figure, in the two hands thrust into the 
 trousers pockets, and in the protrusion of the chin. But 
 this feeling has originated in the general idea that any 
 face, or any figure, not made by the artist more beautiful 
 or more graceful than the original is an injustice. The 
 face must be smoother, the pose of the body must be more 
 dignified, the proportions more perfect, 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 
 before us. I have a portrait of him in crayon, by Samuel 
 Lawrence, as like, but hardly as natural. 
 
 A little before his death Thackeray told me that he had 
 then succeeded in replacing the fortune which he had lost 
 as a young man. He had, in fact, done better, for he left 
 an income of seven hundred and fifty pounds behind him. 
 
 It has been said of Thackeray that he was a cynic. 
 This has been said so generally, that the charge against 
 him has become proverbial. This, stated barely, leaves 
 one of two impressions on the mind, or perhaps the two 
 together — that this cynicism was natural to his character 
 and came out in his life, or that it is the characteristic of 
 his writings. Of the nature of his writings generally, I 
 will speak in the last chapter of this little book. As to 
 his personal character as a cynic, I must find room to 
 quote the following first stanzas of the little poem which 
 appeared to his memory in Punch, from the pen of Shir- 
 ley 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 ! 
 
I.] BIOGRAnilCAL. 59 
 
 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 c}Tiic ! By the love that clung 
 
 About him from his children, friends, and kin ; 
 
 By the sharp pain light pen and gossip tongue 
 Wrought ill him, chafing the soft heart within ! 
 
 The spirit and nature of the man have been caught here 
 with absolute truth. A public man should of course be 
 judged from liis public work. If he wrote as a cynic — a 
 point which I will not discuss here — it may be fair that 
 he who is to be known as a writer should be so called. 
 But, as a man, I protest that it would be hard to find an 
 individual farther removed from the character. Over and 
 outside his fancy, which was the gift which made him so 
 remarkable — a certain feminine softness was the most re- 
 markable trait about him. To give some immediate pleas- 
 ure was the great delight of his life — a sovereign to a 
 schoolboy, gloves to a girl, a dinner to a man, a compli- 
 ment to a woman. His charity was overflowing. His 
 generosity excessive. I heard once a story of woe from a 
 man who was the dear friend of both of us. The gentle- 
 man wanted a large sum of money instantly — something 
 under two thousand pounds — had no natural friends who 
 could provide it, but must go utterly to the wall without 
 it. Pondering over this sad condition of things just re- 
 vealed to me, 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 two thousand pounds?" 
 he said, angrily, with some expletives. I explained that 
 I had not even suggested the doing of anything — only 
 
 that we might discuss the matter. Then there came over 
 E 
 
60 THACKERAY. [chap, l 
 
 bis face a peculiar smile, and a wink in his eye, and lie 
 whispered his suggestion, as though half ashamed of his 
 meanness. " I'll go half," he said, " if anybody will do 
 the rest." And he did go half, at a day or two's notice, 
 though the gentleman was no more than simply a friend. 
 I am glad to be able to add that the money was quickly 
 repaid. I could tell various stories of the same kind, only 
 that I lack space, and that they, if simply added one to 
 the other, would lack interest. 
 
 lie was no cynic, but he was a satirist, and could now 
 and then be a satirist in conversation, hitting very hard when 
 he did hit. AVhen he was in America, he met at dinner a 
 literary gentlemen of high character, middle-aged, and most 
 dignified deportment. The gentleman was one whose char- 
 acter and acquirements stood very high — deservedly so — but 
 who, in society, had that air of wrapping his toga around 
 him, which adds, or is supposed to add, many cubits to a 
 man's height. But he had a broken nose. At dinner he 
 talked much of the tender passion, and did so in a man- 
 ner which stirred up Thackeray's feeling of the ridiculous. 
 " What has the world come to," said Thackeray, out loud 
 to the table, " when two broken-nosed old fogies like you 
 and me sit talking about love to each other !" The gen- 
 tleman was astounded, and could only sit wrapping his 
 toga in silent dismay for the rest of the evening. Thack- 
 eray then, as at other similar times, had no idea of giving 
 pain, but when he saw a foible 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 as one of the most soft-hearted of hu- 
 man beings, sweet as Charity itself, who went about the 
 world dropping pearls, doing good, and never wilfully in- 
 flicting: a wound. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 fraser's magazine and punch. 
 
 How Thackeray comraenced his connection with Fraser'^s 
 Magazine I am unable to say. We know how he liad 
 come to London with a view to a literary career, and that 
 he had at one time made an attempt to earn his bread as 
 a correspondent to a newspaper from Paris. It is proba- 
 ble that he became acquainted with the redoubtable Oliver 
 Yorke, otherwise Dr. Maginn, or some of his staff, through 
 the connection which he had thus opened with the press. 
 He was not known, or at any rate he was unrecognized, by 
 Fraser in January, 1835, in which month an amusing cat- 
 alogue was given of the writers then employed, with por- 
 traits of them all seated at a symposium. I can trace no 
 article to his pen before November, 1837, when the Yel- 
 lowplush Correspondence was commenced, though it is 
 hardly probable that he should have commenced with a 
 work of so much pretension. There had been published 
 a volume called My Book, or the Anatormj of Conduct, by 
 John Skelton, and a very absurd book no doubt it was. 
 We may presume that it contained maxims on etiquette, 
 and that it was intended to convey in print those invalua- 
 ble lessons on deportment which, as Dickens has told us, 
 were subsequently given by Mr. Turveydrop, in the acade- 
 my kept by him for that purpose. Thackeray took this 
 
62 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 as his foundation for the Fashionable Fax and Polite An- 
 nygoats, by Jeames Yellowphish, with which he commenced 
 those repeated attacks against snobbism which he delight- 
 ed to make through a considerable portion of his literary 
 life. Oliver Yorke has himself added four or five pages 
 of his own to Thackeray's lucubrations ; and with the sec- 
 ond, and some future numbers, there appeared illustrations 
 by Thackeray himself, illustrations at this time not having 
 been common with the magazine. From all this I gather 
 that the author was already held in estimation by Fra- 
 sej'^s confraternity. I remember well my own delight with 
 Yelloioplush at the time, and how I inquired who was 
 the author. It was then that I first heard Thackeray's 
 name. 
 
 The Yellowplush Papers were continued through nine 
 numbers. No further reference was made to Mr. Skelton 
 and his book beyond that given at the beginning of the 
 first number, and the satire is only shown by the attempt 
 made by Yellowplush, the footman, to give his ideas gen- 
 erally on the manners of noble life. The idea seems to be 
 that a gentleman may, in heart and in action, be as vulgar 
 as a footman. No doubt he may, but the chances are very 
 much that he won't. But the virtue of the memoir does 
 not consist in the lessons, but in the general drollery of 
 the letters. The " orthogwaphy fs inaccuwate," as a cer- 
 tain person says in the memoirs — "so inaccav\'ate" as to 
 take a positive study to " compwehend " it ; but the joke, 
 though old, is so handled as to be very amusing. Thack- 
 eray soon rushes away from his criticisms on snobbism to 
 other matters. There are the details of a card-sharping 
 enterprise, in which we cannot but feel that we recognise 
 something of the author's own experiences in the misfort- 
 unes of Mr. Dawkins ; there is the Earl of Crab's, and then 
 
n.] ERASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 63 
 
 the first of those attacts which he was tempted to make 
 on the absurdities of his brethren of letters, and the only 
 one which now has the appearance of having been ill-nat- 
 ured. His first victims were Dr. Dionysius Lardner and 
 Mr. Edward Bulwer Lytton, as he was then. We can sur- 
 render the doctor to the whip of the satirist; and for 
 "Sawedwado;eoro:eearllittnbulwio;," as the novelist is made 
 to call himself, we can well believe that he must himself 
 have enjoyed the Yellowplush Memoirs if he ever re-read 
 them in after-life. The speech in which he is made to 
 dissuade the footman from joining the world of letters is 
 so good that I will venture to insert it : " Bullwig was vio- 
 lently affected; a tear stood in his glistening i. 'Yellow- 
 plush,' says he, seizing my hand, 'you are right. Quit 
 not your present occupation; black boots, clean knives, 
 wear plush all your life, but don'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, and 
 perched on every eminence in its turn. I have gazed with 
 eagle eyes on the sun of philosophy, and fathomed the 
 mysterious depths of the human mind. All languages are 
 familiar to me, all thoughts are known to me, all men un- 
 derstood by me. I have gathered wisdom from the hon- 
 eyed lips of 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 the 
 Poet-Philosopher. But the knowledge is only emptiness ; 
 the initiation is but 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 the chandelier, 
 *the curse of Pwomethus descen'ds upon his wace. Wath 
 and punishment pursue them from geuewation to genewa- 
 
64 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 tion ! Wo to genius, the heaven - scaler, the fire -stealer! 
 Wo and thrice-bitter desolation ! Earth is the woch on 
 which Zeus, wemorseless, stwetches his withing wictim ; — 
 men, the vultures that feed and fatten on him. Ai, ai ! it 
 is agony eternal — gwoaning and solitawy despair ! And 
 you, Yellowplush, would penetwate these mystewies ; you 
 would waise the awful veil, and stand in the twemendous 
 Pvvesence. Beware, as you value your peace, beware ! 
 AVithdwaw, wash Neophyte ! For heaven's sake ! for 
 heaven's sake !' — Here he looked round with agony ; — ' give 
 me a glass of bwandy-and-water, for this clawet is begin- 
 ning to disagwee with me.' " It was thus that Thackeray 
 began that vein of satire on his contemporaries of 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 author satirised. 
 
 The next tale of any length from Thackeray's pen, in 
 the magazine, was that called Catherine^ which is the 
 story taken from the life of a wretched woman called 
 Catherine Hayes. It is certainly not pleasant reading, 
 and was not written with a pleasant purpose. It assumes 
 to have come from the pen of Ikey Solomon, of Ilorse- 
 monger Lane, and its object is to show how disgusting 
 would be the records of thieves, cheats, and murderers if 
 their doings and language were described according to 
 their nature, instead of being handled in such a way as 
 to create sympathy, and therefore imitation. Bulwer's 
 Eugene Ai-am, Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Shcppard, and 
 Dickens' Nancy were in his mind, and it was thus that 
 he preached his sermon against the selection of such 
 heroes and heroines by the novelists of the day. " Be it 
 granted," he says, in his epilogue, " Solomon is dull ; but 
 don't attack his morality. He humbly submits that, in 
 
u.] FRASEK'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 66 
 
 his poem, no man shall mistake virtue for vice, no man 
 shall allow a single sentiment of pity or admiration to 
 enter his bosom for any character in the poem, it being 
 from beginning to end a scene of unmixed rascality, per- 
 formed by persons who never deviate into good feeling." 
 The intention is intelligible enough, but such a story 
 neither could have been written nor read — certainly not 
 written by Thackeray, nor read by the ordinary reader of 
 a first-class mao-azine — had he not been enabled to adorn 
 it by infinite wit. Captain Brock, though a brave man, is 
 certainly not described as an interesting or gallant soldier ; 
 but he is possessed of great resources. Captain Macshane, 
 too, is a thorough blackguard ; but he is one with a dash 
 of loyalty about him, so that the reader can almost sympa- 
 thise with him, and is tempted to say that Ikey Solomon 
 has not quite kept his promise. 
 
 Catherine appeared in 1839 and 1840. In the latter 
 of those years The Shabby Genteel story also came out. 
 Then, in 1841, there followed The History of Samuel 
 Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond, illustrated 
 6y SamueFs cousin, Michael Angelo. But though so an- 
 nounced in Fraser, there were no illustrations, and those 
 attached to the story in later editions are not taken from 
 sketches by Thackeray. This, as far as I know, was the 
 first use of the name Titmarsh, and seems to indicate 
 some intention on the part of the author of creating a 
 hoax as to two personages — one the writer and the other 
 the illustrator. If it were so, he must soon have dropped 
 the idea. In the last paragraph he has shaken off his 
 cousin Michael. The main object of the story is to ex- 
 pose the villany of bubble companies, and the danger they 
 run who venture to have dealings with city matters which 
 they do not understand. I cannot but think that he 
 
 4 
 
66 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 altered his mind and changed his purpose while he was 
 writing it, actuated probably by that editorial monition 
 as to its length. 
 
 In 1842 were commenced The Confessions of George 
 Fitz-Boodle, which, were continued into 1843. I do not 
 think that they attracted much attention, or that they 
 have become peculiarly popular since. They are supposed 
 to contain tlie reminiscences of a younger son, who moans 
 over his poverty, complains of womankind generally, 
 laughs at the world all round, and intersperses his pages 
 with one or two excellent ballads. I quote one, written 
 for the sake of affording a parody, with the parody along 
 with it, because the two together give so strong an ex- 
 ample of the condition of Thackeray's mind in regard to 
 literary products. The " humbug " of everything, the 
 pretence, the falseness of affected sentiment, the remote- 
 ness of poetical pathos from the true condition of the 
 average minds of men and women, struck him so strongly, 
 that he sometimes allowed himself almost to feel — or at 
 any rate, to say — that poetical expression, as being above 
 nature, must be unnatural. He had declared to himself 
 that all humbug w^as odious, and should be by him laughed 
 down to the extent of his capacity. His Yellowplush, 
 his Catherine Hayes, his Fitz-Boodle, his Barry Lyndon, 
 and Becky Sharp, with many others of this kind, were 
 all invented and treated for this purpose and after this 
 fashion. I shall have to say more on the same subject 
 when I come to The Snob Paj^ers. In this instance he 
 wrote a very pretty ballad. The Willow Tree — so good 
 that if left by itself it would create no idea of absurdity 
 or extravagant pathos in the mind of the ordinary reader — 
 simply that ho might render his own work absurd by his 
 own parody. 
 
CI.J 
 
 ERASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 
 
 6*7 
 
 THE Wn.LOW-TREE. 
 No. I. 
 
 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 ! 
 
 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 ! 
 
 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 ! 
 
 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 ! , 
 
 THE WILLOW-TREE. 
 No. II. 
 
 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." 
 
 Vainly the constable 
 Shouted and called her. 
 
 Vainly the fisherman 
 Beat the green alder. 
 
 Vainly he threw the net. 
 Never it hauled her ! 
 
 Mother beside the fire 
 
 Sat, her night-cap in ; 
 Father in easy-chair, 
 
 Gloomily napping ; 
 When at the window-sill 
 
 Came a light tapping. 
 
 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 !" 
 
68 
 
 THACKERAY. 
 
 fCHAP. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 ! 
 
 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 ! 
 
 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." 
 
 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. 
 
 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 narra- 
 tives beyond his own Confessions. A series of stories was 
 
n.] FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 69 
 
 carried on by bim in Fraser^ called Men's Wives, contain- 
 ing 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. Vcnables reminded us 
 in the last chapter, was near Smithfield, in London — the 
 school which afterwards became Grey Friars; and the 
 fight between Biggs and Berry is the record of one which 
 took place in the flesh when Thackeray was at the Charter 
 House. But Mr. Fitz- Boodle's name was afterwards at- 
 tached to a greater work than these, to a work so great 
 that subsequent editors have thought him to be unworthy 
 of the honour. In the January number, 1844, of Fraser^s 
 Magazine, are commenced the Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, 
 and the authorship is attributed to Mr. B'itz-Boodle. The 
 title given in the magazine was The Luck of Barry Lyn- 
 don : 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, 
 so brought out by Thackeray, after they had appeared in 
 Fraser. Why Mr. George Fitz-Boodle should have been 
 robbed of so great an honour I do not know. 
 
 In imagination, language, construction, and general lit- 
 erar}' capacity, Thackeray never did anything more re- 
 markable than Barry Lyndon. I have quoted the words 
 which he put into the mouth of Ikey Solomon, declaring 
 that in the story which he has there told he has created 
 nothing but disgust for the wicked characters he has pro- 
 duced, and that he has " used his humble endeavours to 
 cause the public also to hate them." Here, in Barry Lyn- 
 don, he has, probably unconsciously, acted in direct oppo- 
 sition to his own principles. Barry Lyndon is as great a 
 scoundrel as the mind of man ever conceived. He is one 
 
70 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 who might have taken as his motto Satan's words : " Evil, 
 be thou my good." And yet his story is so written that 
 it is almost impossible not to entertain something of a 
 friendlv feelino- for him. He tells his own adventures as a 
 card - sharper, bully, and liar ; as a heartless wretch, who 
 had neither love nor gratitude in his composition ; who 
 had no sense even of loyalty ; who regarded gambling as 
 the highest occupation to which a man could devote him- 
 self, and fraud as always justified by success ; a man pos- 
 sessed by all meannesses except cowardice. And the reader 
 is so carried away by his frankness and energy as almost 
 to rejoice when he succeeds, and to grieve with him when 
 he is brought to the ground. 
 
 The man is perfectly satisfied as to the reasonableness 
 — I might almost say, as to the rectitude — of his own con- 
 duct throughout. He is one of a decayed Irish family, 
 that could boast of good blood. His father had obtained 
 possession of the remnants of the property by turning 
 Protestant, thus ousting the elder brother, who later on be- 
 comes his nephew's confederate in gambling. The elder 
 brother is true to the old religion, and as the law stood in 
 the last century, the younger brother, by changing his re- 
 ligion, was able to turn him out. Barry, when a boy, 
 learns the slang and the gait of the debauched gentlemen 
 of the day. He is specially proud of being a gentleman 
 by birth and manners. He had been kidnapped, and made 
 to serve as a common soldier, but boasts that he was at 
 once fit for the occasion when enabled to show as a court 
 gentleman. " I came to it at once," he says, " and as if I 
 had never done anything else all my life. I had a gentle- 
 man to wait upon me, a French frlseur to dress my hair of 
 a morning. I knew the taste of chocolate as by intuition 
 almost, and could distinguish between the right Spanish 
 
n.] FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 71 
 
 and the French before I bad been a week in my new posi- 
 tion. I bad rings on all my fingers and watches in both 
 my fobs — canes, trinkets, and snuffboxes of all sorts. I 
 had the finest natural taste for lace and china of any man 
 I ever knew." 
 
 To dress well, to wear a sword with a grace, to carry 
 away his plunder with affected indifference, and to appear 
 to be equally easy when he loses his last ducat, to be 
 agreeable to women, and to look like a gentleman — these 
 are his accomplishments. In one place he rises to the 
 height of a grand professor in the art of gambling, and 
 ^ives his lessons with almost a noble air. " Play grandly, 
 honourably. Be not, of course, cast down at losing ; but 
 above all, be not eager at winning, as mean souls are." 
 And he boasts of his accomplishments with so much elo- 
 quence as to make the reader sure that he believes in 
 them. He is quite pathetic over himself, and can describe 
 with heartrending words the evils that befall him when 
 others use against him successfully any of the arts which 
 he practises himself. 
 
 The marvel of the book is not so much that the hero 
 should evidently think well of himself, as that the author 
 should so tell his story as to appear to be altogether on 
 the hero's side. In Catherine, the horrors described are 
 most truly disgusting — so much that the story, though 
 very clever, is not pleasant reading. The Memoirs of 
 Barry Lyndon are very pleasant to read. There is noth- 
 ing to shock or disgust. The style of narrative is exactly 
 that which might be used as to the exploits of a man 
 whom the author intended to represent as deserving of 
 sympathy and praise — so that the reader is almost brought 
 to sympathise. But I should be doing an injustice to 
 Thackeray if I were to leave an impression that he had 
 
72 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 taught lessons tending to evil practice, such as he supposed 
 to have been left by Jack Shejppard or Eugene Aram. 
 No one will be tempted to undertake the life of a chevalier 
 dHndustrie by reading the book, or be made to think that 
 cheating at cards is either an agreeable or a profitable pro- 
 fession. The following is excellent as a tirade in favour 
 of gambling, coming from Redmond de Balibari, as he 
 came to be called during his adventures abroad, but it will 
 hardly persuade anyone to be a gambler : 
 
 "We always played on parole with anybody — any per- 
 son, that is, of honour and noble lineage. We never press- 
 ed for our winnings, or declined to receive promissory 
 notes in lieu of gold. But woe to the man who did not 
 pay when the note became due ! Redmond de Balibari 
 was sure to wait upon 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, and our 
 character for honour stood unimpeached. In latter times, 
 a vulgar national prejudice has chosen to cast a slur upon 
 the character of men of honour engaged in the profession 
 of play ; but I speak of the good old days of Europe, 
 before the cowardice of the French aristocracy (in the 
 shameful revolution, which served them right) brought 
 discredit upon our order. They cry fie now upon men 
 engaged in play ; but I should like to know how much 
 more honourable their modes of livelihood are than ours. 
 The broker of the Exchange, who bulls and bears, and 
 buys and sells, and dabbles with lying loans, and trader 
 upon state-secrets — what is he but a gamester? The mer^ 
 chant who deals in teas and tallow, is he any better? Ilis 
 bales of dirty indigo are his dice, his cards come up every 
 year instead of every ten minutes, and the sea is his green- 
 table. You call the profession of the law an honourable 
 
11.] FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. ^3 
 
 one, where a man will lie for any bidder — lie down pover- 
 ty for the sake of a fee from wealth ; lie down right be- 
 cause wrong is in his brief. You call a doctor an honour- 
 able man — a swindling quack who does not believe in the 
 nostrums which he prescribes, and takes your guinea for 
 whispering in your ear that it is a fine morning. And 
 yet, forsooth, a gallant man, who sits him down before the 
 baize and challenges all comers, his money against theirs, 
 his fortune against theirs, is proscribed by your modern 
 moral world! It is a conspiracy of the middle -class 
 against gentlemen. It is only the shopkeeper cant which 
 is to go down nowadays. I say that play was an institu- 
 tion of chivalry. It has been wrecked along with other 
 privileges of men of birth. When Seingalt engaged a 
 man for six-and-thirty hours without leaving the table, do 
 you think he showed no 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 the cards 
 and the bank against some terrible player, who was match- 
 ing some thousands out of his millions against our all, 
 which was there on the baize ! When we enofaofed that 
 daring Alexis Kossloffsky, and won seven thousand louis 
 on a single coup, had we lost we should have been beggars 
 the next day ; when he lost, he was only a village and a 
 few hundred serfs in pawn the worse. When at Toeplitz 
 the Duke of Courland brought foiirteen lacqueys, each 
 with four bags of florins, and challenged our bank to play 
 against the sealed bags, what did we ask ? * Sir,' said we, 
 ' we have but eighty thousand florins in bank, or two hun- 
 dred thousand at three months. If your highness's bags 
 do not contain more than eighty thousand 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 
 
 4* 
 
V4 THACKERAY. fcHAP. 
 
 tliree ducats, we won seventeen thousand florins of him. 
 Is this not something like boldness? Docs this profession 
 not require skill, and perseverance, and bravery? Four 
 crowned heads looked on at the game, and an imperial 
 princess, when I turned up the ace of hearts and made 
 Paroli, burst into tears. No man on the European Conti- 
 nent held a higher position than Redmond Barry then ; 
 and when the Duke of Courland lost, he was pleased to 
 say that we had won nobly. And so we had, and spent 
 nobly what we won." This is very grand, and is put as 
 an eloquent man would put it who really wished to defend 
 gambling. 
 
 The rascal, of course, comes to a miserable end, but the 
 tone of the narrative is continued throughout. He is 
 brought to live at last with his old mother in the Fleet 
 prison, on a wretched annuity of fifty pounds per annum, 
 which she has saved out of the general wreck, and there 
 he dies of delirium tremens. For an assumed tone of con- 
 tinued irony, maintained through the long memoir of a 
 life, never becoming tedious, never unnatural, astounding 
 us rather by its naturalness, I know nothing equal to Bar- 
 ry Lyndon. 
 
 As one reads, one sometimes is struck by a conviction 
 that this or the other writer has thorouglily liked the work 
 on which he is engaged. There is a gusto about his 
 passages, a liveliness* in the language, a spring in the mo- 
 tion of the words, an eagerness of description, a lilt, if I 
 may so call it, in the progress of the narrative, which 
 makes the reader feel that the author has himself greatly 
 enjoyed what he has written. He has evidently gone on 
 with his work without any sense of weariness or doubt ; 
 and the words have come readily to him. So it has been 
 with Barry Lyndon. "My mind was filled full with those 
 
n.] FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 75 
 
 blackguards," Thackeray once said to a friend. It is easy 
 enough to see that it was so. In the passage which I 
 have above quoted, his mind was running over with the 
 idea that a rascal might be so far gone in rascality as to 
 be in love with his own trade. 
 
 This was the last of Thackeray's long stories in Fraser. 
 I have given by no means a complete catalogue of his 
 contributions to the magazine, but I have perhaps men- 
 tioned those which are best known. There were many 
 short pieces which have now been collected in his works, 
 such as Little Travels and Roadside Sketches^ and the Car- 
 men Lilliense, in which the poet is supposed to be detain- 
 ed at Lille by want of money. There are others which I 
 think are not to be found in the collected works, such as a 
 £ox of Novels hy Titmarsh, and Titmarsh in the Picture 
 Galleries. After the name of Titmarsh had been once as- 
 sumed it was generally used in the papers which he sent 
 to Fraser. 
 
