Prominent among the portrait Waterloo thunder was in the air. ures of men in "Vanity Fair" are the fat Indian official, Jos. Sedley, whose delicate health does not interfere with the play of his knife and fork—the big, hulking dragoon, Rawdon Crawley, whose heart, for all his nonsense, is in the right place the empty dandy, George, upon whom little Amelia wastes her sweetness-and the unselfish and devoted William Dobbin, a kind of Tom Pinch in regimentals. The History of Arthur Pendennis, the second great work from Thackeray's pen, followed in a short time. In the character of Pendennis the novelist depicts a man full of faults and weaknesses, who is acted on by the common influences of modern life. Mrs. Pendennis, the hero's mother, and Laura, who, although 1849 too good for the scamp, finally becomes his wife, are the chief feminine portraits. The Major, a worldly old beau, and that fine fellow, George Warrington, a literary man, who acts as the good genius of Pen, are capitally drawn. A.D. Six brilliant and appreciative Lectures on the English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, dealing, among others, with Swift, Pope, Addison, Steele, Hogarth, and Goldsmith, delighted a fashionable London crowd at Willis's Rooms in 1851, and were afterwards delivered by the author, both in Scotland and America. They have since been printed, and have sold remarkably well. Many of the literary men, whose books and manners Thackeray discussed in the delightful gossip of these Lectures, mingle in the mimic life of his next work, The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. The days of Blenheim and Ramillies are revived. Swift, Congreve, Addison, and Steele walk once more among men. Jacobites are A.D. plotting for the return of those exiled princes who live across the water. Queen Anne is on the English throne. As a work of literary art, Esmond stands, perhaps, higher than either 1852 Vanity Fair or The Newcomes. The hero, who has long sought Beatrix Castlewood, a self-willed beauty, consoles himself for rejection by a union with her mother, and settles down in Virginia to write the story of his life. The novelist had a difficult task to accomplish in reconciling his readers to a plot so un 490 LATER NOVELS AND LECTURES. common; but any slight revulsion of feeling which we experience at the change is amply atoned for by the eloquence of the book and its truthfulness as a piece of historical painting. The Newcomes, Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family, edited by Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, appeared in monthly numbers, which completed their tale in 1855. The story is one of modern life. And, in all the range of fiction, nothing goes deeper to the heart than the affecting spectacle of that true gentleman, and 1855