 Thackeray's connection vs\i\\ Punch began in 1843, and, 
 as far as I can learn. Miss Tlckletobif s Lectures on English 
 History was his first contribution. They, however, have 
 not been found worthy of a place in the collected edition. 
 His short pieces during a long period of his life were so 
 numerous that to have brouo-ht them all tog-ether would 
 have weighted his more important works with too great 
 an amount of extraneous matter. The same lady, Miss 
 Tickletoby, gave a series of lectures. There was The His- 
 tory of the next French Revolution^ and The Wanderings 
 of our Fat Contributor — the first of which is, and the 
 latter is not, perpetuated in his works. Our old friend 
 Jeames Yellowplush, or De la Pluche — for we cannot for 
 a moment doubt that he is the same Jeames — is very pro- 
 lific, and as excellent in his orthography, his sense, and 
 
76 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 satire, as ever. These papers began witli The Lucky Spec- 
 ulator. He lives in The Albany ; he hires a brougham ; 
 and is devoted to Miss Emily Flimsey, the daughter of Sir 
 George, "who had been his master — to the great injury of 
 poor Maryanne, the fellow-servant who had loved him in 
 his kitchen days. Then there follows that wonderful bal- 
 lad, Jeames of Baclcley Square. Upon this he writes an 
 angry letter to Punch, dated from his chambers in The 
 Albany : " Has a reglar suscriber to your amusing paper, 
 I beg leaf to state that 1 should never have done so had I 
 supposed that it was your 'abbit to igsposc the mistaries 
 of privit life, and to hinger the delligit feelings of umble 
 individyouls like myself." He writes in his own defence, 
 both as to Maryanne and to the share-dealing by which he 
 had made his fortune; and he ends with declaring his 
 right to the position which he holds. "You are corrict 
 in stating that I am of hancient Normin fam'ly. This is 
 more than Peal can say, to whomb I applied for a bar- 
 netcy; but the primmier being of low igstraction, natrally 
 stikles for his border." And the letter is signed " Fitz- 
 james De la Pluche." Then follows his diary, beginning 
 with a description of the way in which he rushed into 
 Punches office, declaring his misfortunes, when losses had 
 come upon him. " I wish to be paid for my contribew- 
 tions to your paper. Suckmstances is altered with me." 
 Whereupon he gets a cheque upon Messrs. Pump and Aid- 
 gate, and has himself carried away to new speculations. 
 lie leaves his diary behind him, and Punch surreptitiously 
 publishes it. There is much in the diary \Thich comes 
 from Thackeray's very heart. Who docs not remember 
 his indignation against Lord Bareacres ? "I gave the old 
 humbug a few shares out of my own pocket. 'There, old 
 Pride,' says I, ' I like to sec you down on your knees to a 
 
n.] FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 11 
 
 footman. There, old Pomposity ! Take fifty pounds. I 
 like to see you come cringing and begging for it !' AVhen- 
 ever I see him in a very public place, I take my change 
 for my money. I digg him in the ribbs, or clap his pad- 
 ded old shouldei's. I call him ' Bareacres, my old brick,' 
 and I see him wince. It does my 'art good." It docs 
 Thackeray's heart good to pour himself out in indignation 
 against some imaginary Bareacres. He blows off his 
 steam with such an eagerness that he forgets for a time, or 
 nearly forgets, his cacography. Then there are " Jeames 
 on Time Bargings," "Jeames on the Guage Question," 
 " Mr. Jearaes ao;ain." Of all our author's heroes Jeames 
 is perhaps the most amusing. There is not much in that 
 joke of bad spelling, and we should have been inclined to 
 say beforehand, that Mrs. Malaprop had done it so well 
 and so sufficiently, that no repetition of it would be re- 
 ceived with great favour. 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 PuncKs Prize Novelists, in which Thack- 
 eray imitates the language and plots of Bulwer, Disraeli, 
 Charles Lever, G. P. R. James, Mrs. Gore, and Cooper, the 
 American. They are all excellent ; perhaps Codlingsby is 
 the best. Mendoza, when he is fighting with the barge- 
 man, or drinking with Codlingsby, or receiving Louis 
 Philippe in his rooms, seems to have come direct from 
 the pen of our Premier. Phil Fogerty's jump, and the 
 younger and the elder horsemen, as they come riding into 
 the story, one in his armour and the other with his feathers, 
 have the very savour and tone of Lever and James ; but 
 then the savour and the tone are not so piquant. I know 
 nothing in the way of imitation to equal Codlingsby, if it 
 
IS THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 be not The Tale of Dniry Lane, by W. S. in the Rejected 
 Addresses, of which it is said that Walter Scott declared 
 that he must have written it himself. The scene between 
 Dr. Franklin, Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and Tatua, 
 the chief of the Nose -rings, as told in The Stars and 
 Stripes, is perfect in its way, but it fails as being a carica- 
 ture of Cooper. The caricaturist has been carried away 
 beyond and above his model, by his own sense of fun. 
 
 Of the ballads which appeared in Punch I will speak 
 elsewhere, as I must give a separate short chapter to our 
 author's power of versification ; but I must say a word of 
 The Snob Papers, which were at the time the most popu- 
 lar and the best known of all Thackeray's contributions to 
 Pu7ich. I think that perhaps they were more charming, 
 more piquant, more apparently true, when they came out 
 one after another in the periodical, than they are now as 
 collected too-ether. I think that one at a time would be 
 better than many. And I think that the first half in the 
 long list of snobs would have been more manifestly snobs 
 to us than 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 himself that the meaning of it all 
 is that Adam's family is from first to last a family of 
 snobs. " First," says Thackeray, in preface, " the world 
 was made ; then, as a matter of course, snobs ; they exist- 
 ed for years and years, and were no more known than 
 America. But presently — ingens patebat tellus — the peo- 
 ple became darkly aware that there was such a race. Not 
 above five-and-twenty years since, a name, an expressive 
 monosyllable, arose to designate that case. That name 
 has spread over England like railroads subsequently ; snobs 
 are known and recognised throughout an empire on which 
 I am given to understand the sun never sets. Punch ap- 
 
II.] FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 79 
 
 pears 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 and abiding thankfulness — an eye for a snob. If 
 the truthful is the beautiful, it is beautiful to study even 
 the snobbish — to track snobs through history as certain 
 little dogs in Hampshire hunt out truffles ; to sink shafts 
 in society, and come upon rich veins of snob-ore. Snob- 
 bishness is like Death, in a quotation from Horace, which 
 I hope you never heard, ' beating with equal foot at poor 
 men's doors, and kicking at the gates of emperors.' It is 
 a great mistake to judge of snobs lightly, and think they 
 exist among the lower classes merely. An immense per- 
 centage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of 
 this mortal life. You must not judge hastily or vulgarly 
 of snobs ; to do so shows that you are yourself a snob. I 
 myself have been taken for one." 
 
 The state of Thackeray's mind when he commenced 
 his delineations of snobbery is here accurately depicted. 
 Written, as these papers were, for Punch, and written, as 
 they were, by Thackeray, it was a necessity that every 
 idea put forth should be given as a joke, and that the 
 satire on society in general should be wrapped up in bur- 
 lesque absurdity. But not the less eager and serious was 
 his intention. When he tells us, at the end of the first 
 chapter, of a certain Colonel Snobley, whom he met at 
 " Bagnigge Wells," as he says, and with whom he was so 
 disgusted that he determined to drive the man out of the 
 house, we are well aware that he had met an offensive 
 military gentleman — probably at Tunbridge. Gentlemen 
 thus offensive, even though tamely offensive, were peculiar- 
 ly offensive to him. AVe presume, by what follows, that 
 this gentleman, ignorantly — for himself most unfortunate- 
 
80 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 ]y — spoke of Publicola. Thacteray was disgusted — dis- 
 gusted that such a name should be lugged into ordinary 
 conversation at all, and then that a man should talk about 
 a name with which he was so little acquainted as not to 
 know how to pronounce it. The man was therefore a 
 snob, and ought to be put down ; in all which I think that 
 Thackeray was unnecessarily hard on the man, and gave 
 him too much importance. 
 
 So it was with him in his whole intercourse with snobs 
 — as he calls them. He saw something that was distaste- 
 ful, and a man instantly became a snob in his estimation. 
 " But you can draw," a man once said to him, there hav- 
 ing been some discussion on the subject of Thackeray's 
 art powers. The man meant no doubt to be civil, but 
 meant also to imply that for the purpose needed the 
 drawing was good enough — a matter on which he was 
 competent to form an opinion. Thackeray instantly put 
 the man down as a snob for flattering him. The little 
 courtesies of the world and the little discourtesies became 
 snobbish to him. A man could not wear his hat, or carry 
 his umbrella, or mount his horse, without falling into some 
 error of snobbism before his hypercritical eyes. St. Mi- 
 chael would have carried his armour amiss, and St. Cecilia 
 have been snobbish as she twanged her harp. 
 
 I fancy that a policeman considers that every man in 
 the street would be properly " run in," if only all the truth 
 about the man had been known. The tinker thinks that 
 every pot is unsound. The cobbler doubts the stability 
 of every shoe. So at last it grew to be the case with 
 Thackeray. There was more hope that the city should 
 be saved because of its ten just men, than for society, if 
 society were to depend on ten who were not snobs. All 
 this arose from the keenness of his vision into that which 
 
11.] FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUXCn. 81 
 
 was really mean. But that keenness became so aggravated 
 by the intenseness of his search that the slightest speck 
 of dust became to his eyes as a foul stain. Publicola, as 
 we saw, damned one poor man to a wretched 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 do2:s are trained to find triifiles. But we can im- 
 agine that a dog, very energetic at producing truffles, and 
 not finding them as plentiful as his heart desired, might 
 occasionally produce roots which w^ere not genuine — might 
 be carried on in his energies till to his senses every fungus- 
 root became a truffle. I think that there has been some- 
 thing of this with our author's snob-hunting, and that his 
 zeal was at last greater than his discrimination. 
 
 The nature of the task which came upon him made this 
 fault almost unavoidable. When a hit is made, say with 
 a piece at a theatre, or with a set of illustrations, or with 
 a series of papers on this or the other subject — when 
 something of this kind has suited the taste of the mo- 
 ment, and gratified the public, there is a natural inclina- 
 tion on the part of those w^ho are interested to continue 
 that which has been found to be good. It pays and it 
 pleases, and it seems to suit everybody. Then it is con- 
 tinued usque ad nauseam. We see it in everything. When 
 the king said he liked partridges, partridges were served 
 to him every day. The world was pleased with certain 
 ridiculous portraits of its big men. The big 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 for subjects wherewith to delight its readers. In 
 fact. The Snob Papers were too good to be brought to an 
 end, and therefore there were forty-five of them. A dozen 
 
82 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 would have been better. As he himself says in his last 
 paper, " for a mortal year we have been together flattering 
 and abusing the human race." It was exactly that. Of 
 course we know — everybody always knows — that a bad 
 specimen of his order may be found in every division of 
 society. There may be a snob king, a snob parson, a 
 snob member of parliament, a snob grocer, tailor, gold- 
 smith, and the like. But that is not what has been meant. 
 We did not want a special satirist to tell us what we all 
 knew before. Had snobbishness been divided for us into 
 its various attributes and characteristics, rather than at- 
 tributed to various classes, the end sought — the exposure, 
 namely, of the evil — would have been better attained. 
 The snobbishness of flattery, of falsehood, of cowardice, 
 lying, time-serving, money-worship, would have been per- 
 haps attacked to a better purpose than that of kings, 
 priests, soldiers, merchants, or men of letters. The assault 
 as made by Thackeray seems to have been made on the 
 profession generally. 
 
 The paper on clerical snobs is intended to be essentially 
 generous, and is ended by an allusion to certain old cleri- 
 cal friends which has a sweet tone of tenderness in it. 
 " How should he who knows you, not respect you or your 
 calling ? May this pen never write a pennyworth again if 
 it ever casts ridicule upon either." But in the mean time 
 he has thrown his stone at the covetousness of bishops, 
 because of certain Irish prelates who died rich many years 
 before he wrote. The insinuation is that bishops gener- 
 ally take more of the loaves and fishes than they ought, 
 whereas the fact is that bishops' incomes arc generally so 
 insufficient for the requirements demanded of them, that 
 a feeling prevails that a clergyman to be fit for a bishop- 
 ric should have a private income. He attacks the snob- 
 
II.] FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 83 
 
 bislmess of the universities, showinq; us how one class of 
 young men consists of fellow-commoners, who wear lace 
 and drink wine with their meals, and another class con- 
 sists of sizars, or servitors, who wear badges, as being poor, 
 and are never allowed to take their food with their fellow- 
 students. That arrangements fit for past times are not fit 
 for these is true enough. Consequently, they should grad- 
 ually be changed, and from day to day are changed. But 
 there is no snobbishness in this. Was the fellow-com- 
 moner a snob when he acted in accordance with the cus- 
 tom of his rank and standing? or the sizar who accepted 
 aid in achieving that education which he could not have 
 got without it? or the tutor of the college, who carried 
 out the rules entrusted to him ? There are two military 
 snobs, Rag and Famish. One is a swindler, and the other 
 a debauched young idiot. No doubt they are both snobs, 
 and one has been, while the other is, an officer. But there 
 is, I think, not an unfairness so much as an absence of 
 intuition, in attaching to soldiers especially two vices to 
 which all classes are open. Rag was a gambling snob, and 
 Famish a drunken snob ; but they were not specially mill-* 
 tary snobs. There is a chapter devoted to dinner-giving 
 snobs, in which I think the doctrine laid down will not 
 hold water, and therefore that the snobbism imputed is 
 not proved. " Your usual style of meal," says the satirist 
 — " that is plenteous, comfortable, and in its perfection 
 — should be that to which you welcome your friends." 
 Then there is something said about the "Brummagem 
 plate pomp," and we are told that it is right that dukes 
 should give grand dinners, but that we — of the middle 
 class — should entertain our friends with the simplicity 
 which is customary with us. In all this there is, I think, 
 a mistake. The duke gives a grand dinner because ho 
 
84 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 thinks his friends will like it; sitting down when alone 
 with the duchess, we may suppose, with a retinue and 
 grandeur less than that which is arrayed for gala occa- 
 sions. So is it with Mr. Jones, who is no snob because he 
 provides a costly dinner — if he can afford it. He does it 
 because he thinks his friends will like it. It may be that 
 the grand dinner is a bore — and that the leg of mutton, 
 with plenty of gravy and potatoes all hot, would be nicer. 
 I generally prefer the leg of mutton myself. But I do 
 not think that snobbery is involved in the other. A man, 
 no doubt, may be a snob in giving a dinner. I am not a 
 snob because for 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 a snob. 
 
 In that matter of association with our betters — yve will 
 for the moment presume that gentlemen and ladies with 
 titles or great wealth are our betters — great and delicate 
 questions arise as to what is snobbery and what is not, in 
 speaking of which Thackeray becomes very indignant, and 
 explains the intensity of his feelings as thoroughly by a 
 charming little picture as by his words. It is a picture of 
 Queen Elizabeth as she is about to trample with disdain 
 on the coat which that snob Raleigh is throwing for her 
 use on the mud before her. This is intended to typify 
 the low parasite nature of the Englishman which has 
 been described in the previous page or two. "And of 
 these calm moralists " — it matters not for our present pur- 
 pose who were the moralists in question—-" is there one, I 
 wonder, whose heart would not throb with pleasure if he 
 could be seen walking arm-in-arm with a couple of dukes 
 down Pall Mall ? No ; it is impossible, in our condition 
 of society, not to be sometimes a snob." And again; 
 " How should it be otherwise in a country where lord- 
 
n.] FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 85 
 
 olatry is part of our creed, and where our children are 
 brought up to respect the 'Peerage' as the Englishman's 
 second Bible?" Then follows the wonderfully graphic 
 picture of Queen Elizabeth and Raleigh. 
 
 In all this Thackeray has been carried away from the 
 truth by his hatred for a certain meanness of which there 
 are no doubt examples enough. As for Raleigh, I think 
 we have always sympathised with the young man, instead 
 of despising him, because he felt on the impulse of the 
 moment that nothino- was too jjood for the woman and 
 the queen combined. The idea of getting something in 
 return for his coat could hardly have come so quick to 
 him as that impulse in favour of royalty and womanhood. 
 If one of us to-day should see the queen passing, would he 
 not raise his hat, and assume, unconsciously, something of 
 an altered demeanour because of his reverence for majesty? 
 In doing so he would have no mean desire of getting any- 
 thing. The throne and its occupant are to him honourable, 
 and he honours them. There is surely no greater mistake 
 than to suppose that reverence is snobbishness. I meet a 
 great man in the street, and some chance having brought 
 me to his knowledge, he stops and says a word to me. 
 Am I a snob because I feel myself to be graced by his no- 
 tice? Surely not. And if his acquaintance goes further 
 and he asks me to dinner, am I not entitled so far to think 
 well of myself because I have been found worthy of his 
 society ? 
 
 They who have raised themselves in the world, and 
 they, too, whose position has enabled them to receive all 
 that estimation can give, all that society can furnish, all 
 that intercourse with the great can give, are more likely to 
 be pleasant companions than they who have been less for- 
 tunate. That picture of two companion dukes in Pall 
 
86 THACKERAY. [chae 
 
 Mall is too gorgeous for human eye to endure. A man 
 would be scorched to cinders by so much light, as he 
 would be crushed by a sack of sovereigns even though he 
 might be allowed to have them if he could carry them 
 away. But there can be no doubt that a peer taken at 
 random as a companion would be preferable to a clerk 
 from a counting-house — taken at random. The clerk 
 might turn out a scholar on your hands, and the peer no 
 better than a poor spendthrift; but the chances are the 
 other way. 
 
 A tuft-hunter is a snob, a parasite is a snob, the man 
 who allows the manhood within him to be awed by a cor- 
 onet is a snob. The man who worships mere wealth is a 
 snob. But so also is he who, in fear lest he should be 
 called a snob, is afraid to seek the acquaintance — or if it 
 come to speak of the acquaintance — of those whose ac- 
 quaintance is manifestly desirable. In all this I feel that 
 Thackeray was carried beyond the truth by his intense de- 
 sire to put down what is mean. 
 
 It is in truth well for us all to know what constitutes 
 snobbism, and I think that Thackeray, had he not been 
 driven to dilution and dilatation, could have told us. If 
 you will keep your hands from picking and stealing, and 
 your tongue from evil speaking, lying, and slandering, you 
 will not be a snob. The lesson seems to be simple, and 
 perhaps a little trite, but if you look into it, it will be 
 found to contain nearly all that is necessary. 
 
 But the excellence of each individual picture as it is 
 drawn is not the less striking because there may be found 
 some fault with the series as a whole. What can excel 
 the telling of the story of Captain Shindy at his club — 
 which is, I must own, as true as it is graphic ? Captain 
 Shindy is a real snob. " ' Look at it, sir ; is it cooked ? 
 
ii.j FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 87 
 
 Smell it, sir. Is it meat fit for a gentleman V he roars out 
 to the steward, who stands trembling before him, and who 
 in vain tells him that the Bishop of Bullocksmithy has 
 jnst had three from the same loin." The telling as re- 
 gards Captain Shindy is excellent, but the sidelong at- 
 tack upon the episcopate is cruel. "All the waiters in the 
 club are huddled round the captain's mutton-chop. He 
 roars out the most horrible curses at John for not bring- 
 ing the pickles. He utters the most dreadful oaths be- 
 cause Thomas has not arrived with the Harvey sauce. 
 Peter comes tumbling with the water -jug over Jeames, 
 who is bringing the ' glittering canisters with bread.' 
 ******* 
 
 " Poor Mrs. Shindy and the children are, meanwhile, in 
 dingy lodgings somewhere, waited upon by a charity girl 
 in pattens." 
 
 The visit to Castle Carabas, and the housekeeper's de- 
 scription of the wonders of the family mansion, is as good. 
 " * The Side Entrance and 'All,' says the housekeeper. 
 'The halligator hover the mantelpiece was brought home 
 by Hadmiral St. Michaels, when a capting with Lord Han- 
 son. The harms on the cheers is the harms of the Cara- 
 bas family. The great 'all is seventy feet in lenth, fifty- 
 six in breath, and thirty-eight feet 'igh. The carvings of 
 the chimlies, representing the buth of Venus and 'Ercules 
 and 'Eyelash, is by Van Chislum, the most famous sculpt- 
 ure of his hage and country. The ceiling, by Calimanco, 
 represents Painting, Harchitecture, and Music — the naked 
 female figure with the barrel-organ — introducing George, 
 first Lord Carabas, to the Temple of the Muses. The win- 
 der ornaments is by Yanderputty. The floor is Patago- 
 nian marble ; and the chandelier in the centre was pre- 
 sented to Lionel, second marquis, by Lewy the Sixteenth, 
 
88 THACKERAY. [chap. ii. 
 
 whose 'ead was cut hoff in the French Revohition. We 
 now hcnter the South Gallery," etc., etc. All of which is 
 very good fun, with a dash of truth in it also as to the 
 snobbery — only in this it will be necessary to be quite 
 sure where the snobbery lies. If my Lord Carabas has a 
 " buth of Venus," beautiful for all eyes to see, there is no 
 snobbery, only good-nature, in the showing it ; nor is there 
 snobbery in going to see it, if a beautiful " buth of Ve- 
 nus" has charms for you. If you merely want to see the 
 inside of a lord'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 pearl about it which in the previous chapter 
 I endeavoured to explain. In each some little point is 
 made in excellent language, so as to charm by its neatness, 
 incision, and drollery. But The Snob Papers had better 
 be read separately, and not taken in the lump. 
 
 Thackeray ceased to write for Punch in 1852, either en' 
 tirely or almost so. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 VANITY FAIR. 
 
 Something has been said, in the biographical chapter, of 
 the way in which Vanity Fair was produced, and of the 
 period in the author's life in which it w^as written. He 
 had become famous — to a limited extent — by the exqui- 
 site nature of his contributions to periodicals ; but he de- 
 sired to do something larger, something greater, some- 
 thing, perhaps, less ephemeral. For though Barry Lyn- 
 don and others have not proved to be ephemeral, it was 
 thus that he regarded them. In this spirit he went to 
 work and wrote Vanity Fair. 
 
 It may be as well to speak first of the faults which 
 were attributed to it. It was said that the good people 
 were all fools, and that the clever people were all knaves. 
 When the critics — the talkinsj critics as well as the writ- 
 ing critics — began to discuss Vanity Fair, there had al- 
 ready grown up a feeling as to Thackeray as an author — 
 that he was one who had taken up the business of castiga- 
 ting: the vices of the world. Scott had dealt with the he- 
 roics, whether displayed in his Flora Maclvors or Meg 
 Merrilieses, in his Ivanhoes or Ochil trees. Miss Edge- 
 worth had been moral ; Miss Austen conventional ; Bulwer 
 had been poetical and sentimental ; Marryatt and Lever 
 had been funny and pugnacious, always with a dash of 
 
 5 
 
90 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 gallantry, displaying funny naval and funny military life ; 
 and Dickens had already become great in painting the 
 virtues of the lower orders. But by all these some kind 
 of virtue had been sung, though it might be only the vir- 
 tue of riding a horse or fighting a duel. Even Eugene 
 Aram and Jack Sheppard, with whom Thackeray found so 
 much fault, were intended to be fine fellows, though they 
 broke into houses and committed murders. The primary 
 object of all those writers was to create an interest by ex- 
 citing sympathy. To enhance our sympathy personages 
 were introduced who were very vile indeed — as Bucklaw, 
 in the guise of a lover, to heighten our feelings for Ra- 
 venswood and Lucy ; as Wild, as a thief-taker, to make us 
 more anxious for the saving of Jack ; as Ralph Nickleby, 
 to pile up the pity for his niece Kate. But each of these 
 novelists might have appropriately begun with an Arma 
 virumque cano. The song was to be of something god- 
 like — even with a Peter Simple. With Thackeray it had 
 been altogether different. Alas, alas ! the meanness of 
 human wishes ; the poorness of human results ! That had 
 been his tone. There can be no doubt that the heroic 
 had appeared contemptible to him, as being untrue. The 
 girl who had deceived her papa and mamma seemed more 
 probable to him than she who perished under the willow- 
 tree from sheer love — as given in the last chapter. Why 
 sing songs that are false ? Why tell of Lucy Ashtons and 
 Kate Nicklebys, when pretty girls, let them be ever so 
 beautiful, can be silly and sly ? Why pour philosophy out 
 of the mouth of a fashionable young gentleman like Pel- 
 ham, seeing that young gentlemen of that sort rarely, or 
 we may say never, talk after that fashion ? Why make a 
 house-breaker a gallant charming young fellow, the truth 
 being that house-breakers as a rule are as objectionable iu 
 
fii.] VANITY FAIR. 'Ji 
 
 their manners as tliey are in their morals? Thackeray's 
 mind had in truth worked in this way, and he had become 
 a satirist. That had been all very well for Fraser and 
 Punch ; but when his satire was continued through a long 
 novel, in twenty-four parts, readers — who do in truth like 
 the heroic better than the wicked — began to declare that 
 khis writer was no novelist, but only a cynic. 
 
 Thence the question arises what a novel should be — 
 which I will endeavour to discuss very shortly in a later 
 chapter. But this special fault was certainly found with 
 Vanity Fair at the time. Heroines should not only be 
 beautiful, but should be endowed also with a quasi celestial 
 grace — grace of dignity, propriety, and reticence. A her- 
 oine should hardly want to be married, the arrangement 
 being almost too mundane — and, should she be brought 
 to consent to undergo such bond, because of its acknowl- 
 edged utility, it should be at some period so distant as 
 hardly to present itself to the mind as a reality. Eating 
 and drinking should be altogether indifferent to her, and 
 her clothes should be picturesque rather than smart, and 
 that from accident rather than design. Thackeray's 
 Amelia does not at all come up to the description here 
 given. She is proud of having a lover, constantly declar- 
 ing to herself and to others that he is " the greatest and 
 the best of men" — whereas the young gentleman is, in 
 truth, a very little man. She is not at all indifferent as to 
 her finery, nor, as we see incidentally, to enjoying her sup- 
 pers at Vauxhall. She is anxious to be married — and as 
 soon as possible. A hero, too, should be dignified and of 
 a noble presence ; a man who, though he may be as poor 
 as Nicholas Nickleby, should nevertheless be beautiful on 
 all occasions, and never deficient in readiness, address, or 
 
 self-assertion. Va^Hy Fair is specially declared by the 
 G 
 
92 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 author to be "a novel without a hero," and therefore we 
 have hardly a right to complain of deficiency of heroic 
 conduct in any of the male characters. But Captain Dob- 
 bin does become the hero, and is deficient. Why was he 
 called Dobbin, except to make him ridiculous? Why is 
 he so shamefully ugly, so shy, so awkward ? Why was he 
 Jthe son of a grocer ? Thackeray in so depicting him was 
 determined to run counter to the recognised taste of novel 
 readers. And then again there was the feeling of another 
 great fault. Let there be the virtuous in a novel and let 
 there be the vicious, the dignified and the undignified, the 
 sublime and the ridiculous — only let the virtuous, the dig- 
 nified, and the sublime be in the ascendant. Edith Bellen- 
 den, and Lord Evandale, and Morton himself would be too 
 stilted, were they not enlivened by Mause, and Cuddie, and 
 Poundtext. But here, in this novel, the vicious and the 
 absurd have been made to be of more importance than the 
 good and the noble. Becky Sharp and Rawdon Crawley 
 are the real heroine and hero of the story. It is with 
 them that the reader is called upon to interest himself. 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 was no doubt a feeling with the public 
 that though satire may be very well in its place, it should 
 not be made the backbone of a work so long and so im- 
 portant as this. A short story such as Catherine or Barry 
 Lyndon might be pronounced to have been called for by 
 the iniquities of an outside world; but this seemed to 
 the readers to have been addressed almost to themselves. 
 Now men and women like to be painted as Titian would 
 paint them, or Raffaelle — not as Rembrandt, or even 
 Rubens. 
 
 Whether the ideal or the real is the best form of a 
 
III.] VANITY FAIR. 93 
 
 novel may be questioned, but there can be no doubt that 
 as there are novelists who cannot descend from the bright 
 heaven of the imagination to walk with their feet upon 
 the earth, so there are others to whom it is not given to 
 soar among clouds. The reader must please himself, and 
 mate his selection if he cannot enjoy both. There arc 
 many who are carried into a heaven of pathos by the woes 
 of a Master of Ravenswood, who fail altogether to be 
 touched by the enduring constancy of a Dobbin. There 
 are others — and I will not say but they may enjoy the 
 keenest delight which literature can give — who cannot 
 employ their minds on fiction unless it be conveyed in po- 
 etry. With Thackeray it was essential that the represen- 
 tations made by him should be, to his own thinking, life- 
 like. A Dobbin seemed to him to be such a one as might 
 probably be met with in the w^orld, whereas to his think- 
 ing a Ravenswood was simply a creature of the imagina- 
 tion, lie would have said of such, as we would say of 
 female faces by Raffaelle, that women would like to be 
 like them, but are not like them. Men might like to 
 be like Ravenswood, and women may dream of men so 
 formed and constituted, but such men do not exist. Dob- 
 bins 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 than extolling the virtues of 
 mankind. No doubt he had a more thorough belief in 
 the one than in the other. The Dobbins he did encoun- 
 ter — seldom ; the Rawdon Crawleys very often. He saw 
 around him so much that was mean ! lie was hurt so 
 often by the little vanities of people ! It was thus that 
 be was driven to that overthousrhtfulness about snobs of 
 
94 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 wMcli I have spoken in the last chapter. It thus became 
 natural to him to insist on the thing which he hated with 
 unceasing assiduity, and only to break out now and again 
 into a rapture of love for the true nobility which was dear 
 to him — as he did with the character of Captain Dobbin. 
 
 It must be added to all this, that, before he has done 
 with his snob or his knave, he will generally weave in 
 some little trait of humanity by which the sinner shall 
 be relieved from the absolute darkness of utter iniquity. 
 He deals with no Varneys or Deputy-Shepherds, all villany 
 and all lies, because the snobs and knaves he had seen had 
 never been all snob or all knave. Even Shindy probably 
 had some feeling for the poor woman he left at home. 
 Rawdon Crawley loved his wicked wife dearly, and there 
 were moments even with her in which some redeemins: 
 trait half reconciles her to the reader. 
 
 Such were the faults which were found in Vanity Fair ; 
 but though the faults were found freely, the book was 
 read by all. Those who arc old enough can well remem- 
 ber the effect which it had, and the welcome which was 
 given to the different numbers as they appeared. Though 
 the story is vague and wandering, clearly commenced with- 
 out any idea of an ending, yet there is something in the 
 telling which makes every portion of it perfect in itself. 
 There are absurdities in it which would not be admitted 
 to anyone who had not a peculiar gift of making even 
 his absurdities delightful. No school-girl who ever lived 
 would hai^e thrown back her gift-book, as Rebecca did the 
 " dixonarv," out of the carriage window as she was taken 
 away from school. But who does not love that scene 
 with which the novel commences ? IIow could such a 
 girl as Amelia Osborne have got herself into such society 
 as that in which we see her at Vauxhall ? But we forgive 
 
III.] VANITY FAIR. 95 
 
 it all because of the telling. And then there is that crown- 
 ing absurdity of Sir Pitt Crawley and his establishment. 
 
 I never could understand how Thackeray in his first se- 
 rious attempt could have dared to subject himself and Sir 
 Pitt Crawley to the critics of the time. Sir Pitt is a bar- 
 onet, a man of large property, and in Parliament, to whom 
 Becky Sharp goes as a governess at the end of a delightful 
 visit with her friend Amelia Sedley, on leaving Miss Pink- 
 erton's school. The Sedley carriage takes her to Sir Pitt's 
 door. " When the bell was rung a head appeared between 
 the interstices of the dining-room shutters, and the door 
 was opened by a man in drab breeches and gaiters, with a 
 dirty old coat, a foul old neckcloth lashed round his bris- 
 tly neck, a shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair 
 of twinkling 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 box declines 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 throw- 
 ing Miss Sharp's trunk over his shoulder, carried it into 
 the house." Then Becky is shown into the house, and a 
 dismantled dining-room is described, into which she is led 
 by 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 sauce- 
 pan 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. 
 
96 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 " 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 ! /'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 ap- 
 pearance, 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 half -pence; 
 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 au- 
 dacity which I have been unable to understand. But it 
 has been accepted; and from this commencement of Sir 
 Pitt Crawley have grown the wonderful characters of the 
 Crawley family — old Miss Crawley, the worldly, wicked, 
 pleasure-loving aunt ; the Rev. Bute Crawley and his wife, 
 who arc quite as worldly ; the sanctimonious elder son, who 
 in truth is not less so ; and Rawdon, who ultimately be- 
 comes Becky's husband — who is the bad hero of the book, 
 as Dobbin is the good hero. They are admirable ; but it 
 is quite clear that Thackeray had known nothing of what 
 was coming about them when he caused Sir Pitt to eat his 
 tripe with Mrs. Tinker in the London dining-room. 
 
 There is a double story running through the book, the 
 parts of which are but lightly woven together, of which 
 the former tells us the life and adventures of that singular 
 young woman, Becky Sharp ; and the other the troubles 
 and ultimate success of our noble hero, Captain Dobbin. 
 Though it be true that readers prefer, or pretend to prefer, 
 the romantic to the common in their novels, and complain 
 of pages which arc defiled with that which is low, yet I find 
 
III.] VANITY FAIR. 97 
 
 that the absurd, the ludicrous, and even the evil, leave more 
 impression behind them than the grand, the beautiful, or 
 even the good. Dominie Sampson, Dugald Dalgetty, and 
 Bothwell are, I think, more remembered than Fergus Mac- 
 Ivor, than Ivanhoe himself, or Mr. Butler the minister. It 
 certainly came to pass that, in spite of the critics, Becky 
 Sharp became the first attraction in Vanity Fair. When 
 we speak now of Vanity Fair, it is always to Becky that 
 our thoughts recur. She has made a position for herself 
 in the world of fiction, and is one of our established per- 
 sonages. 
 
 I have already said how she left school, throwing the 
 " dixonary " out of the window, like dust from her feet, 
 and was taken to spend a few halcyon weeks with her 
 friend Amelia Sedley, at the Sedley mansion in Russell 
 Square. There she meets a brother Sedley home from In- 
 dia — the immortal Jos — at whom she began to set her 
 hitherto untried cap. Here we become acquainted both 
 with the Sedley and with the Osborne families, with ail 
 their domestic affections and domestic snobbery, and have 
 to confess that the snobbery is stronger than the affection. 
 As we desire to love Amelia Sedley, we wish that the peo- 
 ple around her were less vulgar or less selfish — especially 
 we wish it in regard to that handsome young fellow, George 
 Osborne, whom she loves with her whole heart. But with 
 Jos Sedley we are inclined to be content, though he be fat, 
 purse-proud, awkward, a drunkard, and a coward, because 
 we do not want anything better for Becky. Becky does 
 not want anything better for herself, because the man has 
 money. She has been born a pauper. She knows herself 
 to be but ill qualified to set up as a beauty — though by 
 dint of cleverness she does succeed in that afterwards. 
 She has no advantages in regard to friends or family as 
 
 5* 
 
98 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 she enters life. She must earn her bread for herself. 
 Young as she is, she loves money, and has a great idea of 
 the power of money. Therefore, though Jos is distasteful 
 at all points, she instantly makes her attack. She fails, 
 however, at any rate for the present. She never becomes 
 his wife, but at last she succeeds in getting some of his 
 money. But before that time comes she has many a suf- 
 fering to endure, and many a triumph to enjoy. 
 
 She goes to Sir Pitt Crawley as governess for his sec- 
 ond family, and is taken down to Queen's Crawley in the 
 country. There her cleverness prevails, even with the 
 baronet, of whom I have just given Thackeray's portrait. 
 She keeps his accounts, and writes his letters, and helps 
 him to save money ; she reads with the elder sister books 
 they ought not to have read ; she flatters the sanctimoni- 
 ouc son. In point of fact, she becomes all in all at Queen's 
 Crawley, so that Sir Pitt himself falls in love Avith her — 
 for there is reason to think that Sir Pitt may soon be- 
 come again a widower. But there also came down to the 
 baronet's house, on an occasion of general entertaining. 
 Captain Kawdon Crawley. Of course Becky sets her cap 
 at him, jnd of course succeeds. She always succeeds. 
 Though vhe is only the governess, he insists upon dancing 
 with her, to the neglect of all the young ladies of the 
 neighbourhood. They continue to walk together by moon- 
 light — or starlight — the great, heavy, stupid, half -tipsy 
 dragoon, and the Intriguing, covetous, altogether unprinci- 
 pled young woman, A.nd the two young people absolute- 
 ly come to love one another in their way — the heavy, 
 stupid, fuddled dragoon, and the false, covetous, altogether 
 unprincipled young woman. 
 
 The fat aunt Crawley is a maiden lady, very rich, and 
 Becky quite succeeds in gaining the rich aunt by her 
 
III.] VANITY FAIR. 99 
 
 wiles. The aunt becomes so fond of Becky down in the 
 country, that when she has to return to her own house in 
 town, sick from over -eating, she cannot be happy with- 
 out taking Becky with her. So Becky is installed in the 
 house in London, having been taken away abruptly from 
 her pupils, to the great dismay of the old lady's long-es- 
 tablished resident companion. They all fall in love with 
 her; she makes herself so charming, she is so clever; she 
 can even, by help of a little care in dressing, become so 
 picturesque! As all this goes on, the reader feels what a 
 great personage is Miss Rebecca Sharp. 
 
 Lady Crawley dies down in the country, while Becky 
 is still staying with his sister, who will not part with her. 
 Sir Pitt at once rushes up to town, before the funeral, 
 looking for consolation where only he can find it. Becky 
 brino's him down word from his sister's room that the old 
 lady is 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 bar- 
 onet 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. 
 
100 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 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 hke, 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, thougli she had been angling, angling for 
 favour and love and power, had not expected this. For 
 once in her life she loses her presence of mind, and ex- 
 claims : " Oh, Sir Pitt ; oh, sir ; I — I'm married already !" 
 She has married Rawdon Crawley, Sir Pitt's younger son, 
 Miss Crawley's favourite among those of her family who 
 are looking for her money. But she keeps her secret for 
 the present, and writes a charming letter to the Captain : 
 "Dearest, — Something tells me that we shall conquer. 
 You shall leave that odious regiment. Quit gaming, rac- 
 ing, and be a good boy, and we shall all live in Park Lane, 
 and ma tante shall leave us all her money." Ma tante's 
 money has been in her mind all through, 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 J \A 
 at her waist. ■. .VaT 
 
 "/fl make your fortune," she said; and Delilah patted Samson's ^^^ v 
 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 mo- 
 ment, nor did Rawdon ever become quitq. bad. Then fol- 
 low the adventures of Becky as a married woman, through 
 
III.] VANITY FAIR. 101 
 
 all of wliich there is a glimmer of love for her stupid hus- 
 band, while it is the real purpose of her heart to get money 
 how she may — by her charms, by her wit, by her lievS, by 
 her readiness. She makes love to everyone — even to her 
 sanctimonious brother-in-law, w^ho becomes Sir Pitt in his 
 time — and always succeeds. But in her love-making there 
 is nothing of love. She gets hold of that well -remem- 
 bered old reprobate, the Marquis of Steyne, who possesses 
 the two valuable gifts of being very dissolute and very 
 rich, and from him she obtains money and jewels to her 
 heart's desire. The abominations of Lord Steyne are de- 
 picted in the strongest language of which Vanity Fair 
 admits. The reader's hair stands almost on end in hor- 
 ror at the wickedness of the two wretches — at her desire 
 for money, sheer money ; and his for wickedness, sheer 
 wickedness. Then her husband finds her out — poor Raw- 
 don ! who with all his faults and thick-headed stupidity, 
 has become absolutely entranced by the wiles of his little 
 wife. He is carried 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 his wife's drawing-room. 
 Whereupon he thrashes the old lord, nearly killing him ; 
 takes away the plunder which he finds on his wife's per- 
 son, and hurries away to seek assistance as to further re- 
 venge ; — for he is determined to shoot the marquis, or to 
 be shot. He goes to one Captain Macmurdo, 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 foot- 
 man ! I gave up everything I had to her. I'm a beggar 
 because I would marry her. By Jove, sir, I've pawned my 
 own watch to get her anything she fancied. And she — 
 she's been making a purse for herself all the time, and 
 
102 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 grudged me a hundred pounds to get me out of quod !" 
 His friend alleges that the wife may be innocent after all. 
 "It may be so," Rawdon exclaimed, sadly; "but this 
 don't look very innocent!" And he showed the captain 
 the thousand-pound note which he had found in Becky's 
 pocket-book. 
 
 But the marquis can do better than fight ; and Raw- 
 don, in spite of his true 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 husband appointed 
 go^'crnor of Coventry Island, with a salary of three thou- 
 sand pounds a year ; and poor Rawdon at last conde- 
 scends to accept the appointment. He will not see his 
 Avifc again, but he makes her an allowance out of his in- 
 come. 
 
 In arranging all this, Thackeray is enabled to have a 
 side blow at the British way of distributing patronage — 
 for the favour of which he was afterwards himself a can- 
 didate. He quotes as follows from The Royalist newspa- 
 per : " We hear that the governorship " — of Coventry Isl- 
 and — " has been offered to Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., 
 a distinguished Waterloo officer. We need not only men 
 of acknowledged bravery, but men of administrative tal- 
 ents to superintend the affairs of our colonies; and we 
 have no doubt that the gentleman selected by the Colo- 
 nial Office to fill the lamented vacancy which has occurred 
 at Coventry Island is admirably calculated for the post." 
 The reader, however, is aware that the officer in question 
 cannot write a sentence or speak two words correctly. 
 
 Our heroine's adventures are carried on much further, 
 but they cannot be given here in detail. To the end she 
 is the same — utterly false, selfish, covetous, and successful. 
 To have made such a woman really in love would havo 
 
III.] VANITY FAIR. 103 
 
 been a mistake. Her husband she likes best — because he 
 is, or was, her own. But there is no man so foul, so wick- 
 ed, so unattractive, but that she can fawn over him for 
 money and jewels. There are women to whom nothing 
 is nasty, either in person, language, scenes, actions, or prin- 
 ciple — and Becky is one of them; and yet she is herself *^#' 
 attractive. A most wonderful sketch, for the perpetration 
 of which all Thackeray's power of combined indignation 
 and humour was necessary ! 
 
 The story of Amelia and her two lovers, George Osborne 
 and Captain, or, as he came afterwards to be. Major, and 
 Colonel Dobbin, is less interesting, simply because good- 
 ness and eulogy are less exciting than wickedness and cen- 
 sure. Amelia is a true, honest-hearted, thoroughly Eng::_zr' 
 lish young woman, who loves her love because he is grand 
 — to her eyes — and loving him, loves him with all her 
 heart. Readers have said that she is silly, only because 
 she is not heroic. I do not know that she is more silly 
 than many young ladies whom we who are old have loved 
 in our youth, or than those whom our sons are loving at 
 the present time. Readers complain of Amelia because 
 she is absolutely true to nature. There are no Raffaellis- \ 
 
 tic touches, no added graces, no divine romance. 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 ap- 
 peased at once, at the first kiss ; quite convinced that her 
 lover, her husband, her children are the people in all the 
 world to whom the greatest consideration is due. Such 
 a one is sure to be the dupe of a Becky Sharp, should 
 a Becky Sharp come in her way — as is the case with so 
 many sweet Amelias whom we have known. But in a mat- 
 ter of love she is sound enouQ-h and sensible enough — an<l 
 
 lij< 
 
104 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 she is as true as steel. I know no trait in Amelia which 
 a man would be ashamed to find in his own daughter. 
 
 She marries her George Osborne, who, to tell the truth 
 of him, is but a poor kind of fellow, though he is a brave 
 soldier. He thinks much of his own person, and is self- 
 ish. Thackeray puts in a touch or two here and there by 
 which he is made to be odious. He would rather give a 
 present to himself than to the girl who loved him. Nev- 
 ertheless, when her father is ruined he marries her, and he 
 fights bravely at Waterloo, and is killed. " No more fir- 
 ing was heard at Brussels. The pursuit rolled miles away. 
 Darkness came down on the field and the city ; and Ame- 
 lia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, 
 dead, with a bullet through his heart." 
 
 Then follows the long courtship of Dobbin, the true 
 hero — he who has been the friend of George since their 
 old school-days ; who has lived with him and served him, 
 and has also loved Amelia. But he has loved her — as 
 one man may love another — solely with a view to the 
 profit of his friend. He has known all along that George 
 and Amelia have been engaged to each other as boy and 
 girl. George would have neglected her, but Dobbin would 
 not allow it. George would have jilted the girl who loved 
 him, but Dobbin would not let him. He had nothing to 
 get for himself, but loving her as he did, it was the work 
 of his life to get for her all that she wanted. 
 
 George is shot at Waterloo, and then come fifteen 
 years of widowhood — fifteen years during which Becky 
 is carrying on her manoeuvres — fifteen years during which 
 Amelia cannot bring herself to accept 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 
 prize he has been trying for all his life. The bird has 
 
III.] VANITY FAIR. 105 
 
 come in at last. There it is, with its head on its shoulder, 
 billing and cooing clean up to his heart, with soft, out- 
 stretched fluttering wings. This is what he has asked for 
 every day and hour for eighteen years. This is what he 
 has pined after. Here it is — the summit, the end, the last 
 page of the third 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 and Dobbin as noble aa 
 any that he has met in literature ; and that among women 
 Amelia is as true and Becky as vile as any he has encoun- 
 tered. Of so much he will be conscious. In addition to 
 this he will unconsciously have found that every page he 
 has read will have been of interest to him. There has 
 been no padding, no longueurs ; every bit will have had 
 its weight with him. And he will find too at the end, if 
 he will think of it — though readers, I fear, seldom think 
 much of this in regard to books they have read — that the 
 lesson taught in every page has been good. There may 
 be details of evil painted so as to disgust — painted almost 
 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 Thackeray himself that in his original preface to Pen- 
 dennis, when he began to be aware that his reputation was 
 made, he tells his public what they may expect and what 
 they may not, and makes his joking complaint of the 
 readers of his time because they will not endure with pa- 
 tience the true picture of a natural man. " Even the gen- 
 tlemen of our age," he says — adding that the story of 
 Pendennis is an attempt to describe one of them, just as 
 he is — " even those we cannot show as they are with the 
 notorious selfishness of their time and their education. 
 Since the author of Tom Jones was buried, no writer of 
 fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his ut' 
 most power a man. We must shape him, and give him 
 a certain conventional temper." Then he rebukes his au' 
 dience because they will not listen to the truth. "You 
 will not hear what moves in the real world, what passes 
 in society, in the clubs, colleges, mess-rooms — what is the 
 life and talk of your sons." You want the Raffaellistic 
 touch, or that of some painter of horrors equally removed 
 from the truth. I tell you how a man really does act — 
 as did Fielding with Tom Jones — but it does not satisfy 
 you. You will not sympathise with this young man of 
 
CHAP. !v.] PEXDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. 10*7 
 
 mine, this Pendennis, because lie is neither angel nor imp. 
 If it be so, let it be so. I will not paint for you angels 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, him I have painted for you ; and here 
 he is, whether you like the picture or not. This is what 
 Thackeray meant, and, having this in his mind, he produced 
 Pendennis. 
 
 The object of a novel should be to instruct in morals 
 while it amuses. I cannot think but that every novelist 
 who has thought much of his art will have realised as 
 much as that for himself. Whether this may best be 
 done by the transcendental or by the common-place is the 
 question which it more behoves the reader than the author 
 to answer, because the author may be fairly sure that he 
 who can do the one will not, probably cannot, do the oth- 
 er. If a lad be only five feet high, he does not try to en- 
 list in the Guards. Thackeray complains that many ladies 
 have "remonstrated and subscribers left him," because of 
 his realistic tendency. Nevertheless he has gone on with 
 his work, and, in Pendennis, has painted a young man as 
 natural as Tom Jones. Had he expended himself in the 
 attempt, he could not have drawn a Master of Ravens- 
 wood. 
 
 It has to be admitted that Pendennis is not a fine fel- 
 low. He is not as weak, as selfish, as untrustworthy as 
 that George Osborne whom Amelia married in Vanity 
 Fair ; but nevertheless, he is weak, and selfish, and un- 
 trustworthy. He is not such a one as a father would 
 wish to see his son, 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 are not 
 H 
 
108 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 Paladins. In our individual lives we are contented to en- 
 dure an admixture of evil, which we should resent if im- 
 puted to us in the general. We presume ourselves to be 
 truth-speaking, noble in our sentiments, generous in our 
 actions, modest and unselfish, chivalrous and devoted. 
 But we forgive and pass over in silence a few delinquen- 
 cies among ourselves. What boy at school ever is a cow- 
 ard — in the general ? What gentleman ever tells a lie ? 
 What young lady is greedy ? We take it for granted, as 
 though they were fixed rules in life, that our boys from 
 our public schools look us in the face and are manly ; that 
 our gentlemen tell the truth as a matter of course ; and 
 that our young ladies are refined 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 we have 
 our little home experiences. Let us have the facts out, and 
 mend what is bad if we can. This novel of Pendennis is 
 one of his loudest protests to this effect. 
 
 I will not attempt to tell the story of Pendennis, how 
 his mother loved him, how he first came to be brought up 
 together with Laura Bell, how he thrashed the other boys 
 when he was a boy, and how he fell in love with Miss 
 Fotheringay, nee Costigan, and was determined to marry 
 her while he was still a hobbledehoy, how he went up to 
 Boniface, that well-known college at Oxford, and there 
 did no good, spending money which he had not 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's room. Pen and his two compan- 
 ions are found with three Homers before them, and Pen 
 asks the tutor with great gravity : " What was the present 
 condition of the river Scamander, and whether it was nav- 
 
IV.] PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. 109 
 
 igable or no ?" He tells his mother that, during a certain 
 vacation he must stay up and read, instead of coming 
 home — but, nevertheless, he goes up to London to amuse 
 himself. The reader is scon made to understand that, 
 though Pen may be a fine gentleman, he is not trust- 
 worthy. But he repents and comes home, and kisses his 
 mother; only, alas! he will always be kissing somebody 
 else also. 
 
 The story of the Amorys and the Claverings, and that 
 wonderful French cook M. Alcide Mirobolant, forms one 
 of those delightful digressions which Thackeray scatters 
 through his novels rather than weaves into them. They 
 generally have but little to do with the story itself, and 
 are brought in only as giving scope for some incident to 
 the real hero or heroine. But in this digression Pen is 
 very much concerned indeed, for he is brought to the 
 very verge of matrimony with that peculiarly disagreea- 
 ble lady Miss Amory. He does escape at last, but only 
 within a few pages of the end, when we are made un- 
 happy by the lady's victory over that poor young sinner 
 Foker, with whom we have all come to sympathise, in 
 spite of his vulgarity and fast propensities. She would 
 to the last fain have married Pen, in whom she believes, 
 thinking that he would make a name for her. " II me 
 faut des emotions," says Blanche. Whereupon the author, 
 as he leaves her, explains the nature of this Miss Amory's 
 feelings. "For this young lady was not able to carry 
 out any emotion to the full, but had a sham enthusiasm, 
 a sham hatred, a sham love, a sham taste, a sham grief ; 
 each of which flared and shone very vehemently for an 
 instant, but subsided and gave place to the next sham 
 emotion." Thackeray, when he drew this portrait, must 
 certainly have had some special young lady in his view. 
 
110 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 But though we are made unhappy for 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 story is the way in which the hero is 
 made to enter upon the world, subject as he has been to 
 the sweet teaching of his mother, and subject as he is 
 made to be to the worldly lessons of his old uncle the 
 major. Then he is ill, and nearly dies, and his mother 
 comes up to nurse him. And there is his friend War^ 
 rington, of whose family down in Suffolk we shall have 
 heard something when we have read The Virginians — one, 
 I think, of the finest characters, as it is certainly one of 
 the most touching, that Thackeray ever drew. Warring- 
 ton, and Pen's mother, and Laura are our hero's better 
 angels — angels so good as to make us wonder that a 
 creature so weak should have had such angels about 
 him ; though we are driven to confess that their affection 
 and loyalty for him are natural. There is a melancholy 
 beneath the roughness of Warrington, and a feminine 
 softness combined with the reticent manliness of the man, 
 which have endeared him to readers beyond perhaps any 
 character in the book. Major Pendennis has become 
 immortal. Selfish, worldly, false, padded, caring alto- 
 gether for things mean and poor in themselves ; still the 
 reader likes him. It is not quite all for himself. To Pen 
 he is good — to Pen, who is the head of his family, and to 
 come after him as the Pendennis of the day. To Pen 
 and to Pen's mother he is beneficent after his lights. In 
 whatever he undertakes, it is so contrived that the reader 
 shall in some degree sympathise with him. And so it is 
 with poor old Costigan, the drunken Irish captain, Miss 
 
IV.] PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. Ill 
 
 Fotbcringay's papa. lie was not a pleasant person. " We 
 have witnessed the deshabille of Major Pcndennis," says 
 our author ; " will any one wish to be valet-de-charabre to 
 our other hero, Costigan ? It would seem that the cap- 
 tain, before issuing from his bedroom, scented himself 
 with otto of whisky." Yet there is a kindliness about 
 him which softens our hearts, though in truth he is 
 very careful that the kindness shall always be shown to 
 himself. 
 
 Among these people Pen makes his way to the end of 
 the novel, coming near to shipwreck on various occasions, 
 and always deserving the shipwreck which he has almost 
 encountered. Then there will arise the question whether 
 it mio-ht not have been better that he should be altoo'cther 
 shipwrecked, rather than housed comfortably with such a 
 wife as Laura, and left to that enjoyment of happiness 
 forever after, which is the normal heaven prepared for 
 heroes and heroines who have done their work well 
 through three volumes. It is almost the only instance 
 in all Thackeray's works in which this state of bliss is 
 reached. George Osborne, who is the beautiful lover in 
 Vanity Fair^ is killed almost before our eyes, on the 
 field of battle, and we feel that Nemesis has with justice 
 taken hold of him. Poor old Dobbin does marry the 
 widow, after fifteen years of further service, when we 
 know him to be a middle-aged man and her a middle-aged 
 woman. That glorious Paradise of which I have spoken 
 requires a freshness which can hardly be attributed to 
 the second marriage of a widow who has been fifteen 
 years mourning for her first husband. Clive Newcome, 
 "the first young man," if we may so call him, of the 
 novel Avhich I shall mention just now, is carried so far 
 beyond his matrimonial elysium that we are allowed to 
 
112 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 see too plainly how far from true may be those promises 
 of hymeneal happiness forever after. The cares of mar- 
 ried life have settled down heavily upon his young head 
 before we leave him. He not only mau'ies, but loses 
 his wife, and is left a melancholy widower with his son. 
 Esmond and Beatrix certainly reach no such elysium as 
 that of which we are speaking. But Pen, who surely 
 deserved a Nemesis, though perhaps not one so black as 
 that demanded by George Osborne's delinquencies, is 
 treated as though he had 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 
 will this Pendennis be?" This is the question asked by 
 the author himself at the end of the novel; feeling, no 
 doubt, some hesitation as to the justice of what, he had 
 just done. "And what sort of a husband will this Pen- 
 dennis be ?" many a reader will ask, doubting the happi- 
 ness of such a marriage and the future of Laura. The 
 querists are referred to that lady herself, who, seeing his 
 faults and wayward moods — seeing and owning that there 
 are better men than he — loves him always with the most 
 constant affection. The assertion could be made with 
 perfect confidence, but is not to the purpose. That 
 Laura's affection should be constant, no one would doubt ; 
 but more than that is wanted for happiness. How about 
 Pendennis and his constancy ? 
 
 Tlie Newcomes, which I bracket in this chapter with 
 Pendennis, was not written till after Esmond, and ap- 
 peared between that novel and The Virginians, which 
 was a sequel to Esmond. It is supposed to be edited by 
 Pen, whose own adventures we have just completed, and 
 is commenced by that celebrated night passed by Colonel 
 Ncwcome and his boy Clive at the Cave of Harmony, 
 
IV.] PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. 113 
 
 during which the colonel is at first so pleasantly received 
 and so genially entertained, but from which he is- at last 
 banished, indignant at the iniquities of our drunken old 
 friend Captain Costigan, with whom we had become 
 intimate in Pen's own memoirs. The boy Clive is de- 
 scribed as being probably about sixteen. At the end of 
 the story he has run through the adventures of his early 
 life, and is left a melancholy man, a widower, one who 
 has suffered the extremity of misery from a stepmother, 
 and who is wrapped up in the only son that is left to him 
 — as had been the case with his father at the beginning 
 of the novel. The Newcomes, therefore, like Thackeray's 
 other tales, is rather a slice from the biographical memoirs 
 of a family, than a romance or novel in itself. 
 
 It is full of satire from the first to the last page. Every 
 word of it seems to have been written to show how vile 
 and poor a place this world is ; how prone men are to de- 
 ceive, how prone to be deceived. There is a scene in which 
 "his Excellency Rummun Loll, otherwise his Highness 
 Rummun Loll," is introduced to Colonel Newcome — or 
 rather presented — for the two men had known each other 
 before. All London was talking of Rummun Loll, taking 
 him for an Indian prince, but the colonel, who had served 
 in India, knew better. Rummun Loll was no more than 
 a merchant, who had made a precarious fortune by doubt- 
 ful means. All the girls, nevertheless, are running after 
 his Excellency. " He's known to have two wives already 
 in India," says Barnes Newcome ; " but, by gad, for a set- 
 tlement, I believe some of the girls here would marry him." 
 We have a delightful illustration of the London girls, with 
 their bare necks and shoulders, sitting round Rummun 
 Loll and worshipping him as he reposes on his low settee. 
 There are a dozen of them so enchanted that the men who 
 
 6 
 
114 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 wish to get a sight of the Rummun arc quite kept at a 
 distance. This is satire on the women. A few pages on 
 we come upon a clergyman who is no more real than Rum- 
 mun Loll. The clergyman, Charles Honeyman, had mar- 
 ried the colonel's sister and had lost his wife, and now the 
 brothers-in-law meet. "' Poor, poor Emma !' exclaimed 
 the ecclesiastic, casting his eyes towards the chandelier and 
 passing a white cambric pocket-handkerchief gracefully 
 before them. No man in London understood the ring 
 business or the pocket-handkerchief business better, or 
 smothered his emotion more beautifully. 'In the gayest 
 moments, in the giddiest throng of fashion, the thoughts 
 of the past will rise ; the departed will be among us still. 
 But this is not the strain wherewith to greet the friend 
 newly arrived on our shores. How it rejoices me to be- 
 hold you in old England !' " And so the satirist goes on 
 with Mr. Honeyman the clergyman. Mr. Honeyman the 
 clergyman has been already mentioned, in that extract 
 made in our first chapter from Lovel the Widoiver. It 
 was he who assisted another friend, " with his wheedling 
 tongue," in inducing Thackeray to purchase that "neat 
 little literary paper " — called then The Museum, but which 
 was in truth The National Standard. In describing 
 Barnes Newcome, the colonel's relative, Thackeray in the 
 same scene attacks the sharpness of the young men of busi- 
 ness of the present day. There were, or were to be, some 
 transactions with Rummun Loll, and Barnes Newcome, be- 
 ing in doubt, asks the 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 dropped his 
 drawl or his languor, and was speaking quite unaffectedly, 
 good-naturedly, and selfishly. Had you talked to him for 
 a week you would not have made him understand the 
 
IV.] PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. 115 
 
 scorn and loathing with which the colonel regarded him. 
 Here was a young fellow as keen as the oldest curmud- 
 geon — a lad with scarce a beard to his chin, that would 
 pursue his bond as rigidly as Shylock." "Barnes New- 
 come never missed a church," he goes on, " or dressing for 
 dinner. He never kept a tradesman waiting for his money. 
 He seldom drank too much, and never was late for busi- 
 ness, or huddled over his toilet, however brief his sleep or 
 severe his headache. In a word, he was as scrupulously 
 whited as any sepulchre in the whole bills of mortality." 
 Thackeray had lately seen some Barnes Newcome when he 
 wrote that. 
 
 It is all satire ; but there is generally a touch of pathos 
 even through the satire. It is satire when Miss Quigley, 
 the governess in Park Street, falls in love with the old 
 colonel after some dim fashion of her own. " When she 
 is walking with her little charges in the Park, faint signals 
 of welcome appear on her wan cheeks. She knows the 
 dear colonel amidst a thousand horsemen." The colonel 
 had drunk a glass of wine with her after his stately fash- 
 ion, and the foolish old maid thinks too much of it. Then 
 we are told how she knits purses for him, "as she sits 
 alone in the schoolroom — high up in that lone house, 
 when the little ones are long since asleep — before her dis- 
 mal little tea-tray, and her little desk containing her moth- 
 er's letters and her mementoes of home." Miss Quigley 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, is himself a satire on young men — on young 
 men who are idle and ambitious at the same time. He is 
 a painter ; but, instead of being proud of his art, is half 
 
116 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 ashamed of it — because not being industrious be has not, 
 while yet young, learned to excel. He is " doing " a por- 
 trait of Mrs. Pendennis, Laura, and thus speaks of his busi- 
 ness. "No. 666 " — he is supposed to be quoting from the 
 catalogue of the Royal Academy for the year — " No. 666. 
 Portrait of Joseph Muggins, Esq., Newcome, George Street. 
 No. 979. Portrait of Mrs. Muggins on her gray pony. New- 
 come. No. 579. Portrait of Joseph Muggins, Esq.'s dog 
 Toby, Newcome. This is what I am fit for. These are 
 the victories I have set myself on achieving. Oh, Mrs. 
 Pendennis! isn't it humiliating? Why isn't there a war? 
 Why haven't I a genius? There is a painter who lives 
 hard by, and who begs me to come and look at his work. 
 He is in the Muggins line too. He gets his canvases with 
 a good light upon them; excludes the contemplation of 
 other objects; stands beside his picture in an attitude 
 himself; and thinks that he and they are masterpieces. 
 Oh me, what drivelling wretches we are ! Fame ! — ex- 
 cept that of just the one or two — what's the use of it?" 
 In all of which Thackeray is speaking his own feelings 
 about himself as well as the world at large. What's the 
 use of it all? Oh vanitas vanitatum ! Oh vanity and 
 vexation of spirit ! " So Clive Newcome," he says after- 
 wards, " lay on a bed of down and tossed and tumbled 
 there. He went to fine dinners, and sat silent over them ; 
 rode fine horses, and black care jumped up behind the 
 moody horseman." As I write this I have before me a 
 letter from Thackeray to a friend describing his own suc- 
 cess when Vanity Fair was coming out, full of the same 
 feeling. He is making money, but he spends it so fast 
 that he never has any ; and as for the opinions expressed 
 on his books, he cares little for what he hears. There was 
 always present to him a feeling of black .care seated be- 
 
IT.] PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. Ill 
 
 hind the horseman — and would have been equally so had 
 there been no real care present to him. A sardonic mel- 
 ancholy was the characteristic most common to him — 
 which, however, was relieved by an always present capac- 
 ity for instant frolic. It was these attributes combined 
 which made him of all satirists the most humorous, and of 
 all humorists the most satirical. It was these that pro- 
 duced the Osbornes, the Dobbins, the Pens, the Clives, and 
 the Newcomes, whom, when he loved them the most, he 
 could not save himself from describing as mean and un- 
 worthy. A somewhat heroic hero of romance — such a 
 one, let us say, as Waverley, or Lovel in The Antiquary^ or 
 Morton in Old Mortality — was revolting to him, as lack- 
 ing those foibles which human nature seemed to him to 
 demand. 
 
 The story ends with two sad tragedies, neither of which 
 would have been demanded by the story, had not such 
 sadness been agreeable to the author's own idiosyncrasy. 
 The one is the ruin of the old colonel's fortunes, he hav- 
 ing allowed himself to be enticed into bubble speculations ; 
 and the other is the loss of all happiness, and even com- 
 fort, to Clive the hero, by the abominations of his mother- 
 in-law. The woman is so iniquitous, and so tremendous 
 in her iniquities, that she rises to tragedy. Who does not 
 know Mrs, Mack the Campaigner? "Why at the end of his 
 long story should Thackeray have married his hero to so 
 lackadaisical a heroine as poor little Rosey, or brought on 
 the stage such a she-demon as Rosey's mother ? But there 
 is the Campaigner in all her vigour, a marvel of strength 
 of composition — one of the most vividly drawm characters 
 in fiction — but a woman so odious that one is induced to 
 doubt whether she should have been depicted. 
 
 The other tragedy is altogether of a different kind, and 
 
118 THACKERAY. [chap. iv. 
 
 though unnecessary to the story, and contrary to that 
 practice of story-telling which seems to demand that ca- 
 lamities to those personages with whom we are to sympa- 
 thise should not be brought in at the close of a work of 
 fiction, is so beautifully told that no lover of Thackeray's 
 work would be willing to part with it. The old colonel, 
 as we have said, is ruined by speculation, and in his ruin is 
 brought to accept the alms of the brotherhood of the Grey 
 Friars. Then we are introduced to the Charter House, at 
 which, as most of us know, there still exists a brotherhood 
 of the kind. He dons the gown — this old colonel, who 
 had always been comfortable in his means, and latterly 
 apparently rich — and occupies the single room, and eats 
 the doled bread, and among his poor brothers sits in the 
 chapel of his order. The description is perhaps as fine as 
 anything thalT Thackeray ever did. The gentleman is still 
 the gentleman, with all the pride of gentry ; — but not the 
 less is he the humble bedesman, aware that he is living 
 upon charity, not made to grovel by any sense of shame, 
 but knowing that, though his normal pride may be left to 
 him, an outward demeanour of humility is befitting. 
 
 And then he dies. "At the usual evening hour the 
 chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas Newcome's hands 
 outside the bed feebly beat time — and just as the last bell 
 struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he 
 lifted up his head a little, and quickly said, ' Adsum ' — and 
 fell back. It was the word we used at school when names 
 were called ; and, lo, he whose heart was as that of a little 
 child had answered to his name, and stood in the presence 
 of his Maker 1" 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 
 
 The novel with whicli we are now going to deal I regard 
 as the greatest work that Thackeray did. Though I do 
 not hesitate to compare himself with himself, I will make 
 no comparison between him and others ; I therefore ab- 
 stain from assigning to Esmond any special niche among 
 prose fictions in the English language, but I rank it so 
 high as to justify me in placing him among the small 
 number of the highest class of English 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 than its 
 "weakest link, so is a poet, or a dramatist, or a novelist to 
 be placed in no lower level than that which he has attained 
 by his highest sustained flight. The excellence which has 
 been reached here Thackeray achieved, without doubt, by 
 giving a greater amount of forethought to the work he 
 had before him than had been his wont. When we were 
 young we used to be told, in our house at home, that " el- 
 bow-grease" was the one essential necessary to getting a 
 tough piece of work well done. If a mahogany table was 
 to be made to shine, it was elbow-grease that the operation 
 needed. Forethought is the elbow-grease which a novelist 
 — or poet — or dramatist — requires. It is not only his plot 
 that has to be turned and re-turned in his mind, not his 
 
120 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 plot chiefly, but he has to make himself sure of his situa- 
 tions, of his characters, of his effects, so that when the 
 time comes for hitting the nail he may know where to hit 
 it on the head — so that he may himself understand the 
 passion, the calmness, the virtues, the vices, the rewards 
 and punishments which he means to explain to others — so 
 that his proportions shall be correct, and he be saved froto 
 the absurdity of devoting two-thirds of his book to the 
 beginning, or two-thirds to the completion of his task. It 
 is from want of this special labour, more frequently than 
 from intellectual deficiency, that the tellers of stories fail 
 so often to hit their nails on 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, 
 and produce a certain number of words. That is compar- 
 atively easy, and if he have 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 cosily over your fire, 
 to turn it all in your thoughts, and nxake__the_thi_ngs^fit — ■ 
 that requires elbow-grease of the mind. The arrangement 
 of the words is as though you were walking simply along 
 a road. The arrangement of your story is as though you 
 were carrying a sack of flour while you walked. Fielding 
 had carried his sack of flour before he wrote Tom Jones, 
 and Scott his before he produced Ivanlioe. So had 
 Thackeray done — a very heavy sack of flour — in creating 
 Msmond. In VaniUj Fair,<Ln Pendennis, and in The New^ 
 comes, there was more of that mere wandering in which 
 no heavy burden was borne. The richness of the author's 
 mind, the beauty of his language, his imagination and 
 perception of character, are all there. For that which 
 was lovely he has shown his love, and for the hateful 
 his hatred ; but, nevertheless, they are comparatively idle 
 
v.] ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 121 
 
 books. His only work, as far as I can judge tliem, in 
 wliicli there is no touch of idleness, is Esmond, Barry 
 Lyndon is consecutive, and has the well-sustained purpose 
 of exhibiting a finished rascal ; but Barry Lyndon is not 
 quite the same from beginning to end. All his full-fledged 
 novels, except Esmond, contain rather strings of incidents 
 and memoirs of individuals, than a completed story. But 
 Es7nond is a whole from beginning to end, with its tale 
 well told, its purpose developed, its moral brought home — 
 and its nail hit well on the head and driven in. 
 
 I told Thackeray once that it was not only his best 
 work, but so much the 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 it matter?" 
 he went on after awhile. " If they like anything, one 
 ought to be satisfied. After all, Esmond was a prig." 
 Then he laughed and changed the subject, not caring to 
 dwell on thoughts painful to liim. The elbow-grease of 
 thinking was always distasteful to him, and had no doubt 
 been so when he conceived and carried out this work. 
 
 To the ordinary labour necessary for such a novel he 
 added very much by his resolution to write it in a style 
 different, not only from that which he had made his own, 
 but from that also which belonged to the time. He had 
 devoted himself to the reading of the literature of Queen 
 Anne's reign, and having chosen to throw his story into 
 that period, and to create in it personages who were to be 
 peculiarly concerned with the period, he resolved to use as 
 the vehicle for his story the forms of expression then prev- 
 alent. No one who has not tried it can understand how 
 great is the difficulty of mastering a phase of one's own 
 language other than that which habit has made familiar. 
 To write in another lano^uao'e, if the lano;uao:e be suflfi- 
 
 6* 
 
122 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 cicntly known, is a much less arduous undertaking. The 
 lad who attempts to write his essay in Ciceronian Latin 
 struggles to achieve a style which is not indeed common 
 to him, but is more common than any other he has be- 
 come 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 expression which the day had adopted. Whether he 
 asked advice on the subject, I do not know. But I feel 
 sure that if he did he must have been counselled against 
 it. Let my reader think what advice he would give to 
 any writer on such a subject. Probably he asked no ad- 
 vice, and would have taken none. No doubt he found 
 himself, at first imperceptibly, gliding into a phraseology 
 which had attractions for his ear, and then probably was 
 so charmed with the peculiarly masculine forms of sen- 
 tences which thus became familiar to him, that he thought 
 it would be almost as diflScult to drop them altogether as 
 altogether to assume the use of them. And if he could do 
 so successfully, how great would be the assistance given 
 to the local colouring which is needed for a novel in prose, 
 the scene of which is thrown far back from the writer's 
 period ! Were I to write a poem about Coeur de Lion, I 
 should not mar my poem by using the simple Language of 
 the day ; but if I write a prose story of the time, I cannot 
 altogether avoid some attempt at far-away quaintnesses in 
 language. To call a purse a " gypsire," and to begin your 
 little speeches with " Marry come up," or to finish them 
 with " Quotha," are but poor attempts. But even they 
 have had their effect. Scott did the best he could with 
 his Coeur de Lion. W^hen we look to it yvo 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 
 
v.j ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 123 
 
 heartily, and in high praise of thine order." We donbt 
 whether he achieved any similarity to the language of the 
 time ; but still, even in the little which he attempted, there 
 was something of the picturesque. But how much more 
 would be done if in very truth the whole language of a 
 story could be thrown with correctness into the form of 
 expression used at the time depicted? 
 
 It was this that Thackeray tried in his Esmond^ and he 
 has done it almost without a flaw. The time in question 
 is near enough to us, and the literature sufficiently familiar 
 to enable us to judge. Whether folk swore by their troth 
 in the days of King Richard I. we do not know, but when 
 we read Swift's letters, and Addison's papers, or Defoe's 
 novels, we do catch the veritable sounds of Queen Anne's 
 age, and can say for ourselves whether Thackeray has 
 caught them correctly or not. No reader can doubt that 
 he has done so. Nor is the reader ever struck with the 
 affectation of an assumed dialect. The words come as 
 though they had been written naturally — though not nat- 
 ural to the middle of the nineteenth century. It was a 
 tour de force^ and successful as such a tour de force so 
 seldom is. But though Thackeray was successful in adopt- 
 ing the tone he wished to assume, he never quite succeed- 
 ed, as far as my ear can judge, in altogether dropping it 
 again. 
 
 And yet it has to be remembered that though Esmond. 
 deals with the times of Queen Anne, and "copies the lan- 
 guage" of the time, as Thackeray himself says in the ded- 
 ication, the story is not supposed to have been written till 
 the reign of George II. Esmond in his narrative speaks 
 ot Fielding and Hogarth, who did their best work ilnder 
 George II. The idea is that Henry Esmond, the hero, 
 went out to Virginia after the events told, and there wrote 
 
124 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 the memoir in the form of an autobiography. The estate 
 or Gastlewood, in Virginia, had been given to the Esmond 
 family by Charles 11. ; and this Esmond, onr hero, finding 
 that expatriation would best suit both his domestic happi- 
 ness and his political difficulties — as the reader of the book 
 ■will understand might be the case — settles himself in the 
 colony, and there writes the history of his early life. He 
 retains the manners, and with the manners the language 
 of his youth. He lives among his own people, a country 
 gentleman with a broad domain, mixing but little with the 
 world beyond, and remains an English gentleman of the 
 time of Queen Anne. The story is continued in The Vir- 
 ginians^ the name given to a record of two lads who were 
 grandsons of Harry Esmond, whose names are Warring- 
 ton. Before The Virginians appeared we had already be- 
 come acquainted with a scion of that family, the friend of 
 Arthur Pendennis, a younger son of Sir Miles AVarrington, 
 of Suffolk. Henry Esmond's daughter had in a previous 
 generation married a younger son of the then baronet. 
 This is mentioned now to show the way in which Thack- 
 eray's mind worked afterwards upon the details and char- 
 acters which he had originated in Esmond. 
 
 It is not my purpose to tell the story here, but rather 
 to explain the way in which it is written, to show how it 
 differs from other stories, and tlius to explain its effect, 
 Harry Esmond, who tells the story, is of course the hero. 
 There are two heroines who equally command our sympa- 
 thy — Lady Gastlewood, the wife of Harry's kinsman, and 
 her daughter Beatrix. Thackeray himself declared the 
 man to be a prig, and lie was not altogether wrong. Bea- 
 trix, with whom throughout the whole book he is in love, 
 knew him well. " Shall I be frank with you, Harry," sue 
 says, when she is engaged to another suitor, "and say that 
 
v.] ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 125 
 
 if you had not been down on your knees and so humble, 
 you might have fared better 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 and 
 singing hymns to me, I know very well I am no goddess." 
 And again: "As for you, you want a woman to bring 
 your slippers and cap, and to sit at your feet and cry, O 
 caro, caro ! O bravo ! whilst you read your Shakespeares 
 and Miltons and stuff." He was a prig, and the girl he 
 loved knew him, and being quite of another way of think- 
 ing herself, would have nothing to say to him in the way 
 of love. But without something of the aptitudes of a 
 prig the character which the author intended could not 
 have been drawn. There was to be courage — military 
 courage — and that propensity to fighting which the tone 
 of the age demanded in a finished gentleman. Esmond, 
 therefore, is ready enough to use his sword. But at the 
 same time he has to live as becomes one whose name is in 
 some degree under a cloud ; for though he be not in truth 
 an illegitimate offshoot of the noble family which is his, 
 and though he knows that he is not so, still he has to liv^e 
 as though he were. He becomes a soldier, and it was just 
 then that our army was accustomed " to swear horribly 
 in Flanders." But Esmond likes his books, and cannot 
 swear or drink like other soldiers. Nevertheless he has a 
 sort of liking for fast ways in others, knowing that such 
 are the ways of a gallant cavalier. There is a melancholy 
 over his life which makes him always, to himself and to 
 others, much older than his years. He is well aware that, 
 being as he is, it is impossible that Beatrix should love 
 him. Now and then there is a dash of lightness about 
 him, as though he had taught himself, in his philosophy, 
 that even sorrow may be borne with a smile — as though 
 
126 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 there was something in him of the Stoic's doctrine, which 
 made him feel that even disappointed love should not be 
 seen to wound too deep. But still, when he smiles, even 
 when he indulges in some little pleasantry, there is that 
 garb of melancholy over him which always makes a man a 
 prig. But he is a gentleman from the crown of his head 
 to the sole of his foot. Thackeray had let the whole 
 power of his intellect apply itself to a conception of the 
 character of a gentleman. This man is brave, polished, 
 gifted with that old-fashioned courtesy which ladies used 
 to love, true as steel, loyal as faith himself, with a power 
 of self-abnegation which astonishes the criticisincr reader 
 
 CD O 
 
 when he finds such a virtue carried to such an extent with- 
 out seeming to be unnatural. To draw the picture of a 
 man, and say that he is gifted with all the virtues, is easy 
 enough — easy enough to describe him as performing all 
 the virtues. The diflSculty is to put your man on his legs, 
 and make him move about, carrying his virtues with a nat- 
 ural gait, so that the reader shall feel that he is becoming 
 acquainted with flesh and blood, not with a wooden figure. 
 The virtues are all there with Henry Esmond, and the 
 flesh and blood also, so that the reader believes in them. 
 But still there is left a flavour of the character which 
 Thackeray 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 by him. Fault has been 
 found with the story, because of the unnatural rivalry — 
 because it has been felt that a mother's solicitude for her 
 daughter should admit of no such juxtaposition. But the 
 criticism has come, I think, from those who have failed to 
 understand, not from those who have understood the tale,* 
 not because they have read it, but because they have not 
 
V.J ESMOND AND TUE VIRGINIANS. 127 
 
 read it, and have only looted at it or heard of it. Lady 
 Castlewood is perhaps ten years older than the boy Es- 
 mond, whom she first finds in her husband's house, and 
 takes as a protege ; and from the moment in which she 
 finds that he is in love with her own daughter, she does 
 her best to brino: about a marriafice between them. Her 
 husband is alive, and though he is a drunken brute — after 
 the manner of lords of that time — she is thoroughly loyal 
 to him. The little touches, of which the woman is herself 
 altogether unconscious, that gradually turn a love for the 
 boy into a love for the man, are told so delicately, that it 
 is only at last that the reader perceives what has in truth 
 happened to the woman. She is angry with him, grate- 
 ful to him, careful over him, gradually conscious of all his 
 worth, and of all that he does to her and hers, till at last 
 her heart is unable to resist. But then she is a widow ; — ■ 
 and Beatrix has declared that her ambition will not allow 
 her to marry so humble a swain, and Esmond has become 
 — as he says of himself when he calls himself " an old gen- 
 tleman " — " the guardian of all the family," " fit to be tho 
 grandfather of you all." 
 
 The character of Lady Castlewood has required more 
 delicacy in its manipulation than perhaps any other which 
 Thackeray has drawn. There is a mixture in it of self- 
 negation and of jealousy, of gratefulness of heart and of 
 the weary thoughtfulness of age, of occasional sprightli- 
 ness with deep melancholy, of injustice with a thorough 
 appreciation of the good around her, of personal weakness 
 — as shown always in her intercourse with her children, 
 and of personal strength — as displayed when she vindi- 
 cates the position of her kinsman Henry to the Duke of 
 Hamilton, who is about to marry Beatrix; — a mixture 
 which has required a master's hand to trace. These con- 
 
128 . THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 tradictions are essentially feminine. Perhaps it must be 
 confessed that in the unreasonableness of the woman, the 
 author has intended to bear more harshly 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 been killed in a duel, and there were circumstances 
 which had induced her at the moment to quarrel with 
 Harry and to be unjust to him. He had been ill, 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 say- 
 ing her prayers, her heart flows over with tenderness to 
 him. " I knew you would come back," she said; "and 
 to-day, Henry, in the anthem when they sang it — 'When 
 the Lord turned the captivity of Zion we were like them 
 that dream ' — I thought, yes, like them that dream — them 
 that dream. And then it went on, 'They that sow in 
 tears shall reap in joy, and he that goeth forth and weep- 
 eth shall doubtless come home again with rejoicing, bring- 
 ing his sheaves with him.' I looked up from the book 
 and saw you. I was not surprised when I saw you. I 
 knew you would come, my dear, and saw the gold sun- 
 shine round your head." And so it goes on running into 
 expressions of heart-melting tenderness. And yet she her- 
 self does not know that her own heart is seeking his with 
 all 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 in Europe." But she 
 warns him of the nature of her own girl. " 'Tis for my 
 poor Beatrix I tremble, whose headstrong will affrights 
 me, whose jealous temper, and whose vanity no prayers of 
 mine can cure." It is but very gradually that Esmond 
 
v.] ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 129 
 
 becomes aware of the truth. Indeed, he has not become 
 altogether aware of it till the tale closes. The reader does 
 not see that transfer of affection from the dano-hter to the 
 mother which would fail to reach his sympathy. In the 
 last page of the last chapter it is told that it is so — that 
 Esmond marries Lady Castlewood — but it is 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 has most strongly exercised the writer's powers, 
 and will most interest the reader. As far as outward per- 
 son is concerned, she is very lovely — so charming that ev- 
 ery man that comes near to her submits himself to her at- 
 tractions and caprices. It is but rarely that a novelist can 
 succeed in impressing his reader with a sense of female 
 loveliness. Tlie attempt is made so frequently — comes so 
 much as a matter of course in every novel that is written, 
 and fails so much as a matter of course, that the reader 
 does not feel the failure. There are things which we do 
 not expect to have done for us in literature, because they 
 are done so seldom. Novelists are apt to describe the ru- 
 ral scenes among which their characters play their parts, 
 but seldom leave any impression of the places described. 
 Even in poetry how often does this occur? The words 
 used are pretty, well chosen, perhaps musical to the ear, 
 and in that way befitting ; but unless the spot has violent 
 characteristics of its own, such as Burley's cave or the wa- 
 terfall of Lodore, no striking portrait is left. Nor are we 
 disappointed as we read, because we have not been taught 
 to expect it to be otherwise. So it is with those word- 
 painted portraits of women, which are so frequently given 
 and so seldom convey any impression. AVho has an idea 
 of the outside look of Sophia Western, or Edith Bellen- 
 den, or even of Imogen, though lachimo, who described 
 
130 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 her, was so good at words ? A series of pictures — illustra- 
 tions — as we have with Dickens' novels, and with Thack- 
 eray's, may leave an impression of a figure — though even 
 then not often of feminine beauty. But in this work 
 Thackeray has succeeded in imbuing us with a sense of 
 the outside loveliness of Beatrix by the mere force of 
 words. We are not only told it, but we feel that she was 
 such a one as a man cannot fail to covet, even when his 
 judgment goes against his choice. 
 
 Here the judgment goes altogether against the choice. 
 The girl grows up before us from her early youth till her 
 twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year, and becomes — such as 
 her mother described her — one whose headlong will, whose 
 jealousy, and whose vanity notliing could restrain. She 
 has none of those soft foibles, half allied to virtues, by 
 which weak women fall away into misery or perhaps dis- 
 traction. She does not want to love or to be loved. She 
 does not care to be fondled. She has no longing for ca- 
 resses. She wants to be admired — and to make use of 
 the admiration she shall achieve for the material purposes 
 of her life. She wishes to rise in the world ; and her 
 beauty is the sword with which she must open her oyster. 
 As to her heart, it is a thing of which she becomes aware, 
 only to assure herself that it must be laid aside and put 
 out of the question. Now and again Esmond touches it. 
 She just feels that she has a heart to be touched. But she 
 never has a doubt as to her conduct in that respect. She 
 will not allow her dreams of ambition 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 touch of nobility. But this poor creature is 
 made with her bleared blind .eyes to fall into the very 
 
v.] ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 131 
 
 lowest depths of feminine ignobility. One lover comes 
 after another. Ilarry Esmond is, of course, the lover with 
 whom the reader interests himself. At last there comes 
 a duke — fifty years old, indeed, but with semi-royal appa- 
 nages. As his wife she will become a duchess, 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 be Duchess of Hamilton, and towers already in pride 
 of place above her mother, and her kinsman lover, and all 
 her belongings. The story here, with its little incidents 
 of birth, and blood, and ignoble pride, and gratified ambi- 
 tion, with a dash of true feminine nobility on the part of 
 the girl's mother, is such as to leave one with the impres- 
 sion that it has hardly been beaten in English prose fic- 
 tion. Then, in the last moment, the duke is killed in a 
 duel, and the news is brought to the girl by Esmond. 
 She turns upon him and rebukes him harshly. Then she 
 moves away, and feels in a moment that there is nothing 
 left for her in this world, and that she can only throw her- 
 self upon devotion for consolation. " I am best in my 
 own room and by myself," she said. Her eyes 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 simplicity more touching than tears ; " all that 
 you have said is true and kind, and I will go away and 
 will ask pardon." 
 
 But the consolation coming from devotion did not go 
 far with such a one as her. AVe cannot rest on relio-ion 
 merely by saying that we will do so. Very speedily there 
 comes consolation in another form. Queen Anne is on 
 her deathbed, and a young Stuart prince appears upon 
 the scene, of whom some loyal hearts dream that they 
 
132 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 can make a king. He is such as Stuarts were, and only 
 walks across the novelist's canvas to show his folly and 
 hcartlessness. But there is a moment in which Beatrix 
 thinks that she may rise in the world to the proud place 
 of a royal mistress. That is her last ambition ! That is 
 her pride ! That is to be her glory ! The bleared eyes 
 can see no clearer than that. But the mock prince passes 
 away, and nothing but the disgrace of the wish remains. 
 
 Such is the story of Esmond, leaving with it, as does 
 all Thackeray's work, a melancholy conviction of the van- 
 ity of all things human. Vanitas vanitatum, as he wrote 
 on the pages of the French lady's album, and again in one 
 of the earlier numbers of The Cornhill Magazine. With 
 much that is picturesque, much that is droll, much that 
 is valuable as being a correct picture of the period select- 
 ed, the gist of the book is melancholy throughout. It 
 ends with the promise of happiness to come, but that is 
 contained merely in a concluding paragraph. The one 
 woman, during the course of the story, becomes a widow, 
 with a living love in which she has no hope, with children 
 for whom her fears are almost stronger than her affection, 
 who never can rally herself to happiness for a moment. 
 The other, with all her beauty and all her brilliance, be- 
 comes what we have described — and marries at last her 
 brother's tutor, who becomes a bishop by means of her 
 intrigues. Esmond, the hero, who is compounded of all 
 good gifts, after a childhood and youth tinged throughout 
 with melancholy, vanishes from us, with the promise that 
 he is to be rewarded by the hand of the mother of the 
 girl he has loved. 
 
 And yet, there is not a page in the book over which a 
 thoughtful reader cannot pause with delight. The nature 
 in it is true nature. Given a story thus sad, and persons 
 
v.] ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 133 
 
 thus situated, and it is thus that the details would follow 
 each other, and thus that the people would conduct them- 
 selves. It was the tone of Thackeray's mind to turn away 
 from the prospect of things joyful, and to see — or believe 
 that he saw — in all human affairs, the seed of something 
 base, of something which would be antagonistic to true 
 contentment. All his snobs, and all his fools, and all his 
 knaves, come from the same conviction. Is it not the 
 doctrine on which our relio-ion is founded — thouo-h the 
 sadness of it there is alleviated 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 it be, the lesson taught in Esmond 
 is salutary from beginning to end. The sermon truly 
 preached is that glory can only come from that which is 
 truly glorious, and that the results of meanness end al- 
 ways in the mean. No girl will be taught to wish to shine 
 like Beatrix, nor will any youth be made to think that to 
 gain the love of such a one it can be worth his while to 
 expend his energy or his heart. 
 
 Esmond was published in 1852. It was not till 1858, 
 some time after he had returned from his lecturing tours, 
 that he published the sequel called The Virginians. It 
 was first brought out in twenty -four monthly numbers, 
 and ran through the years 1858 and 1859, Messrs. Brad- 
 bury and Evans having been the publishers. It takes up 
 by no means the story of Esmond, and hardly the charac- 
 ters. The twin lads, who are called the Virginians, and 
 
134 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 whose name is Warrington, arc grandsons of Esmond find 
 his wife Lady Castlewood. Their one daughter, born at 
 the estate in Virginia, had married a Warrington, and the 
 Virginians are the issue of that marriage. In the story, 
 one is sent to England, there to make his way; and the 
 other is for awhile supposed to have been killed by the In- 
 dians. How he was not killed, but after awhile comes 
 again forward in the world of fiction, will be found in the 
 story, which it is not our purpose to set forth here. The 
 most interesting part of the narrative is that which tells 
 us of the later fortunes of Madame Beatrix — the Baroness 
 Bernstein — the lady who had in her youth been Beatrix 
 Esmond, who had then condescended to become Mrs. 
 Tusher, the tutor's wife, whence she rose to be the " lady " 
 of a bishop, and, after the bishop had been put to rest 
 under a load of marble, had become the baroness — a rich 
 old woman, courted by all her relatives because of her 
 wealth. 
 
 In The Virginians, as a work of art, is discovered, more 
 strongly than had shown itself yet in any of his works, 
 that propensity to wandering which came to Thackeray 
 because of his idleness. It is, I think, to be found in 
 every book he ever wrote — except Esmond; but is here 
 more conspicuous than it had been in his earlier years. 
 Though he can settle himself down to his pen and ink — 
 not always even to that svithout a struggle, but to that 
 with sufficient burst of energy to produce a large average 
 amount of work — he cannot settle himself down to the 
 task of contriving a story. There have been those — 
 and they have not been bad judges of literature — who 
 Lave told me that they have best liked these vague nar- 
 ratives. The mind of the man has been clearly exhibited 
 .in them. In them he has spoken out his thoughts, and 
 
v.] ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 135 
 
 given the world to know his convictions, as well as could 
 hav^e been done in the carrying out any well-conducted 
 plot. And though the narratives be vague, the characters 
 are alive. In The Virginians, the two young men and 
 their mother, and the other ladies with whom they have 
 to deal, and especially their aunt, the Baroness Bernstein, 
 are all alive. For desultory reading, for that picking up 
 of a volume now and again which requires permission to 
 forget the plot of a novel, this novel is admirably adapted. 
 There is not a page of it vacant or dull. But he who 
 takes it up to read as a whole, will find that it is the work 
 of a desultory writer, to whom it is not unfrequently dif- 
 ficult to remember the incidents of his own narrative. 
 " How good it is, even as it is ! — but if he 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's mind 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 on from day 
 to day furthering the difficulty he has intended to mas- 
 ter, till the book, under the stress of circumstances — de- 
 mands for copy and the like — has been completed before 
 the difficulty has even in truth been encountered. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Thackeray's burlesques. 
 
 As so niucli of Thackeray's writing partakes of the nature 
 of burlesque, it would have been unnecessary to devote a 
 separate chapter to the subject, were it not that there are 
 among his tales two or three so exceedingly good of their 
 kind, coming so entirely up to our idea of what a prose 
 burlesque should be, that were I to omit to mention them 
 I should pass over a distinctive portion of our author's 
 work. 
 
 The volume cnWcd Burlesques, \n\h\ls\\Gd in 18G9, begins 
 with the Novels hy Eminent Hands, and Jeames''s Dianj^ 
 to which I have already alluded. It contains also The 
 Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan, A Legend of 
 the Rhine J and Rebecca and Rowena. It is of these that 
 I will now speak. The History of the Next French Revo- 
 lution and Cox's Diary, with which the volume is con- 
 cluded, are, according to my thinking, hardly equal to the 
 others ; nor are they so properly called burlesques. 
 
 Nor will I say much of Major Gahagan, though his ad- 
 ventures arc very good fun. lie is a warrior — that is, of 
 course — and he is one in whose wonderful narrative all 
 that distant India can produce in the way of boasting, 
 is superadded to Ireland's best efforts in the same line. 
 Baron Munchausen was nothing to him ; and to the bare 
 
CHAP. VI.] THACKERAY'S BURLESQUES. 137 
 
 and simple miracles of the baron is joined that humour 
 without which Thackeray never tells any story. This is 
 broad enough, no doubt, but is still humour — as when the 
 major tells us that he always kept in his own apartment a 
 small store of gunpowder; "always keeping it under my 
 bed, with a candle burning for fear of accidents." Or 
 when he describes his courage ; " I was running — running 
 as the brave staoj before the hounds — runnino;, as I have 
 done a great number of times in my life, when there w^as 
 no help for it but a run." Then he tells us of his diges- 
 tion. " Once in Spain I ate the leg of a horse, and was so 
 eager to swallow this morsel, that I bolted the shoe as well 
 as the hoof, and never felt the slightest inconvenience 
 from either." He storms a citadel, and has only a snuff- 
 box given him for his reward. " Never mind," says Ma- 
 jor Gahagan ; " when they want me to storm a fort again, 
 I shall know better." By which we perceive that the ma- 
 jor remembered his Horace, and had in his mind the sol- 
 dier who had lost his purse. But the major's adventures, 
 excellent as they are, lack the continued interest which is 
 attached to the two following stories. 
 
 Of what nature is The Legend of the Rhine^ we learn 
 from the commencement. " It w^as in the good old days 
 of chivalry, when every mountain that bathes its shadow 
 in the Rhine had its castle ; not inhabited as now by a few 
 rats and owls, nor covered with moss and wallflowers and 
 funguses and creeping ivy. No, no; where the ivy now 
 clusters there grew strong portcullis and bars of steel ; 
 where the wallflowers now quiver in the ramparts there 
 were silken banners embroidered with wonderful heraldry; 
 men-at-arms marched where now you shall only see a bank 
 of moss or a hideous black champignon ; and in place of 
 the rats and owlets, I warrant me there were ladies and 
 
 7 
 
138 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 knights to revel in the great halls, and to feast and dance, 
 and to make love there." So that we know well before- 
 hand of what kind will this story be. It will be pure ro- 
 mance — burlesqued. " Ho seneschal, fill rae a cup of hot 
 liquor; put sugar in it, good fellow; yea, and a little hot 
 water — but very little, for my soul is sad as I think of 
 those days and knights of old." 
 
 A knio-ht is ridinjr alone on his war-horse, with all his 
 armour with him — and his luggage. His rank is shown 
 by the name on his portmanteau, and his former address 
 and present destination by a card which was attached. It 
 had run, " Count Ludwig de Hombourg, Jerusalem, but the 
 name of the Holy City had been dashed out with the pen, 
 and that of Godesberg substituted." " By St. Hugo of 
 Katzenellcnbogcn," said the good knight, shivering, " 'tis 
 colder here than at Damascus. Shall I be at Godesberg 
 in time for dinner ?" He has come to see his friend 
 Count Karl, Margrave of Godesberg, 
 
 But at Godesberg evei'ything is in distress and sorrow. 
 There is a new inmate there, one Sir Gottfried, since whose 
 arrival the knio-ht of the castle has become a wretched 
 man, having been taught to believe all evils of his wife, 
 and of his child Otto, and a certain stranger, one Ililde- 
 brandt. Gottfried, we see with half an eye, has done it 
 all. It is in vain that Ludwig de Hombourg tells his old 
 friend Karl that this Gottfried is a thoroughly bad fel- 
 low, that he had been found to be a card -sharper in the 
 Holy Land, and had been drummed out of his regiment. 
 "'Twas but some silly quarrel over the wine-cup," says 
 Karl. " Huo-o de Brodeucl would have no black bottle on 
 the board." We think we can remember the quarrel of 
 "Brodenel" and the black bottle, though so many things 
 have taken place since that. 
 
VI.] TUACKERAY'S BURLESQUES. 139 
 
 Til ere is a festival in the castle, and Hildebrandt comes 
 with the other guests. Then Ludwig's attention is called 
 by poor Karl, the father, to a certain family likeness. Can 
 it be that he is not the father of his own child? lie is 
 playing cards with his friend Ludwig when that traitor 
 Gottfried comes and whispers to him, and makes an ap- 
 pointment. " I will be there too," thought Count Lud- 
 wig, the good Knight of Hombourg. 
 
 On the next morning, before the stranger knight had 
 shaken off his slumbers, all had been found out and every- 
 thing done. The lady had been sent to a convent and her 
 son to a monastery. The knight of the castle has no com- 
 fort but in his friend Gottfried, a distant cousin who is to 
 inherit everything. All this is told to Sir Ludwig — who 
 immediately takes steps to repair the mischief. "A cup 
 of coffee straight," says he to the servitors. "Bid the 
 cook pack me a sausage and bread in paper, and the groom 
 saddle Streithenojst. We have far to ride." So this re- 
 dresser 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 chron- 
 iclers — a hermit sitting by and describing everything al- 
 most as well as Rebecca did on the tow^r. Sir Ludwig 
 being in the right, of course gains the day. But the es- 
 cape of the fallen knight's horse is the cream of this chap- 
 ter. " Away, ay, away ! — away amid the green vineyards 
 and golden cornfields ; away up the steep mountains, where 
 he frightened the eagles in their eyries; away down the 
 clattering ravines, where the flashing cataracts tumble ; 
 away through the dark pine -forests, where the hungry 
 wolves are howling; away over the dreary wolds, where 
 the wild wind walks alone ; away through the splashing 
 K 
 
140 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 quagmires, where the "will -o'- the wisp slunk frightened 
 among the reeds ; away through light and darkness, storm 
 and sunshine ; away by tower and town, highroad and 
 hamlet. . . . Brave horse ! gallant steed ! snorting child of 
 Araby ! On went the horse, over mountains, rivers, turn- 
 pikes, applewomen ; and never stopped until he reached a 
 livery-stable in Cologne, where his master was accustomed 
 to put him up I" 
 
 The conquered knight, Sir Gottfried, of course reveals 
 the truth. This Hildebrandt is no more than the lady's 
 brother — as it happened a brother in disguise — and hence 
 the likeness. AVicked knights, when they die, always di- 
 vulge their wicked secrets, and this knight Gottfried does 
 so now. Sir Ludwig carries the new^s home to the afflict- 
 ed husband and father ; who of course instantly sends ofi 
 messeno;ers for his wife and son. The wife won't come. 
 All she wants is to have her dresses and jewels sent to her. 
 Of so cruel a husband she has had enough. As for the 
 son, he has jumped out of a boat on the Rhine, as he was 
 being carried to his monastery, and was drowned ! 
 * But he was not drowned, but had only dived. "The 
 gallant boy swam on beneath the water, never lifting his 
 head for a single moment between Godesberg and Cologne ; 
 the distance being twenty-five or thirty miles." 
 
 Then he becomes an archer, dressed in green from head 
 to foot. IIow it was is all told in the story ; and he goes 
 to shoot for a prize at the Castle of Adolf the Duke of 
 Cleeves. On his way he shoots a raven marvellously — al- 
 most as marvellously as did Robin Hood the twig in Ivan- 
 hoe. Then one of his companions is married, or nearly 
 married, to the mysterious " Lady of Windeck " — would 
 liave been married but for Otto, and that the bishop and 
 dean, who were dragged up from their long-ago graves to 
 
VI.] THACKERAY'S BURLESQUES. 141 
 
 perform the ghostly ceremony, were prevented by tlie ill- 
 timed mirth of a certain old canon of the church named 
 Schidnischmidt. The reader has to read the name out 
 loud before he recognizes an old friend. But this of the 
 Lady of Windeck is an episode. 
 
 IIow at the shooting -match, which of course ensued, 
 Otto shot for and won the 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 and sulky, 
 but rich and powerful, nobleman who had come to take 
 the hand, whether he could win the heart or not, of the 
 dano'hter of the duke. It is all arranixed accordinof to the 
 proper and rouiantic order. Otto, though he enlists in 
 the duke's archer-guard as simple soldier, contrives to fight 
 with the Rowski de Donnerblitz, Margrave of Eulenschren- 
 kenstein, and of course kills him. " ' Yield, yield, Sir 
 Rowski!' shouted he, in a calm voice. A blow dealt mad- 
 ly at his head was the reply. It was the last blow that the 
 Count of Eulenschrenkenstein ever struck in battle. The 
 curse was on his lips as the crashing steel descended into 
 his brain and split it in two. He rolled like a dog from 
 his horse, his enemy's knee was in a moment on his chest, 
 and the dagger of mercy at his throat, as the knight once 
 more called upon him to yield." The knight was 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. For this story, as well as the rest, is 
 a burlesque on our dear old favourite Ivanhoe. 
 
 That everything goes right at last, that the wife comes 
 back from her monastery, and joins her jealous husband, 
 and that the duke's daughter has always, in truth, known 
 that the poor archer was a noble knight — these things are 
 all matters of course. 
 
142 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 But the best of the three burlesques ia Rebecca and 
 Mowena, or A Romance upon Romance, which I need not 
 tell my readers is a continuation of Ivanhoe. Of this bur- . 
 lesque it is the peculiar characteristic that, while it has been 
 written to ridicule the persons and the incidents of that 
 perhaps the most favourite novel in the English language, 
 it has been so written that it would not have offended the 
 author had he lived to read it, nor does it disgust or annoy 
 Ihose who most love the origiufil. There is not a word 
 in it having an intention to belittle Scott. It has sprung 
 from the genuine humour created in Thackeray's mind by 
 his aspect of the romantic. We remember how reticent, 
 how dignified was Rowena — how cold we perhaps thought 
 her, whether there was so little of that billing and cooing, 
 that kissing and squeezing, between her and Ivanhoe which 
 we used to think necessary to lovers' blisses. And there 
 was left, too, on our minds an idea that Ivanhoe had liked 
 the Jewess almost as well as Rowena, and that Rowena 
 might possibly have become jealous. Thackeray's mind 
 at once went to work and pictured to him a Rowena such 
 as such a woman might become after marriage ; and as 
 Ivanhoe was of a melancholy nature and apt to be hipped, 
 and grave, and silent, as a matter of course Thackeray pre- 
 sumes him to have been henpecked after his marriage. 
 
 Our dear Wamba disturbs his mistress in some devo- 
 tional conversation with her chaplain, and the stern lady 
 orders that the fool shall have three-dozen lashes. " I got 
 you out of Front de Boeuf 's castle," said poor Wamba, 
 piteously appealing to Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, " and canst 
 thou not save me from the lash ?" 
 
 ''Yes; from Front de Bceuf's castle, %vhcn you were 
 locked up with the Jewess in the toiverP^ said Rowena, 
 haughtily replying to the timid appeal of her husband. 
 
VI.] THACKERAY'S BURLESQUES. 143 
 
 "Giirtli, give Liiii four- dozen" — and this was all poor 
 Wamba got by applying for the mediation of Ms master. 
 Then the satirist moralises : " Did you ever know a right- 
 minded woman pardon another for being handsomer and 
 more love - worthy than herself ?" Rowcna is " always 
 flinging Rebecca into Ivanhoe's teeth ;" and altogether life 
 at Rotherwood, as described by the later chronicles, is not 
 very happy even when most domestic. Ivanhoc becomes 
 sad and moody. He takes to drinking, and his lady does 
 not forget to tell him of it. " Ah, dear axe I" he exclaims, 
 apostrophising his weapon, " ah, gentle steel ! that was a 
 merry time when I sent thee crashing into the pate of the 
 Emir Abdul Melek!" 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 look after King 
 Richard, who of course was wandering abroad. lie antici- 
 pates a little difficulty with his wife ; but she is only too 
 happy to let him go, comforting herself with the idea that 
 Athelstane will look after her. So her hnsband starts on 
 his joaraey. "Then Ivanhoe's trumpet blew. Then Row- 
 ena waved her pocket-handkerchief. Then the household 
 gave a shout. Then the pursuivant of the good knight, 
 Sir Wilfrid the Crusader, flung out his banner — which 
 was argent, a gules cramoisy with three Moors impaled — 
 then Wamba gave a lash on his mule's haunch, and Ivan- 
 hoe, heaving a great sigh, turned the tail of his war-horse 
 upon the castle of his fathers." 
 
 Ivanhoe finds Coenr de Leon besieging the Castle of 
 Chalons, and there they both do wondrous deeds, Ivanhoo 
 always surpassing the king. The jealousy of the courtiers, 
 the ingratitude of the king, and the melancholy of the 
 knight, who is never comforted except when he has slaugh- 
 tered some hundreds, are delightful. Roger dc Backbite 
 
144 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 and Peter de Toadliole are intended to be quite real. Then 
 his majesty sings, passing off as his own a song of Charles 
 Lever's. Sir Wilfrid declares the truth, and twits the king 
 with his falsehood, -whereupon he has the guitar thrown at 
 his head for his pains. He catches the guitar, however, 
 gracefully in his left hand, and sings his owm immortal 
 ballad of King Canute — 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 is killing the youngest of the sons of the 
 Count of Chalons. Those illustrations of Doyle's are ad- 
 mirable. The size of the king's head, and the size of his 
 battle-axe as contrasted with the size of the child, are bur- 
 lesque all over. But the king has been wounded by a 
 bolt from the bow of Sir Bertrand do Gourdon while he 
 is slaughtering the infant, and there is an end of him. 
 Ivanhoe, too, is killed at the siege — Sir Roger de Backbite 
 having stabbed him in the back during the scene. Had 
 he not been then killed, his widow Rowena could not have 
 married iVthelstane, which she soon did after hearing the 
 sad news ; nor could he have had that celebrated epitaph 
 in Latin and Eufrlish: 
 
VI.] THACKERAY'S BUKLESQUES. 145 
 
 Hie est Guilfridus, belli dum vixit avidus. 
 Cum gladeo et lancea Novmanuia et quoque Francia 
 Yerbera 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.* 
 
 The translation, we are told, was by Wamba : 
 
 Under the stone you behold, Brian, the Templar untrue, 
 
 Buried and coffined and cold, Fairly in tourney he slew ; 
 
 Lieth Sir Wilfrid the Bold. Saw Hierusalem too. 
 
 Always he marched in advance. Now he is buried and gone, 
 
 Warring in Flandei's and France, Lying beneath the gray stone. 
 
 Doughty with sword and with Where shall you find .such a 
 lance. one ? 
 
 Famous in Saracen fight. Long time his widow deplored, 
 
 Rode in his youth, the Good Weeping, the fate of her lord. 
 
 Knight, Sadly cut off by the sword. 
 Scattering Paynims in flight. 
 
 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 will suppose, from the events described in the last 
 chapter, that our friend Ivanhoe is really dead." He is of 
 course cured of his wounds, though they take six years in 
 the curing. And then he makes his way bach to Kother- 
 wood, in a friar's disguise, much as he did on that former 
 
 ^ I doubt that Thackeray did not write the Latin epitaph, but I 
 hardly dare suggest the name of any author. The "vixit avidus" 
 is quite worthy of Thackeray; but had he tried his hand at such 
 mode of expression he would have done more of it. I should like to 
 know whether he had been in company with Father Prout at the time. 
 
146 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 occasion when wo first mot liim, and there is received by 
 Athelstane and Rowena — 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 Ivanhoo, who 
 roams about the country, melancholy — as he of course 
 would be — charitable — as he perhaps might be — for we 
 are specially told that he had a large fortune and nothing 
 to do with it, and slaying robbers wherever he met them — 
 but sad at heart all the time. Then there comes a little 
 burst of the author's own feelings, while he is burlesquing. 
 "Ah my dear friends and British public, are there not oth- 
 ers who are melancholy under a mask of gaiety, and who 
 in the midst of crowds are lonely ? Liston was a most 
 melancholy man ; Grimaldi had feelings ; and then others 
 I wot of. But psha ! — let us have the next chapter." In 
 all of which there was a touch of earnestness. 
 
 Ivanhoe's griefs were enhanced by the wickedness of 
 King John, under whom he would not serve. " It was Sir 
 Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, I need scarcely say, who got the Bar^ 
 ons of Eno-land to leao;ue to2:ether and extort from the 
 king that famous instrument and palladium of our liber- 
 ties, at present in the British Museum, Great Russell Street, 
 Bloomsbury — The Magna Charta." Athelstane also quar- 
 rels with the king, wdiose orders he disobeys, and Rother- 
 wood is attacked by the royal army. No one was of real 
 service in the way of fighting except Ivanhoe — and how 
 could he take up that cause ? " No ; be hanged to me," 
 said the knight, bitterly. "This is a quarrel in which I 
 can't interfere. Common politeness forbids. Let yonder 
 ale-swilling Athelstane defend his — ha, ha! — wife; and 
 
VI.] THACKERAY'S BURLESQUES. 147 
 
 my Lady Rowena guard her — ha, ha! — sonr and he 
 laughed wildly and madly. 
 
 But Athelstane is killed— this time in earnest — and then 
 Ivanhoe rushes to the rescue. He finds Gurth dead at the 
 park-lodge ; and though he is ail alone — having out ridden 
 his followers — he rushes up the chestnut avenue to the 
 housed which is being attacked. " An Ivanhoe ! an Ivan- 
 hoe !" he bellowed out with a shout that overcame all the 
 din of battle ; — " Notre Dame a la recousse !" and to hurl 
 his lance through the midriff of Reginald de Bracy, who 
 was commanding the assault — who fell howling with an- 
 guish — to wave his battle-axe over his own head, and to 
 cut off those of thirteen men-at-arms, was the work of an 
 instant. "An Ivanhoe! an Ivanhoe!" he still shouted, 
 and down went a man as sure as he said " hoe !" 
 
 Nevertheless he is again killed by multitudes, or very 
 nearly — and has again to be cured by the tender nursing 
 of Wamba. But Athelstane is really dead, and Rowena 
 and the boy have to be found. He does his duty and 
 finds them — just in time to be present at Rowena's death. 
 She has been put in prison by King John, and is in ex- 
 tremis when her first husband gets to her. " Wilfrid, my 
 early loved,"^ slowly gasped she, removing her gray hair 
 from her furrowed temples, and gazing on her boy fondly 
 as he nestled on Ivanhoe's knee — " promise me by St. Wal- 
 theof of Templestowe — promise me one boon !" 
 
 "I do," said Ivanhoe, clasping the boy, and thinking 
 that it was to that little innocent that the promise was 
 intended to apply. 
 
 * There is something almost illnatured in his treatment of Rowena, 
 who is very false in her declarations of love ; — and it is to be feared 
 that by Rowena the author iutcnds the normal married lady of Eng- 
 lish society. 
 
148 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 ''By St.AValtheof?" 
 
 "By StAValtlieof!" 
 
 " Promise me, then," gasped Rowena, staring wildly at 
 him, " that you will never marry a Jewess 1" 
 
 "By St. Waltheof!" cried Ivanhoe, "but this is too 
 much," and he did not make the promise. 
 
 "Having placed young Cedric at school at the Hall of 
 Dotheboys, in Yorkshire, and arranged his family affairs. 
 Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe quitted a country which had no 
 longer any charm for him, as there was no fighting to be 
 done, and in which his stay was rendered less agreeable 
 by the notion that King John would hang him." So he 
 goes forth and fights again, in league with the Knights of 
 St. John — the Templars naturally having a dislike to him 
 because of Brian de Bois Guilbert. " The only fault that 
 the great and gallant, though severe and ascetic Folko of 
 Heydenbraten, the chief of the Order of St. John, found 
 with the melancholy warrior whose lance did such service 
 to the cause, was that he did not persecute the Jews as 
 so religious a knight should. So the Jews, in cursing the 
 Christians, always excepted the name of the Desdichado 
 — or the double disinherited, as he now was — the Des- 
 dichado Doblado." Then came the battle of Alarcos, and 
 the Moors were all but in possession of the whole of 
 Spain. Sir Wilfrid, like other good Christians, cannot en- 
 dure this, so he takes ship in Bohemia, where he happens 
 to be quartered, and has himself carried to Barcelona, and 
 proceeds " to slaughter the Moors forthwith." Then there 
 is a scene in which Isaac of York comes on as a messen- 
 ger, to ransom from a Spanish knight, Don Bcltram de 
 Cuchilla y Trabuco, y Espada, y Espelon, a little Moorish 
 girl. The Spanish knight of course murders the little girl 
 instead of takinir the ransom. Two hundred thousand 
 
VI.] THACKERAY'S BURLESQUES. 149 
 
 dirhems arc offered, however much that may be ; but the 
 knight, who happens to be in funds at the time, prefers to 
 kill the little girl. All this is only necessary to the story 
 as introducing Isaac of York. Sir Wilfrid is of course 
 intent upon finding Rebecca. Through all his troubles 
 and triumphs, from his gaining and his losing of Row- 
 ena, from the day on which he had been " locked wp with 
 the Jewess in the tower^'' he had always been true to her. 
 "Away from me!" said the old Jew, tottering. "Away, 
 Rebecca is — dead!" Then Ivanhoe goes out and kills 
 fifty thousand Moors, and there is the picture of him — 
 killing them. 
 
 But Rebecca is not dead at all. Her father had said 
 so because Rebecca had behaved very badly to him. She 
 had refused to marry the Moorish prince, or any of her 
 own people, the Jews, and had gone as far as to declare 
 her passion for Ivanhoe and her resolution to be a 
 Christian. All the Jews and Jewesses in Valencia turned 
 against her — so that she was locked up in the back-kitchen 
 and almost starved to death. But Ivanhoe found her, of 
 course, and makes her Mrs. Ivanhoe, or Lady Wilfrid the 
 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 of it any time these five-and-twen- 
 ty years — ever since, as a boy at school, I commenced the 
 noble study of novels — ever since the day when, lying on 
 sunny slopes, of half-holidays, the fair chivalrous figures 
 and beautiful shapes of knights and ladies were visible to 
 me, ever since I grew to love Rebecca, that sweetest creat- 
 ure of the poet's fancy, and longed to see her righted." 
 
 And so, no doubt, it had been. The very burlesque 
 had grown from the way in which his young imagination 
 bad been moved by Scott's romance. lie had felt, from 
 
150 THACKERAY. [chap. vi. 
 
 tlie time of those happy half-holidays in which he had 
 been lucky enough to get hold of the novel, that according 
 to all laws of poetic justice, Rebecca, as being the more 
 beautiful and the more interesting 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 
 same time all that is ludicrous in our ideas of middle-age 
 chivalry ; the absurdity of its recorded deeds, the blood- 
 thirstiness of its recreations, the selfishness of its men, the 
 falseness of its honour, the cringing of its loyalty, the 
 tyranny of its princes. And so there came forth Rebecca 
 and Rowena, all broad fun from beginning to end, but 
 never without a purpose — the best burlesque, as I think, 
 in our language. 
 
CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 Thackeray's lectures. 
 
 In speaking of Thackeray's life, I have said why and how 
 it was that he took upon himself to lecture, and have also 
 told the reader that he was altogether successful in carry- 
 ing out the views proposed to himself. Of his peculiar 
 manner of lecturing I have said but little, never having 
 heard him. "He pounded along — very clearly," I have 
 been told ; from which I surmise that there was no special 
 grace of eloquence, but that he was always audible. I 
 cannot imagine that he should have been ever eloquent. 
 He could not have taken the trouble necessary with his 
 voice, with his cadences, or with his outward appearance. 
 I imagine that they who seem so naturally to fall into the 
 proprieties of elocution have generally taken a great deal 
 of trouble beyond that which the mere finding of their 
 words has cost them. It is clearly to the matter of what 
 he then gave the world, and not to the manner, that we 
 must look for 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 vol- 
 ume now before us The Georges are printed first, and the 
 whole is produced simply as a part of Thackeray's literary 
 work. Looked at, however, in that light, the merit of the 
 two sets of biographical essays is very different. In the 
 
152 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 one "we Lave all the anecdotes wliicli could be brought to- 
 gether respecting four of our kings — who as men were 
 not peculiar, though their reigns were, and will always be, 
 famous, because the country during the period was in- 
 creasing greatly in prosperity, and was ever strengthening 
 the hold it had upon its liberties. In the other set the 
 lecturer was a man of letters dealing with men of letters, 
 and himself a prince among humorists is dealing with the 
 humorists of his own country and language. One could 
 not imagine a better subject for such discourses from 
 Thackeray's mouth than the latter. The former was not, 
 I think, so good. 
 
 In discussing the lives of kings the biographer may 
 trust to personal details or to historical facts. He may 
 take the man, and say what good or evil may be said of 
 him as a man ; — or he may take the period, and tell his 
 readers what happened to the country while this or the 
 other king was on the throne. In the case with which 
 we are dealing, the lecturer had not time enough or room 
 enough for real history. His object was to let his audi- 
 ence know of what nature were the men ; and we are bound 
 to say that the pictures have not, on the whole, been flat- 
 tering. It was 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 course be- 
 come us to write if we were dealing with the life of a 
 living sovereign — would not be interesting. No one on 
 going to hear Thackeray lecture on the Georges expected 
 that. There must be some piquancy given, or the lecture 
 would be dull ; — and the eulogy of personal virtues can sel- 
 dom be piquant. It is difllcult to speak fittingly of a sov- 
 ereign, either living or not, long since gone. You can 
 
VII.] THACKERAY'S LECTURES. 153 
 
 hardly praise sucli a one without flattery. You can hardly 
 censure him without injustice. We are either ignorant of 
 his personal doings or "we know them as secrets, which 
 have heen divulged for the most part either falsely or 
 treacherously — often both falsely and treacherously. It 
 is better, perhaps, that we should not deal with the person- 
 alities of princes. 
 
 I believe that Thacteray fancied that he had spoken 
 well of George III., and am sure that it w^as his intention 
 to do so. But the impression he leaves is poor. " He is 
 said not to hav^e cared for Shakespeare or tragedy much ; 
 farces and pantomimes were his joy ; — and especially when 
 clown swallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, he would 
 laugh so outrageously that the lovely princess by his side 
 would have to say, 'My gracious monarch, do compose 
 yourself.' ' George, be a king !' were the words which 
 she " — his mother — " was ever croaking in the ears of her 
 son ; and a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted 
 man tried to be." "He did his best; he w^orked accord- 
 ing to his lights ; what virtues he knew he tried to prac- 
 tise; what knowledge he could master he strove to ac- 
 quire." If the lectures were to be popular, it was abso- 
 lutely necessary that they should be written in this strain. 
 A lecture simply laudatory on the life of St. Paul would 
 not draw even the bench of bishops to listen to it ; but 
 were a flaw found in the apostle's life, the whole Church 
 of Enofland. would be bound to know all about it. I am 
 quite sure that Thackeray believed every word that he said 
 in the lectures, 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 not intend to flatter the 
 royal family ; — equally sure that he would not calumniate. 
 There were, however, so many difficulties to be encounter' 
 
164= THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 od that I cannot but think tliat the subject was ill-chosen. 
 In makinof them so amusinjj as he did, and so little offen- 
 sive, great ingenuity was shown. 
 
 I will now go back to the fii*st series, in wliich the lect- 
 urer treated of Swift, Congreve, Addison, Steele, Prior, 
 Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett, Fielding, Sterne, and Gold- 
 smith. All these Thackeray has put in their proper order, 
 placing the men from the date of their birth, except Prior, 
 who was in truth the eldest of the ]ot, but whom it was 
 necessary to depose, in order that the great Swift might 
 stand first on the list, and Smollett, who was not born till 
 fourteen yeai-s after Fielding, eight years after Sterne, and 
 who has been moved up, I presume, simply from caprice, 
 li'rom the birth of the first to the death of the last, was a 
 period of nearly a hundred yoars. They were never abso- 
 lutely all alive together ; b it it was nearly so, Addison 
 and Prior having died before Smollett was born. AVhetlv- 
 er we should accept as humorists the full catalogue, may 
 be a question ; though we shall hardly wish to eliminate 
 any one from such a dozen of names. Pope we should 
 hardly define as a humorist, 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 Bape of 
 the Lock, or to the translator of any portion of The Odys- 
 sey. Nor should we have included Fielding or Smollett, 
 in spite of Parson Adams and Tabitha Bramble, unless 
 anxious to fill a good company. That Hogarth was spe- 
 cially a humorist no one will deny; but in speaking of 
 humorists we should have presumed, unless otherwise no- 
 tified, that humorists in letters only liad been intended. 
 As Thackeray explains clearly what he means by a hu- 
 morist, I may as well here repeat the passage : " If hu- 
 mour only meant laughter, you would scarcely feel more 
 
VII.] THACKERAY'S LECTURES. 155 
 
 interest about humorous writers than about the private 
 life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who possesses in 
 common with these the power of making you laugh. But 
 the men regarding whose lives and stories your kind pres- 
 ence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, 
 appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides 
 our mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer pro- 
 fesses 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, the 
 unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he com- 
 ments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life al- 
 most. He takes upon himself to be the week-day preach- 
 er, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, and speaks, and 
 feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem him — some- 
 times love him. And as his business is to mark other 
 people's lives and peculiarities, we moralise upon his life 
 when he is gone — and yesterday's preacher becomes the 
 text for to-day's sermon." 
 
 Having thus explained his purpose, Thackeray begins 
 his task, and puts Swift in his front rank as a humorist. 
 The picture given of this great man has very manifestly 
 the look of truth, and if true, is terrible indeed. We do, 
 in fact, know it to be true — even though it be admitted 
 that there is still room left for a book to be written on 
 the life of the fearful dean. Here was a man endued with 
 an intellect pellucid as well as brilliant ; who could not 
 only conceive but see also — with some fine instincts too ; 
 whom fortune did not flout ; whom circumstances fairly 
 served ; but who, from first to last, was miserable himself, 
 who made others miserable, and who deserved misery. 
 Our business, during the page or two which we can give 
 to the subject, is not with Swift, but with Thackeray's 
 
156 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 picture of Swift. It is painted witli colours terribly strong 
 and with shadows fearfully deep. " Would you like to 
 have lived with him?" Thackeray asks. Then he says 
 how pleasant it would have been to have passed some time 
 with Fielding, Johnson, or Goldsmith. " I should like 
 to have been Shakespeare's shoeblack," he says. *'But 
 Swift ! If you had been his inferior in parts — and that, 
 with a great respect for all persons present, I fear is only 
 very likely — his equal in mere social station, he would 
 have bullied, scorned, and insulted you. If, undeterred 
 by his great reputation, you had met him like a man, he 
 would have quailed before you and not had the pluck to 
 reply — and gone home, and years after written a foul epi- 
 gram upon you." There is a picture ! " If you had been 
 a lord with a blue riband, who flattered his vanity, or could 
 help his ambition, he would have been the most delightful 
 company in the world. . . . How he would have torn your 
 enemies to pieces for you, and made fun of the Opposition ! 
 llis servility was so boisterous that it looked like inde- 
 pendence." lie was a man whose mind was never fixed 
 on high things, but was striving always after something 
 which, little as it might be, and successful as he was, 
 should always be out of his reach. It had been his mis- 
 fortune to become a clergyman, because the way to church 
 preferment seemed to be the readiest. He became, as we 
 all know, a dean — but never a bishop, and was therefore 
 wretched. Thackeray describes him as a clerical highway- 
 man, seizing on all he could get. But " the great prize 
 has not yet come. The coach with the mitre and crozier 
 in it, which he intends to have for his share, has been 
 delayed on the way from St. James's ; and he waits and 
 waits till nightfall, when his runners come and tell him 
 that the coach has taken a different way and escaped him. 
 
VII.J THACKERAY'S LECTURES. 157 
 
 So he fires bis pistol into the air with a curse, and rides 
 away into his own country ;" — or, in other words, takes a 
 poor deanery in Ireland. 
 
 Thackeray explains very correctly, as I think, the nature 
 of the weapons which 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 
 the honour and glory ; but it seems to me he was no more 
 an Irishman than a man born of English parents at Cal- 
 cutta is a Hindoo. Goldsmith was an Irishman, and al- 
 ways an Irishman ; Steele was an Irishman, and always an 
 Irishman.; Swift's heart was English and in England, his 
 habits English, his logic eminently English ; liis statement 
 is elaborately simple ; he shuns tropes and metaphors, and 
 uses his ideas and words with a wise thrift and economy, 
 as he used his money ; — with which he could be gener- 
 ous and splendid upon great occasions, but which he hus- 
 banded when there was no need to spend it. He never in- 
 dulges in needless extravagance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, 
 profuse imagery. He lays his opinions before you with a 
 grave simplicity and a perfect neatness." This is quite 
 true of him, and the result is that though you may deny 
 him sincerity, simplicity, humanity, or good taste, you can 
 hardly find fault with his language. 
 
 Swift was a clergyman, and this is what Thackeray says 
 of him in regard to his sacred profession. " I know of 
 few things more conclusiv^e as to the sincerity of Swift's 
 religion, than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergy- 
 man, and look out for a seat on the Bench ! Gay, the au- 
 thor of The Beggar'' s Opera; Gay, the wildest of the wits 
 about town ! It was this man that Jonathan Swift ad- 
 vised to take orders, to mount in a cassock and bands — • 
 
158 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 just as lie advised Lim to husband his shillings, and put 
 his thousand pounds out to interest." 
 
 It was not that he was without religion — or without, 
 rather, his religious beliefs and doubts, " for Swift," says 
 Thackeray, " was a reverent, was a pious spirit. For Swift 
 could love and could pray." Left to 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 then have been heartbreaking. " It is my 
 belief," says Thackeray, " that he suffered frightfully from 
 the consciousness of his own scepticism, and that he had 
 bent his pride so far down as to put his apostasy out to 
 hire." I doubt whether any of Swift's works are very 
 much read now, but perhaps Gulliver's travels are oftener 
 in the hands of modern readers than any other. Of all 
 the satires in our language, it is probably the most cynical, 
 the most absolutely illnatured, and therefore the falsest. 
 Let those who care to form an opinion of Swift's mind 
 from the best known of his works, turn to Thackeray's 
 account of Gulliver. I can imagine no greater proof of 
 misery than to have been able to write such a book as that. 
 
 It is thus that the lecturer concludes his lecture about 
 Swift: "lie shrank away from all affections sooner or 
 later. Stella and Vanessa both died near him, and away 
 from him. He had not heart enough to sec them die. 
 He broke from his fastest friend, Sheridan. He slunk 
 away from his fondest admirer. Pope. His laugh jnrs on 
 one's ear after seven-score years. He was always alone — 
 alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella's 
 sweet smile came and shone on him. When that went, 
 silence and utter night closed over him. An immense 
 genius, an awful downfall and ruin ! So great a man he 
 
vn.] THACKERAY'S LECTURES. 159 
 
 seems to me, that thinkini^ of him is like thinking of an 
 empire falling. We have other great names to mention — 
 none, I think, however, so great or so gloomy." And so 
 we pass on from Swift, feeling that though the man was 
 certainly a humorist, we have had as yet but little to do 
 with humour. 
 
 Congreve is the next who, however truly he may have 
 been a humorist, is described here rather as a man of 
 fashion. A man of fashion he certainly was, but is best 
 known in our literature as a comedian — worshipping that 
 Comic Muse to whom Thackeray hesitates to introduce his 
 audience, because she is not only merry, but shameless also. 
 Congreve's muse was about as bad as any muse that ever 
 misbehaved herself — and I think, as little amusing. " Read- 
 ing in these plays now," says Thackeray, " is like shutting 
 your ears and looking at people dancing. What does it 
 mean ? — the measures, the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling, 
 and retreating, the cavaliers seul advancing upon those la- 
 dies — those ladies and men twirling round at the end in 
 a mad galop, after which everybody bows and the quaint 
 rite is celebrated ?" It is always so with Congreve's plays, 
 and Etherege's and Wycherley's. The world we meet 
 there is not our world, and as we read the plays we have 
 no sympathy with these unknown people. It was not 
 that they lived so long ago. They are much nearer to us 
 in time than the men and women who ficjured on the 
 stage in the reign of James I. But their nature is farther 
 from our nature. They sparkle, but never warm. They 
 are witty, but leave no impression. I might almost go 
 further, and say that they are wicked, but never allure. 
 " When Voltaire came to visit the great Congreve," says 
 Thackeray, " the latter rather affected to despise his liter- 
 ary reputation ; and in this, perhaps, the great Congreve 
 
160 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 was not far wrong. A touch of Steele's tenderness is 
 worth all his finery ; a flash of Swift's lightning, a beam 
 of 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, 
 wh.o next comes up before us, but I think that he makes 
 hardly so good a subject for a lecturer as the great 
 gloomy man of intellect, or the frivolous man of pleasure. 
 Thackeray tells us all that is to be said about him as a 
 humorist 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 The Campaign, or for his merits as 
 Secretary of State, or for his rank and high distinction as 
 Lady Warwick's husband, or for his eminence as an ex- 
 aminer of political questions on the Whig side, or a guar- 
 dian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. 
 It is as a Tattler of small talk and a Spectator of mankind 
 that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure 
 to him as to any human being that ever wrote, lie came 
 in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble 
 natural voice. He came the gentle satirist, who hit no un- 
 fair blow ; the kind judge, who castigated only in smiling. 
 While Swift went about hanging and ruthless, a literary 
 Jeffreys, in Addison's kind court only minor cases were 
 tried ; — only peccadilloes and small sins against society, 
 only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and hoops, or a 
 nuisance in the abuse of beaux canes and snuffboxes." 
 Steele set The Taller a-going. "But with his friend's 
 discovery of The Taller, Addison's calling was found, and 
 the most delightful Tattler in the world began to speak. 
 He does not go very deep. Let gentlemen of a profound 
 genius, critics accustomed to the plunge of the bathes, con- 
 
vn.l THACKERAY'S LECTURES. 161 
 
 sole themselves by thinking that he couldn't go very deep. 
 There is no trace of suffering in his writing. He was so 
 good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish — if I must 
 use the word !" 
 
 Such was Addison as a humorist ; and when' the hearer 
 shall have heard also — or the reader read — that this most 
 charming Tattler also wrote Cato, became a Secretary of 
 State, and mamcd a countess, he will have learned all that 
 Thackeray had to tell of him. 
 
 Steele was one who stood much less high in the world's 
 esteem, and who left behind him a much smaller name — 
 but was quite Addison's equal as a humorist and a wit. 
 Addison, though he had the reputation of a toper, was re- 
 spectability itself. Steele was almost always disreputable. 
 He was brought from Ireland, placed at the Charter House, 
 and then transferred to Oxford, where he became acquaint- 
 ed with Addison. Thackeray says that " Steele found Ad- 
 dison a stately college don at Oxford." The stateliness 
 and the don's rank were attributable no doubt to the more 
 sober character of the English lad, for, in fact, the two 
 men were born in the same year, 1672. Steele, who during 
 his life was affected by various different tastes, first turned 
 himself to literature, but early in life was bitten by the hue 
 of a red coat and became a trooper in the Horse Guards. 
 To the end he vacillated in the same way. In that charm- 
 ing paper in The Tatler, in which he records his father's 
 death, his mother's griefs, his own most solemn and ten- 
 der emotions, he says he is interrupted by the arrival of a 
 hamper of wine, * the same as is to be sold at Garraway's 
 next week ;' upon the receipt of which he sends for three 
 friends, and they fall to instantly, drinking two bottles 
 apiece, with great benefit to themselves, and not separating 
 till two o'clock in the morninir." 
 
162 TmVCKERAY. [chap. 
 
 He had two wives, whom he loved dearly and treated 
 badly. lie hired grand houses, and bought line horses for 
 which he could never pay. He was often religious, but 
 more often drunk. As a man of letters, other men of let- 
 ters who followed him, such as Thackeray, could not be 
 very proud of him. But everybody loved him ; and he 
 seems to have been the inventor of that flying literature 
 which, with many changes in form and manner, has done 
 so much for the amusement and edification of readers ever 
 since his time. He was always commencing, or carrying 
 on — often editing — some one of the numerous periodicals 
 which appeared during his time. Thackeray mentions 
 seven : The Taller^ The Sinctator^ The Guardian, The Eng- 
 lishman, The Lovcr^ The Reader, and Tlie Theatre ; that 
 three of them are well known to this day — the three first 
 named — and are to be found in all libraries, is proof that 
 his life was not thrown away. 
 
 I almost question Prior's right to be in the list, unless, 
 indeed, the mastery over well-turned conceits is to be in- 
 cluded within the border of humour. But Thackeray had 
 a strong liking for Prior, and in his own humorous way 
 rebukes his audience for not being familiar with The Town 
 and Country Mouse. He says that Prior's epigrams have 
 the genuine sparkle, and compares Prior to Horace. " His 
 song, his philosophy, his good sense, his happy, easy turns 
 and melody, his loves and his epicureanism, bear a great 
 resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished mas- 
 ter." I cannot say that I agree with this. Prior is gen- 
 erally neat in his expression. Horace is happy — which is 
 surely a great deal more. . 
 
 All that is said of Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett, and 
 Fielding is worth reading, and may be of great value both 
 to those who have not time to study the authors, and to 
 
VII.] THACKERAY'S LECTURES. 163 
 
 those who desire to have their own judgments somewhat 
 guided, somewhat assisted. That they were all men of 
 humour there can be no doubt. AVhether either of them, 
 except perhaps Gay, Avould have been specially ranked as 
 a humorist among men of letters, may be a question. * 
 
 Sterne was a humorist, and employed his pen in that 
 line, if ever a writer did so, and so was Goldsmith. Of 
 the excellence and largeness of the disposition of the one, 
 and the meanness and littleness of the other, it is not nec- 
 essary that I should here say much. But I will give a 
 short passage from our author as to each. He has been 
 quoting somewhat at length from Sterne, and thus he 
 ends: "And Avith this pretty dance and chorus the vol- 
 ume artfully concludes. Even here one can't give the 
 whole description. There is not a page in Sterne's writ- 
 ino; but has somcthinn; that were better awav, a latent cor- 
 ruption — a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that 
 dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times 
 and manners than ours — but not all. The foul satyr's 
 eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the 
 famous author wrote were bad and wricked. The last lines 
 the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and par- 
 don." Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I will 
 then let my reader go to the volume and study the lect- 
 ures for himself. " The poor fellow was never so friend- 
 less but that he could befriend some one ; never so pinched 
 and wretched but he could give of his crust, and speak his 
 word of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he would 
 give that, and make the children happy in the dreary Lon- 
 don courts." 
 
 Of this, too, I will remind my readers — those who have 
 bookshelves w^ell-filled to adorn their houses — that Gold- 
 smith stands in the front where all the young people see 
 
164 THACKERAY. [chap. th. 
 
 the volumes. There are few among the young people who 
 do not refresh their sense of humour occasionally from 
 that shelf; Sterne is relegated to some distant and high 
 corner. The less often that he is taken down the better. 
 Thackeray makes some half excuse for him because of the 
 greater freedom of the times. But "the times" were the 
 Eame for the two. Both Sterne and Goldsmith wTote 
 in the reign of George II. ; both died in the reign of 
 George III. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Thackeray's ballads* 
 
 V/e Lave a volume of Thackeray's poems, republished un- 
 der the name of Ballads, which is, I think, to a great extent 
 a misnomer. They are all readable, almost all good, full of 
 humour, and with some fine touches of pathos, most happy 
 in their versification, and, with a few exceptions, hitting 
 well on the head the nail which he intended to hit. But 
 they are not on that account ballads. Literally, a ballad 
 is a song; but it has come to signify a short chronicle in 
 verse, w^hich may be political, or pathetic, or grotesque — 
 or it may have all three characteristics or any two of them ; 
 but not on that account is any grotesque poem a ballad — 
 nor, of course, any pathetic or any political poem. Jacob 
 Omnium'' s Hoss may fairly be called a ballad, containing 
 as it does a chronicle of a certain well-defined transaction ; 
 and the story of King Canute is a ballad — one of the best 
 that has been produced in our language in modern years. 
 But such pieces as those called The End of the Play and 
 Vanitas Vanitatum, which are didactic as well as pathetic, 
 are not ballads in the common sense ; nor are such songs 
 as The Mahogany Tree, or the little collection called Love 
 Songs made Easy. The majority of the pieces are not 
 ballads; but if they be good of the kind, we should be 
 ungrateful to quarrel much with the name. 
 
166 THACKERAY. [ciiap. 
 
 How very good most of them are, I did not know till 
 I re-read them for the purpose of writing this chapter. 
 There is a manifest falling off in some few — which has 
 come from that source of literary failure which is now so 
 common. If a man write a book or a poem because it is 
 in him to write it — the motive power being altogether in 
 himself, and coming from his desire to express himself — 
 he will write it well, presuming him to be capable of the 
 effort. But if he write his book or poem simply because 
 a book or poem is required from him, let his capability 
 be what it may, it is not unlikely that he will do it badly. 
 Thackeray occasionally suffered from the weakness thus 
 produced. A ballad from Policeman X — Bow Street Bal- 
 lads they were first called — was required by Punch, and 
 had to be forthcoming, whatever might be the poet's hu- 
 mour, by a certain time. Jacob Omnium'' s Hoss is excel- 
 lent. His heart and feeling were all there, on behalf of 
 his friend, and against that obsolete old court of justice. 
 But we can tell well when he was looking through the po- 
 lice reports for a subject, and taking what chance might 
 send him, without any special interest in the matter. The 
 Knight and the Lady of Bath, and the Damages Two 
 Hundred Pounds, as they were demanded at Guildford, 
 taste as though they were written to order. 
 
 Here, in his verses as in his prose, the charm of Thack- 
 eray's work lies in the mingling of humour with pathos 
 and indignation. There is hardly a piece that is not more 
 or less funny, hardly a piece that is not satirical ; — and in 
 most of them, for those who will look a little below the 
 surface, there is something that will touch them. Thack- 
 eray, though he rarely uttered a word, either with his pen 
 or his mouth, in which there was not an intention to reach 
 our sense of humour, never was only funny. "When ho 
 
ym.] THACKERAY'S BALLADS. 167 
 
 was most determined to make us laugh, he had always a 
 further purpose; some pity was to be extracted from us 
 on behalf of the sorrows of men, or some indignation at 
 the evil done by them. 
 
 This is the beginning of that story as to the Tivo Hun- 
 dred Pounds^ for which, 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 miscar- 
 riage of justice on that special occasion, but at the gen- 
 eral unfitness of jurymen for the work confided to them. 
 " Gaily compliment yourselves," he says, " on your beauti- 
 ful constitution, from which come such beautiful results 
 as those I am going to tell you !" When he reminded 
 us that Ivanhoe had produced Magna Charta, there was a 
 purpose of irony even there in regard to our vaunted free- 
 dom. With all your Magna Charta and your juries, what 
 are you but snobs ! There is nothing so often misguided 
 as general indignation, and I think that in his judgment 
 of outside things, in the measure which he usually took of 
 them, Thackeray was very frequently misguided. A satir- 
 ist by trade will learn to satirise everything, till the light 
 of the sun and the moon's loveliness will become evil and 
 mean to him. I think that he was mistaken in his views 
 of things. But we have to do with him as a writer, not 
 as a political economist or a politician. His indignation 
 was all true, and the expression of it was often perfect. 
 The lines in which he addresses that Pallis Court, at the 
 end of Jacob Omnium^s JIoss, are almost sublime. 
 
1G8 TUACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 Pallis Court, you move Come down from that tribewn, 
 My pity most profound. Thou shameless and unjust; 
 
 A most amusing sport Thou swindle, picking pockets in 
 You thought it, I'll be bound, The name of Truth august ; 
 
 To saddle hup a three -pound Come down, thou hoary Bias- 
 debt, phemy, 
 With two-and-twenty pound. For die thou shalt and must. 
 
 Good sport it is to you And go it, Jacob Homnium, 
 To grind the honest poor. And ply your iron pen, 
 
 To pay their just or unjust debts And rise up. Sir John Jervis, 
 With eight hundred per cent., And shut me up that den ; 
 
 for Lor ; That sty for fattening lawyers 
 
 Make haste and get your costes in, in. 
 
 They will not last much mor ! On the bones of honest men. 
 
 " Come down from tliat tribewn, thou shameless and 
 unjust !" It is impossible 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 is now called, Lyra Hyhernica, for which 
 no doubt The Groves of Blarney w\as his model. There 
 have been many imitations since, of which perhaps Bar- 
 ham's ballad on the coronation was the best, " When to 
 AVestminster the Royal Spinster and the Duke of Leinster 
 all in order did repair!" Thackeray, in some of his at- 
 tempts, has been equally droll and equally graphic. That 
 on The Cristal Palace — not that at Sydenham, but its 
 forerunner, the palace of the Great Exhibition — is very 
 good, as the following catalogue of its contents will show : 
 
 There's lioly saints There's fountains there 
 
 And window paints. And crosses fair ; 
 
 By Maydiayval Pugin ; There's water-gods with urns ; 
 
 Alhamborough Jones There's organs three, 
 
 Did paint the tones To play, d'ye see ? 
 
 Of yellow and gambouge in. " God save the Queen," by turns 
 
VIII.] THACKERAY'S BALLADS; 169 
 
 There's statues bright And ploughs h'ke toys 
 
 Of marble white, For little boys, 
 
 Of silver, and of copper ; And ilegant wheel-barrow3. 
 
 And some in zinc. 
 
 And some, I think. For thim genteels 
 
 That isn't over proper. Who ride on wheels. 
 
 There's plenty to indulge 'em ; 
 There's staym ingynes, There's droskys snug 
 
 That stands in lines, From Paytersbug, 
 
 Enormous and amazing, And vayhycles from Bulgium. 
 
 That squeal and snort 
 
 Like whales in sport, Tliere's cabs on stands 
 
 Or elephants a grazing. And shaudthry danns ; 
 
 There's waggons from New 
 There's carts and gigs, York here ; 
 
 And pins for pigs, There's Lapland sleighs 
 
 There's dibblers and there's Have crossed the seas, 
 harrows, And jaunting cyars from Cork 
 
 here. 
 
 In writing tins Thackeray was a little late with his copy 
 for Punch ; not, we should say, altogether an uncommon 
 accident to him. It should have been with the editor ear- 
 ly on Saturday, if not before, but did not come till late on 
 Saturday evening. The editor, who was among men the 
 most good-natured, and I should think the most forbear- 
 ing, either could not, or in this case would not, insert it in 
 the next week's issue, and Thackeray, angry and disgusted, 
 sent it to The Times. In The Times of next Monday it 
 appeared — very much, I should think, to the delight of the 
 readers of that august newspaper. 
 
 Mr. Molony's account of the ball given to the Nepau- 
 lese ambassadors by the Peninsular and Oriental Com- 
 pany, is so like Barham's coronation in the account it 
 gives of the guests, that one would fancy it must be by 
 the same hand. 
 
 8* 
 
170 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 The noble Chair^ stud at the stair 
 
 And bade the dhrums to thump ; and he 
 
 Did thus evince to that Black Prince 
 The welcome of his Company.^ 
 
 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. 
 
 Pat, such girls, such jukes and earls. 
 
 Such fashion and nobilitee ! 
 Just think of Tim, and fancy him 
 
 Amidst the high gentilitce ! 
 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 in expression, that it would be needless to criticise 
 their peculiar dialect, were it not that Thackeray has made 
 for himself a reputation by his writing of Irish. In this 
 he has been so entirely successful that for many English 
 readers he has established a new language which may not 
 improperly be called Ilybernico-Thackerayan. If comedy 
 is to be got from peculiarities of dialect, as no doubt it is, 
 
 ' Chair— i. <?., Chairman. ^ / ^^ The P. and 0. Company. 
 
yiil] THACKERAY'S BALLADS. 171 
 
 one form will do as well as another, so long as those who 
 read it know no better. So it has been with Thackeray's 
 Irish, for in truth he was not familiar with the modes of 
 pronunciation which make up Irish brogue. Therefore, 
 though he is always droll, he is not true to nature. Many 
 an Irishman coming to London, not unnaturally tries to 
 imitate the talk of Londoners. You or I, reader, were we 
 from the West, and were the dear County Galway to send 
 either of us to Parliament, would probably endeavour to 
 drop the dear brogue of our country, and in doing so we 
 should make some mistakes. It was these mistakes which 
 Thackeray took for the natural Irish tone. He was 
 amused to hear a major called " Meejor," but was una- 
 ware that the sound arose from Pat's affection of English 
 softness of speech. The expression natural to the unadul- 
 terated Irishman would rather be " Ma-ajor." He discov- 
 ers his own provincialism, and trying to be polite and ur- 
 bane, he says " Meejor." In one of the lines I have quoted 
 there occurs the word " troat." Such a sound never came 
 naturally from 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 wrong with 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 piece called the Last Irish Grievance, to which 
 Thackeray adds a still later grievance, by the false sounds 
 which he elicits from the calumniated mouth of the 
 pretended Irish poet. Slaves are " sleeves," places are 
 " pleeces," Lord John is " Lard Jahn," fatal is " fetal," 
 danfjer is " deenccer," and native is "neetive." All these 
 are unintended slanders. Tea, Hibernice, is " tay," please 
 is " plaise," sea is " say," and ease is " aise." The softer 
 
 sound of e is broadened out bv the natural Irishman — not, 
 M 
 
172 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 to my ear, without a certain eupbony ; but no one in Ire- 
 land says or hears the reverse. The Irishman who in Lon- 
 don might talk of his " neetive " race, would be mincing 
 his words to please the ear of the cockney. 
 
 The Chronicle of the Drum would be a true ballad all 
 through, were it not that there is tacked on to it a long 
 moral in an altered metre. I do not much value the mor- 
 al, but the ballad is excellent, not only in much of its ver- 
 sification and in the turns of its language, but in the quaint 
 and true picture it gives of the French nation. The drum- 
 mer, either by himself or by some of his family, has drum- 
 med through a century of French battling, caring much 
 for his country and its glory, but understanding nothing 
 of the causes for which he is enthusiastic. Whether for 
 King, Republic, or Emperor, whether fighting and con- 
 quering or fighting and conquered, he is happy as long as 
 he can beat his drum on a field of glory. But throughout 
 his adventures there is a touch of chivalry about our drum- 
 mer. In all the episodes of his country's career he feels 
 much of patriotism and something of tenderness. It is 
 thus he sings 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. 
 
VIII.] THACKERAY'S BALLADS 173 
 
 I loathed to assist at such deeds, 
 
 And my drum beat its loudest of tunes, 
 
 As we oifered 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, be- 
 cause it contains the worst rhyme that Thackeray ever 
 permitted himself to use. The Chronicle of the Drum has 
 not the finish which he achieved after v/ards, but it is full 
 of national feeling, and carries on its purpose to the end 
 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 any description of a scene in verse may be included 
 in the name — is surely one of the most graphic descrip- 
 tions ever put into verse. Nothing written by Thackeray 
 shows more plainly his power over w^ords and rhymes. 
 He draws his picture without a line omitted or a line 
 too much, saying with apparent facility all that he has to 
 say, and so saying it that every word conveys its natural 
 
 When a squall, upon a sudden, 
 Came o'er the waters scudding ; 
 
174 THACKEliAY. [chap. 
 
 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 squalUng ; 
 And the passengers awaken. 
 Most pitifully shaken ; 
 And the steward jumps up and hastens 
 For the necessary basins. 
 
 Then the Greeks they groaned and quiveredo 
 
 And they knelt, and moaned, and shivcrecS 
 
 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 
 
 W^r«> frightened and behorror'd ; 
 
viii.] THACKERAY'S BALLADS. ITS 
 
 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 
 ttie public have not, I think, been generally aware that the 
 young lady in question lived in truth at Newton Limavady 
 (with one d). But with the correct name Thackeray would 
 hardly have been so successful with hin 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 
 
176 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 Meetly I'd admire 
 
 Peg of Liraavaddy. 
 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 thint, 
 than Peg of Limavaddy, as containing that mixture of 
 burlesque with the pathetic which belonged so peculiarly 
 to Thackeray, and which was indeed the very essence 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 fol- 
 lowed by a picture of Fanny in the chair, to which I can- 
 not but take exception. I am quite sure that when Fanny 
 graced the room and seated herself in the chair of her old 
 bachelor friend, she had not on a low dress and loosely- 
 flowing drawing-room shawl, nor was there a footstool 
 ready for her feet. I doubt also the headgear. Fanny 
 on that occasion was dressed in her morning apparel, and 
 had walked through the streets, carried no fan, and wore 
 
VIII.] THACKERAY'S BALLADS. 177 
 
 no brooch but one that might be necessary for pinning her 
 shawl. 
 
 The Great Cossack Epic is the longest of the ballads. 
 It is a legend of St. Sophia of Kioff, telling how Father 
 Hyacinth, by the aid of St. Sophia, whose w^ooden statue 
 he carried with him, escaped across the Borysthenes with 
 all the Cossacks at his tail. It is very good fun, but not 
 equal to many of the others. Nor is the Carmen Lilliense 
 quite to my taste. I should not have declared at once that 
 it had come from Thackeray's hand, had I not known it. 
 
 But who could doubt the Bouillabaisse ? Who else 
 could have wTitten that ? Who at the same moment could 
 have been so merry and so melancholy — could have gone 
 so deep into the regrets of life, with words so appropriate 
 to its jollities? I do not know how far my readers will 
 agree with me that to read it always must be a fresh pleas- 
 ure ; but in order that they may agree with me, if they can, 
 I will give it to them entire. If there be one whom it does 
 not please, he will like nothing 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 Xeuve 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 ; 
 
178 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, 
 
 Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace : 
 All these you eat at Terre'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 Cordeher 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, hC'Te the lamp is, as before ; 
 The smiling red-checked ecaillere is 
 
 Still opening oysters at the door. 
 Is Terre still alive and able ? 
 
 I recollect his droll grimace ; 
 Ile'd come and smile before your table, 
 
 And hope you liked your Bouillabaisse. 
 
 We enter — nothing's changed or older. 
 
 " How's Monsieur Terre, 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 Terre'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 chambcrtin with yellow seal." 
 " So Terre'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." 
 
TUi.] THACKERAY'S BALLADS. lid 
 
 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 racmorv of dear old times. 
 
180 THACKERAY. [chap. nn. 
 
 "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 among English poets. lie would have been 
 the first to ridicule such an assumption made on his be- 
 half. But I think that his verses will be more popular 
 than those of many highly reputed poets, and that as 
 years roll on they will gain rather than lose in public 
 estimation. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Thackeray's style and manner of work. 
 
 A NOVEL in style slioiild be easy, lucid, and of course 
 grammatical. The same may be said of any book; but 
 that which is intended to recreate should be easily under- 
 stood — for "which purpose lucid narration is an essential. 
 In matter it should be moral and amusing. In manner it 
 may be realistic, or sublime, or ludicrous; or it may be 
 all these if the author can combine them. As to Thack- 
 eray's performance in style and matter I will say some- 
 thing further on. His manner was mainly realistic, and 
 I will therefore speak first of that mode of expression 
 which was peculiarly his own. 
 
 Realism in style has not all the ease which seems to be- 
 long to it. It is the object of the author who afiects it 
 so to communicate with his reader that all his words shall 
 seem to be natural to the occasion. We do not think 
 the language of Dogberry natural, when he tells neigh- 
 bour Seacole that " to write and read comes by nature." 
 That is ludicrous. Nor is the lano;uao;e of Hamlet nat- 
 ural when he shows to his mother the portrait 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. 
 
182 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 That is sublime. Constance is natural wlien she turns 
 away from the Cardinal, declaring that 
 
 He talks to me that nevef had a son. 
 
 In one respect both the sublime and ludicrous are easier 
 than the realistic. They are not required to be true. A 
 man with an imagination and culture may feign either of 
 them without knowing the ways of men. To be realistic 
 you must know accurately that which you describe. How 
 often do we find in novels that the author makes an at- 
 tempt at realism and falls into a bathos of absurdity, be- 
 cause he cannot use appropriate language? "No human 
 being ever spoke like that," w^e say to ourselves — while we 
 should not question the naturalness of the production, ei- 
 ther in the grand or the ridiculous. 
 
 And yet in very truth the realistic must not be true — 
 but just so far removed from truth as to suit the erroneous 
 idea of truth which the reader may be supposed to enter- 
 tain. For were a novelist to narrate a conversation between 
 two persons of fair but not high education, and to use the 
 ill-arranged words and fragments of speech which are real- 
 ly common in such conversations, he would seem to have 
 sunk to the ludicrous, and to be attributing to the interloc- 
 utors a mode of lanQjuai^e much beneath them. Thouc-h 
 in fact true, it would seem to be far from natural. But, 
 on the other hand, were he to put words grammatically 
 correct into the mouths of his personages, and to round off 
 and to complete the spoken sentences, the ordinary reader 
 would instantly feel such a style to be stilted and unreal. 
 This reader would not analyse it, but w^ould in some dim 
 but sufficiently critical manner be aware that his author 
 was not providing him with a naturally spoken dialogue. 
 To produce the desired effect the narrator must go be 
 
IX.] THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 183 
 
 tween tlic two. He must mount somewhat above the or- 
 dinary conversational powers of such persons as are to be 
 represented — lest he disgust. But he must by no means 
 soar into correct phraseology — lest he offend. The real- 
 istic — by w^liich we mean that which shall seem to be real 
 — lies between the two, and in reaching it the writer has 
 not only to keep his proper distance on both sides, but has 
 to maintain varying distances in accordance with the posi- 
 tion, mode of life, and education of the speakers. Lady 
 Castlcwood in Esmond would not have been properly made 
 to speak with absolute precision ; 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 the same strain, but they would 
 alter their language according to their companion — accord- 
 ing even to the hour of the day. All this the reader un- 
 consciousl}^ perceives, and will not think the language to 
 be natural unless the proper variations be there. 
 
 In simple narrative the rule is the same as in dialogue, 
 though it does not admit of the sam.e palpable deviation 
 from correct construction. The story of any incident, to 
 be realistic, will admit neither of sesquipedalian grandeur 
 nor of grotesque images. The one gives an idea of ro- 
 mance and the other of burlesque, to neither of which is 
 truth supposed to appertain. We desire to soar frequent- 
 ly, and then we try romance. We desire to recreate our- 
 selves with the easy and droll. Dulce est desipere in loco. 
 Then we have recourse to burlesque. But in neither do 
 we expect human nature. 
 
 I cannot but think that in the hands of the novelist the 
 middle course is the most powerful. Much as we may 
 
184 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 delight in burlesque, we cannot claim for it the power of 
 achieving great results. So much, I think, will be granted. 
 For the sublime we look rather to poetry than to prose; 
 and though I will give one or two instances just now in 
 which it has been used with great effect in prose fiction, 
 it does not come home to the heart, teaching a lesson, as 
 does the realistic. The girl who reads is touched by Lucy 
 Ashton, but she feels herself to be convinced of the facts 
 as to Jcanie Deans, and asks herself whether she might 
 not emulate them. 
 
 Now as to the realism of Thackeray, I must rather ap- 
 peal to my readers than attempt to prove it by quotation. 
 "Whoever it is that speaks in his pages, does it not seem 
 that such a person would certainly have used such words 
 on such an occasion ? If there be need of examination to 
 learn whether it be so or not, let the reader study all that 
 falls from the mouth of Lady Castlewood through the 
 novel called Esmond^ or all that falls from the mouth of 
 Beatrix. They are persons peculiarly situated — noble 
 women, but who have still lived much out of the world. 
 The former is always conscious of a sorrow ; the latter is 
 always striving after an effect — and both on this account 
 are difficult of management. A period for the story has 
 been chosen which is strange and unknown to us, and 
 which has required a peculiar language. One would have 
 said beforehand that whatever might be the charms of the 
 book, it would not be natural. And yet the ear is never 
 wounded by a tone that is false. It is not always the case 
 that in novel reading the ear should be wounded because 
 the words spoken are unnatural. Bulwer does not wound, 
 though he never puts into the mouth of any of his per- 
 sons words such as would have been spoken. They are not 
 expected from him. It is something else that he provides. 
 
ts.] THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. ]85 
 
 From Thackeray they are expected — and from many oth- 
 ers. But Thackeray never disappoints. Whether it be a 
 great duke, such as he who was to have married Beatrix, 
 or a mean chaplain, such as Tusher, or Captain Steele the 
 humorist, they talk — not as they would have talked prob- 
 ably, of which I am no judge — but as we feel that they 
 might have talked. We find ourselves willing to take it 
 as proved because it is there, which is the strongest possi- 
 ble evidence of the realistic capacity of the writer. 
 
 As to the sublime in novels, it is not to be supposed 
 that any very high rank of sublimity is required to put 
 such works within the pale of that definition. I allude to 
 those in which an attempt is made to soar above the ordi- 
 nary actions and ordinary language of life. We may take 
 as an instance The Mysteries of JJdolpho. That is intend- 
 ed to be sublime throughout. Even the writer never for 
 a moment thought of descending to real life. She must 
 have been untrue to her own idea of her own business had 
 she done so. It is all stilted — all of a certain altitude 
 among the clouds. It has been in its time a popular book, 
 and has had its world of readers. Those readers no doubt 
 preferred the diluted romance of Mrs. Radclifi to the con- 
 densed realism of Fielding. At any rate, they did not look 
 for realism. Pelham may be taken as another instance of 
 the sublime, 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. The personages talk in glittering di- 
 alogues, throwing about philosophy, science, and the clas- 
 sics, in a manner which is always suggestive and often 
 amusing. The book is brilliant with intellect. But no 
 word is ever spoken as it would have been spoken — no de- 
 tail is ever narrated as it would have occurred. Bulwer no 
 doubt regarded novels as romantic, and would have lookec^ 
 
 9 
 
186 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 -with contempt on any junction of realism and romance, 
 though, in varying his work, he did not think it beneath 
 him to vary his subUmity with the ludicrous. ^ The sub- 
 lime in novels is no doubt most effective when it breaks 
 out, as though by some burst of nature, in the midst of 
 a story true to life. " If," said Evan Maccorabich, " the 
 Saxon gentlemen are laughing because a poor man such as 
 me thinks my life, or the life of six of my degree, is worth 
 that of Vich Ian Vohr, it's like enough they may be very 
 right; but if they laugh because they think I would not 
 keep my word and come back to redeem him, I can tell 
 them they ken neither the heart of a Hielandraan 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. 
 " Die as thou hast lived ! Die like the beasts that per- 
 ish — hoping nothing, believing nothing !" — " And fearing 
 nothing," said Bothwell. Ilorrible as is the picture, it is 
 sublime. As is also that speech of Meg Merrilics, as she 
 addresses Mr. Bertram, standing on the bank. " Ride your 
 ways," said the gipsy ; " ride your ways, Laird of Ellan- 
 gowan ; ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram. This day have 
 ye quenched seven smoking hearths ; see if the fire in your 
 ain parlour burn the blyther for that. Ye have riven the 
 thack off seven cottar houses; look if your ain roof-tree 
 stand the faster. Ye may stable your stirks in the shcal- 
 ings at Derncleugh ; see that the hare does not couch on 
 the hearthstane at Ellangowan." That is romance, and 
 reaches the very height of the sublime. That does not 
 offend, impossible though it be that any old woman should 
 have spoken such words, because it docs in truth lift the 
 reader up among llie bright stars. It is thus that the sub- 
 lime may be mingled with the realistic, if the writer has 
 
IX.] THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 187 
 
 the powerj Thackeray also rises in that way to a high 
 pitch, though not in many instances. Romance does not 
 often justify to him an absence of truth. The scene be^ 
 twccn Lady Castle wood and the Duke of Hamilton is one 
 when she explains to her child's suitor who Henry Esmond 
 is. " My daughter may receive presents from the head of 
 our house," says the lady, speaking up for her kinsman. 
 " My daughter may thankfully take kindness from her fa- 
 ther's, her mother's, her brother's dearest friend." The 
 whole scene is of the same nature, and is evidence of 
 Thackeray's capacity for the sublime. And again, when 
 the same lady welcomes the same kinsman on his return 
 from the wars, she rises as high. But as I have already 
 quoted a part of the passage in the chapter on this novel, 
 I will not repeat it here. 
 
 It may perhaps be said of the sublime in novels — which 
 I have endeavoured to describe as not being generally of 
 a high order — that it is apt to become cold, stilted, and 
 unsatisfactory. What may be done by impossible castles 
 among impossible mountains, peopled by impossible heroes 
 and heroines, and fraught with impossible horrors. The 
 Mysteries of JJdolpho have shown us. But they require 
 a patient reader, and one who can content himself with a 
 long protracted and most unemotional excitement. The 
 sublimity which is effected by sparkling speeches is better, 
 if the speeches really have something in them beneath the 
 sparkles. Those of Bulwer generally have. Those of his 
 imitators are often without anything, the sparkles even 
 hardly sparkling. At the best they fatigue ; and a novel, 
 if it fatigues, is unpardonable. Its only excuse is to be 
 found in the amusement it affords. It should instruct 
 also, no doubt, but it never will do so unless it hides its 
 
 instruction and amuses. Scott understood all this, when 
 
 N 
 
188 THACKERAY. [cuap. 
 
 he allowed himself only such sudden bursts as I have de- 
 scribed. Even in The Bride of Lammermoor, which I do 
 not regard as among the best of his performances, as he 
 soars high into the sublime, so does he descend low into 
 the ludicrous. 
 
 In this latter division of pure fiction — the burlesque, as 
 it is commonly called, or the ludicrous — Thackeray is 
 quite as much at home as in the realistic, though, the ve- 
 hicle being less powerful, he has achieved smaller results 
 by it. Manifest as are the objects in his view when he 
 wrote The Hoggarty Diamond or The Legend of the Mhine, 
 they were less important and less evidently effected than 
 those attempted by Vanity Fair and Pendennis. Cap- 
 tain Shindy, the Snob, does not tell us so plainly what is 
 not a gentleman as does Colonel Newcome what is. Nev- 
 ertheless, the ludicrous has, with Thackeray, been very 
 powerful and very delightful. 
 
 In trying to describe what is done by literature of this 
 class, it is especially necessary to remember that different 
 readers are affected in a 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 the reader's 
 own fault if he be not touched. We know that many 
 are indifferent to the soliloquies of Hamlet, but we do not 
 hesitate to declare to ourselves that they are so because 
 they lack the power of appreciating grand language. Wc 
 do not scruple to attribute to those who are indifferent 
 some inferiority of intelligence. And in regard to the 
 realistic, when the truth of a well-told story or life-like 
 character does not come home, we think that then, too, 
 there is deficiency in the critical ability. But there is 
 nothing necessarily lacking to a man because lie does not 
 enjoy The Heathen Chinee or The Biglow Papers; -ind 
 
IX.] THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 189 
 
 the man to whom these delights of American humour are 
 leather and prunello may be of all the most enraptured by 
 the wit of Sam Weller or the mock piety of Pecksniff. 
 It is a matter of taste and not of intellect, as one man 
 likes caviare after his dinner, while another prefers 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 de- 
 light which I have in the various and peculiar expressions 
 of the ludicrous which are common to Thackeray. Some 
 considerable portion of it consists in bad spelling. We 
 may say that Charles James Harrington Fitzroy Yellow- 
 plnsh, or C. FitzJeames De La Pluche, as he is afterwards 
 called, would be nothing but for his " orthogwaphy so 
 carefully inaccuwate." As I have before said, Mrs. Mai- 
 aprop had seemed to have reached the height of this hu- 
 mour, and in having done so to have made any repetition 
 unpalatable. But Thackeray's studied blundering is alto- 
 gether different from that of Sheridan. Mrs. Malaprop 
 uses her words in a delightfully wrong sense. Yellow- 
 plush would be a very intelligible, if not quite an accurate 
 writer, had he not made for himself special forms of Eng- 
 lish words altogether new to the eye. 
 
 " My ma wrapped up my buth in a mistry. I may be 
 illygitmit; I may have been changed at nus ; but I've al- 
 ways had gen'l'm'nly tastes through life, and have no 
 doubt that I come of a gen'l'm'nly origum." We cannot 
 admit that there is wit, or even humour, in bad spelling 
 alone. Were it not that Yellowplush, with his bad spell- 
 ing, had so much to say for himself, there would be noth- 
 ing in it ; but there is always a sting of satire directed 
 against some real vice, or some growing vulgarity, which is 
 
i90 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 made sharper by the absurdity of the language. In The, 
 Diary of George IV. there are the following reflections 
 on a certain correspondence : " Wooden you phansy, now, 
 that the author of such a letter, instead of writun about 
 pipple of tip -top quality, was describin' 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? 
 trumpery ! o morris! as Homer says. This is a hige- 
 ous pictur of manners, such as I weap to think of, as ev- 
 ery morl man must weap." We do not wonder that when 
 he makes his " ajew " he should have been called up to be 
 congratulated on the score of his literary performances by 
 his master, before the Duke, and Lord Bagwig, and Dr. 
 Larner, aiid " Sawedwadgeorgeearllittnbulwig." All that 
 Yellowplush says or writes are among the pearls which 
 Thackeray was continually scattering abroad. 
 
 But this of the distinguished footman was only one of 
 the forms of the ludicrous which he was accustomed to 
 use in the furtherance of some purpose which he had at 
 heart. It was his practice to clothe things most revolt- 
 ing with an assumed grace and dignity, and to add to the 
 weight of his condemnation by the astounding mendacity 
 of the parody thus drawn. There was a grim humour in 
 this which has been displeasing to some, as seeming to 
 hold out to vice a hand which has appeared for too long a 
 time to be friendly. As we are disposed to be not alto- 
 gether sympathetic with a detective policeman who shall 
 have spent a jolly night with a delinquent, for the sake of 
 tracing home the suspected guilt to his late 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 them on familiar terms till we doubt whether 
 he docs not forget their rascality. Barry Lyndon is the 
 
IX.] THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 191 
 
 strongest example we Lave of this style of the ludicrous, 
 and the critics of whom I speak have thought that our 
 friendly relations with Barry have been too genial, too 
 apparently genuine, so that it might almost be doubtful 
 whether during the narrative we might not, at this or the 
 other crisis, be rather with him than against him. "After 
 all," the reader might say, on coming to that passage in 
 which Barry defends his trade as a gambler — a passage 
 which I have quoted in speaking of the novel — "after 
 all, this man is more hero than scoundrel ;" so well is the 
 burlesque humour maintained, so well does the scoundrel 
 hide his own villany. I can easily understand that to 
 some it should seem too long drawn out. To me it seems 
 to be the perfection 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 the 
 footsteps which lead to it ? But, as I have said above, 
 there is no standard by which to judge of the excellence 
 of the ludicrous as there is of the sublime, and even the 
 realistic. 
 
 No writer ever had a stronger proclivity towards paro- 
 dy than Thackeray ; and we may, I think, confess that 
 there is no form of literar}^ drollery more dangerous. The 
 parody will often mar the gem of which it coarsely re- 
 produces the outward semblance. The word " damaged," 
 used instead of " damask," has destroyed to my ear for 
 ever the music of one of the sweetest passages in Shake- 
 speare. But it must be acknowledged of Thackeray that, 
 fond as he is of this branch of humour, he has done little 
 or no injury by his parodies. They run over with fun, 
 but are so contrived that they do not lessen the flavour of 
 the original. I have given in one of the preceding chap^ 
 
192 ' THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 ters a little set of verses of bis own, called The Willow 
 Tree, and his own parody on his own work. There the 
 reader may see how effective a parody may be in destroy- 
 ing the sentiment of the piece parodied. But in dealing 
 with other authors be has been grotesque without being 
 sevtfrely critical, and has been very like, without making 
 ugly or distasteful that which he has imitated. No one 
 "who has admired Coningshy will admire it the less because 
 of Codling shy. Nor will the undoubted romance of Eu- 
 gene Aram be lessened in the estimation of any reader of 
 novels by the well-told career of George de Barnwell. One 
 may say that to laugh Ivanhoe out of face, or to lessen the 
 glory of that immortal story, would be beyond the power 
 of any farcical effect. Thackeray, in his Rowena mid Re- 
 becca, certainly had no such purpose. Nothing oi Ivanhoe 
 is injured, nothing made less valuable than it was before, 
 yet, of all prose parodies in the language, it is perhaps the 
 most perfect. Every character is maintained, every inci- 
 dent has a taste of Scott. It has the twang of Ivanhoe 
 from beginning to end, and yet there is not a word in it 
 by which the author of Ivanhoe could have been offended. 
 But then there is the purpose beyond that of the mere 
 parody. Prudish women have to be laughed at, and des- 
 potic kings, and parasite lords and bishops. The ludi- 
 crous alone is but poor fun ; but when the ludicrous has a 
 meaning, it can be very effective 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 omnibtis. 
 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 
 
IX.] THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 193 
 
 he saw it, so that his readers should learn to love what is 
 good, and to hate what is evil. As to the merits of his 
 style, it will be necessary to insist on them the less, be- 
 cause it has been generally admitted to be easy, lucid, and 
 grammatical. I call that style easy by which the writer 
 has succeeded in conveying to the reader that which the 
 reader is intended to receive with the least possible amount 
 of trouble to him. I call that style lucid which conveys to 
 the reader most accurately all that the writer wishes to con- 
 vey on any subject. The two virtues will, I think, be seen 
 to be very different. An author may wish to give an idea 
 that a certain flavour is bitter. He shall leave a convic- 
 tion that it is simply disagreeable. 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 the conclu- 
 sion. Therefore he is easy. The subject here suggested 
 is as little complicated as possible ; but in the intercourse 
 which is going on continually between writers and read- 
 ers, affairs of all degrees of complication are continually 
 being discussed, of a nature so complicated that the inex- 
 perienced writer is puzzled at every turn to express him- 
 self, and the altogether inartistic writer fails to do so. 
 Who among writers has not to acknowledge that he is 
 often unable to tell all that he has to tell ? Words refuse 
 to do it for him. He struggles and stumbles and alters 
 and adds, but finds at last that he has gone either too far 
 or not quite far enough. Tlicn there comes upon him 
 the necessity of choosing between two evils. He must 
 either give up the fulness of his thought, and content 
 himself with presenting some fragment of it in that lucid 
 arrangement of words which he affects ; or he must bring 
 out his thought with ambages ; he must mass his sen- 
 tences inconsequentially; he must struggle up hill almost 
 
 9* 
 
194 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 hopelessly witli his phrases — so that at the end the reader 
 will have to labour as he himself has laboured, or else to 
 leave behind much of the fruit which it has been intended 
 that he should garner. It is the ill-fortune of some to be 
 neither easy or lucid ; and there is nothing more wonder- 
 ful in the history of letters than the patience of readers 
 when called upon to suffer under the double calamity. It 
 is as though a man were reading a dialogue of Plato, un- 
 derstanding neither the subject nor the language. But it 
 is often the case that one has to be sacrificed to the other. 
 The pregnant writer will sometimes solace himself by de- 
 claring that it is not his business to supply intelligence to 
 the reader ; and then, in throwing out the entirety of his 
 thought, will not stop to remember that he cannot hope 
 to scatter his ideas far and wide unless he can make them 
 easily intelligible. Then the writer who is determined 
 that his book shall not be put down because it is trouble- 
 some, is too apt to avoid the knotty bits and shirk the 
 rocky turns, because he cannot with ease to himself make 
 them easy to others. If this be acknowledged, I shall be 
 held to be right in saying not only that ease and lucidity 
 in style are different virtues, but that they are often op- 
 posed to each other. They may, however, be combined, 
 and then the writer will have really learned the art of 
 writing. Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. It 
 is to be done, I believe, in all languages. A man by art 
 and practice shall at least obtain such a masterhood over 
 words as to express all that he thinks, in phrases that shall 
 be easily understood. 
 
 In such a small space as can here be allowed, I cannot 
 give instances to prove that this has been achieved by 
 Thackeray. Nor would instances prove the existence of 
 the virtue, though instances might the absence. The proof 
 
IX.] TUACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 195 
 
 lies in the work of the man^s life, and can only become 
 plain to those who have read his writings. I must refer 
 readers to their own experiences, and ask them whether 
 they have found themselves compelled to study passages 
 in Tliackeray in order that they might find a recondite 
 meaning, or whether they have not been sure that they 
 and the author have toorether understood all that there 
 was to understand in the matter. Have they run back- 
 ward over the passages, and then gone on, not quite sure 
 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 that are old. I may best, 
 perhaps, explain my meaning by taking something written 
 long ago ; something very valuable, in order that I may 
 not damage my argument by comparing the easiness of 
 Thackeray with the harshness of some author who has 
 in other respects failed of obtaining approbation. If you 
 take the play of CymheVine, you will, I think, find it to be 
 anything but easy reading. Nor is Shakespeare always 
 lucid. For purposes of his own he will sometimes force 
 his readers to doubt his meaning, even after prolonged 
 study. It has ever been so with Hamlet. My readers 
 will not, I think, be so crossgrained with me as to suppose 
 that I am putting Thackeray as a master of style above 
 Shakespeare. I am only endeavouring to explain by ref- 
 erence to the great master the condition of literary pro- 
 duction which he attained. Whatever Thackeray says, the 
 reader cannot fail to understand ; and whatever Thackeray 
 attempts to communicate, he succeeds in conveying. 
 
 That he is grammatical I must leave to my readers' 
 judgment, with a simple assertion in his favour. There 
 arc some who say that grammar — by which I mean ac- 
 curacy of composition, in accordance with certain acknowl- 
 
196 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 edged rules — is only a means to an end; and that, if a 
 writer can absolutely achieve the end by some other mode 
 of his own, he need not regard the prescribed means. If 
 a man can so write as to be easily understood, and to 
 convey lucidly that which he has to convey without ac- 
 curacy of grammar, why should he subject himself to un- 
 necessary trammels ? Why not make a path for himself, 
 if the path so made will certainly lead him whither he 
 wishes to go ? The answer is, that no other path will 
 lead others whither he wishes to carry them but that 
 which is common to him and to those others. It is nec- 
 essary that there should be a ground equally familiar to 
 the writer and to his readers. If there be no such com- 
 mon ground, they will certainly not come into full accord. 
 There have been recusants who, by a certain acuteness of 
 their own, have partly done so — wilful recusants; but 
 they have been recusants, not to the extent of discarding 
 grammar — which no writer could do and not be altogether 
 in the dark — but so far as to have created for themselves 
 a phraseology which has been picturesque by reason of its 
 illicit vagaries ; as a woman will sometimes please ill-in- 
 structed eyes and ears by little departures from feminine 
 propriety. They have probably laboured in their vocation 
 as sedulously as though they had striven to be correct, 
 and have achieved at the best but a short-lived success — 
 as is the case also with the unconventional female. The 
 charm of the disorderly soon loses itself in the ugliness of 
 disorder. And there are others rebellious from grammar, 
 who are, however, hardly to be called rebels, because the 
 laws which they break have never been altogether known 
 to them. Among those very dear to me in English litera- 
 ture, one or two might be named of cither sort, whoso 
 works, though they have that in them which will insure to 
 
IX.] THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 197 
 
 them a long life, will become from year to year less valu- 
 able and less venerable, because their authors have either 
 scorned or have not known that common ground of lan- 
 guage on which the author and his readers should stand 
 together. My purport here is only with Thackeray, and I 
 say that he stands always on that common ground. He 
 quarrels with none of the laws. As the lady who is most 
 attentive to conventional propriety may still have her own 
 fashion of dress and her own mode of speech, so had 
 Thackeray very manifestly his own style; but it is one 
 the correctness of which has never been impugned. 
 
 I hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose 
 dress no one observes. I am not sure but that the same 
 may be said of an author's written language. Only, where 
 shall we find an example of sucli perfection ? Always 
 easy, always lucid, always 'correct, we may find them ; but 
 who is the writer, easy, lucid, and correct, who has not 
 impregnated his writing with something of that personal 
 flavour which we call mannerism ? To speak of authors 
 well known to all readers — Does not The Rambler taste of 
 Johnson ; The Decline and Fall, of Gibbon ; The Middle 
 Ages, of Hallam ; The History of England, of Macaulay ; 
 and The Invasion of the Crimea, of Kinglake ? Do we 
 not know the elephantine tread of The Saturday, and the 
 precise toe of The Spectator? I have sometimes thought 
 that Swift has been nearest to the mark of any — writing 
 English and not writing Swift. But I doubt whether an 
 accurate observer would not trace even here the "mark 
 of the beast." Thackeray, too, has a strong flavour of 
 Thackeray. I am inclined to think that his most beset- 
 ting sin in style — the little ear-mark by which he is most 
 conspicuous — is a certain affected familiarity. He in- 
 dulges too frequently in little confidences with individual 
 
198 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 readers, in whicli pretended allusions to himself arc fre- 
 quent. " What would you do ? what would you say now, 
 if you were in such a position ?" he asks. He describes 
 this practice of his in the preface to Pendennis. "It is a 
 sort of confidential talk between writer and reader. . . . 
 In the course of his volubility the perpetual speaker raust 
 of necessity lay bare his own weaknesses, vanities, peculiari- 
 ties." In the short contributions to periodicals on which 
 he tried his 'prentice hand, such addresses and conversa- 
 tions were natural and efficacious ; but in a larger work of 
 fiction they cause an absence of that dignity to which even 
 a novel may aspire. You feel that each morsel as you 
 read it is a detached bit, and that it has all been written 
 in detachments. The book is robbed of its integrity by a 
 certain good-humoured geniality of language, which causes 
 the reader to be almost too much at home with his au- 
 thor. There is a saying that familiarity breeds contempt, 
 and I have been sometimes inclined to think that our au- 
 thor has sometimes failed to stand up for himself 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 receives all that the author has to 
 give. 
 
 There now remains to be discussed the matter of our 
 author's work. The manner and the style are but the 
 natural wrappings in which the goods have been prepared 
 for the market. Of these goods it is no doubt true that 
 unless the wrappings be in some degree meritorious the 
 article will not be accepted at all; but it is the kernel 
 which we seek, which, if it be not of itself sweet and di- 
 gestible, cannot be made serviceable by any shell, however 
 pretty or easy to be cracked. I have said previously that 
 
IX.] THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 199 
 
 it is the business of a novel to instruct in morals and to 
 amuse. I will go further, and will add, having been for 
 many years a most prolific writer of novels myself, that I 
 regard him who can put himself into close communication 
 with young people year after year without making some 
 attempt to do them good as a very sorry fellow indeed. 
 However poor your matter may be, however near you may 
 come to that " foolishest of existing mortals," as Carlyle 
 presumes some unfortunate novelist to be, still, if there be 
 those who read your works, they will undoubtedly be more 
 or less influenced by what they find there. And it is be- 
 cause the novelist amuses that he is thus influential. The 
 sermon too often has no such effect, because it is applied 
 with the declared intention of having it. The palpable 
 and overt dose the child rejects; but that which is cun- 
 ningly insinuated by the aid of jam or honey is accepted 
 unconsciously, and goes on upon its curative mission. So 
 it is with the novel. It is taken because of its jam and 
 honey. But, unlike the honest simple jam and honey of 
 the household cupboard, it is never unmixed with physic. 
 There will be the dose within it, either curative or poison- 
 ous. The girl will be taught modesty or immodesty, truth 
 or falsehood ; the lad will be taught honour or dishonour, 
 simplicity or affectation. Without the lesson the amuse- 
 ment will not be there. There are novels which certain- 
 ly can teach nothing; but then neither can they amuse 
 any one. 
 
 I should be said to insist absurdly on the power of my 
 own confraternity if I were to declare that the bulk of the 
 young people in the upper and middle classes receive their 
 moral teaching chiefly from the novels they read. Moth- 
 ers would no doubt think of their own sweet teaching; 
 fathers of the examples which they set; and schoolmas- 
 
200 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 ters of the excellence of their instructions. Happy is the 
 country that has such mothers, fathers, and schoolmasters! 
 But the novelist creeps in closer than the schoolmaster, 
 closer than the father, closer almost than the mother. He 
 is 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 do into her task-work; 
 and there she is taught — how she shall learn to love ; how 
 she shall receive the lover when he comes; how far she 
 should advance to meet the joy ; why she should be reti- 
 cent, and not throw herself at once into this new delight. 
 It is the same with the young man. though he v/ould be 
 more prone even than she to reject the suspicion of such 
 tutorship. But he too will there learn either to speak the 
 truth, or to lie ; and will receive from his novel lessons ei- 
 ther of real manliness, or of that affected apishness and 
 tailor-begotten demeanour which too man}' professors of 
 the craft give out as their dearest precepts. 
 
 At any rate the close intercourse is admitted. "Where 
 is the house now from which novels are tabooed ? Is it 
 not common to allow them almost indiscriminately, so that 
 young and old each chooses his own novel? Shall he, 
 then, to whom this close fellowship is allowed — this inner 
 confidence — shall he not be careful what words he uses, 
 and what thoughts 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 thrust- 
 ing ^^Lord Aimwell under the sofa." AV-? iave got be- 
 yond that now, and arc tolerably sure that our girls do not 
 
IX.] THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 201 
 
 hide tbcir novels. The more freely they are allowed, the 
 more necessary is it that he who supplies shall take care 
 that they are worthy of the trust that is given to them. 
 
 Now let the reader ask himself what are the lessons 
 which Tliackeray has taught. Let him send his memory 
 running back over all those characters of whom we have 
 just been speaking, and ask himself whether any girl has 
 been taught to be immodest, or any man unmanly, by 
 what Thackeray has written. 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, there- 
 fore the precept will be evil. If so, some personages with 
 whom we have been made well acquainted from our youth 
 upwards would have been omitted in our early lessons. 
 It may be a question whether the teaching is not more ef- 
 ficacious which comes from the evil example. -What story 
 was ever more powerful in showing the beauty of feminine 
 reticence, and the horrors of feminine evil-doing, than the 
 fate of Effie Deans ? The Templar would have betrayed a 
 woman to his lust, but has not encouraged others by the 
 freedom of his life. Yarney was utterly bad — but though 
 a gay courtier, he has enticed no others to go the way that 
 he went. So it has been with Thackeray. His examples 
 have been generally of that kind — but they have all been 
 efficacious in their teaching on the side of modesty and 
 manliness, truth and simplicity. When some girl shall 
 have traced from first to last the character of Beatrix, 
 what, let us ask, will be the result on her mind ? Beatrix 
 was born noble, clever, beautiful, with certain material ad- 
 vantages, which it was within her compass to improve by 
 her nobility, wit, and beauty. She was quite alive to that 
 fact, and thought of those material advantages, to the ut- 
 ter exclusion, in our mind, of any idea of moral goodness. 
 
202 THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 She realised it all, and told herself that that was the game 
 she would play. " Twenty -five !" says she; "and in eight 
 years no man has ever touched my heart !" That is her 
 boast when she is about to be married — her only boast of 
 herself. "A most detestable young woman!" some will 
 say. "An awful example !" others will add. Not a doubt 
 of it. She proves the misery of her own career so fully 
 that no one will follow it. The example is so awful that 
 it will surely deter. The girl will declare to herself that 
 not in that way will she look for the happiness which she 
 hopes to enjoy ; and the young man. will say, as he reads 
 it, that no Beatrix shall touch his heart. 
 
 You may go through all his cliaracters with the same 
 effect. Pendennis will be scorned because he is light; 
 AVarrington loved because he is strong and merciful ; Dob- 
 bin will be honoured because he is unselfish ; and the old 
 colonel, though he be foolish, vain, and weak, almost wor- 
 shipped because he is so true a gentleman. It is in the 
 handling of questions such as these that we have to look 
 for the matter of the novelist — those moral lessons which 
 he mixes up with his jam and his honey. I say that with 
 Thackeray the physic is always curative and never poison- 
 ous. He may be admitted safely into that close fellow- 
 ship, and be allowed to accompany the dear ones to their 
 retreats. The girl will never become bold under his 
 preaching, or taught to throw herself at men''s heads. Nor 
 will the lad receive a false flashy idea of what becomes a 
 youtb, when he is first about to take his place among men. 
 
 As to that other question, whether Thackeray be amus- 
 ing as well as salutary, I must leave it to public opinion. 
 There is now being brought out of his works a more splen- 
 did edition than has ever been produced in any age or 
 any country of the writings of such an author. A ce^ 
 
IX.] THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 203 
 
 tain fixed number of copies only is being issued, and each 
 copy will cost £33 12s. when completed. It is under- 
 Btood that a very large proportion of the 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 
 any more than it will of a horse. But it is proof of the 
 popularity of the book. Print and illustrate and bind up 
 some novels how you Avill, no one will buy them. Previous 
 to these costly volumes, there have been l^'o entire editions 
 of his works since the author's death, one comparatively 
 cheap and the other dear. Before his death his stories had 
 been scattered in all imaginable forms. I may therefore 
 assert that their charm has been proved by their popularity. 
 There remains for us only this question — whether the 
 nature of Thackeray's works entitle him to be called a 
 cynic. The word is one which is always used in a bad 
 sense. " Of a dog ; currish," is the definition which we 
 get from Johnson — quite correctly, and in accordance with 
 its etymology. And he gives us examples. " How vilely 
 does this cynic rhyme," he takes from Shakespeare ; and 
 Addison speaks of a man degenerating into a cynic. That 
 Thackeray's nature was soft and kindly — gentle almost to 
 a fault — has been shown elsewhere. But they who have 
 called him a cynic have spoken of him merely as a writer 
 — and as writer he has certainly taken upon hin^self the 
 special task of barking at the vices and follies of the world 
 around him. Any satirist might in the same way be call- 
 ed a cynic in so far as his satire goes. Swift was a cynic, 
 certainly. Pope was cynical when he was a satirist. Ju- 
 venal was all cynical, because he was all satirist. If that 
 be what is meant, Thackeray was certainly a cynic. But 
 that is not all that the word implies. It intends to go 
 
 back beyond the work of the man, and to describe his 
 
 
204 ^ THACKERAY. [chap. 
 
 heart. It says of any satirist so described that he has 
 given himself up to satire, not because things have been 
 evil, but because he himself has been evil. Hamlet is a 
 satirist, whereas Thersites is a cynic. If Thackeray be 
 judged after this fashion, the word is as inappropriate to 
 the writer as to the man. 
 
 But it has to be confessed that Thackeray did allow his 
 intellect to be too thoroughly saturated with the aspect of 
 the ill side of things. We can trace the operation of his 
 mind from his earliest days, when he commenced his paro- 
 dies at school ; when he brought out The Snob at Cam- 
 bridge, when he sent Yellowplush out upon the world as 
 a satirist on the doings of gentlemen generally ; when he 
 wrote his Catherine, to show the vileness of the taste for 
 what he would have called Newgate literature; and The 
 Hoggarty Diamond, to attack bubble companies; and 
 Barry Lyndon, to expose the pride which a rascal may 
 take in his rascality. Becky Sharp, Major Pendennis, Bea- 
 trix, both as a young and as an old woman, were written 
 with the same purpose. There is a touch of satire in 
 every drawing that he made. A jeer is needed for some- 
 thing that is ridiculous, scorn has to be thrown on some- 
 thing that is vile. The same feeling is to be found ic 
 every line of every ballad. 
 
 VANITAS VANITATUM. 
 
 Mcthinks the text is never stale, 
 
 And life is every day renewing 
 Fresh comments on the old old talc, 
 
 Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin. 
 
 Ilark 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— 
 
IX.] THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 205 
 
 For you and me to heart to take 
 
 (0 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, if it might be so, to do something to- 
 wards lesscninix the evils he saw around him. We all 
 preach our sermon, but not always with the same earnest- 
 ness, lie had become so urgent in the cause, so loud in 
 his denunciations, that he did not stop often to speak of 
 the good things around him. Now and again he paused 
 and blessed amid, the torrent of his anathemas. There 
 are Dobbin, and Esmond, and Colonel Newcome. But his 
 anathemas are the loudest. It has been so, I think, nearly 
 always with the eloquent preachers. 
 
 I will insert here — especially here at the end of this 
 chapter, in which I have spoken of Thackeray's matter and 
 manner of writing, because of the justice of the criticism 
 conveyed — the lines which Lord Houghton wrote on his 
 death, and which are to be found in the February number 
 of The Cotiihill of 1864. It was the first number printed 
 after his death. I would add that, though no Dean ap- 
 plied for permission to bury Thackeray in Westminster 
 Abbey, his bust was placed there without delay. What is 
 needed by the nation in such a case is simply a lasting 
 memorial there, where such memorials are most often seen 
 and most highly honoured. But we can all of us sympa- 
 thise with the feeling of the poet, writing immediately oa 
 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, 
 
200 THACKERAY. [chap, is 
 
 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 Hi.d forgot their strife, 
 
 And rival statesmen thronged the fane. 
 
 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, 
 
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
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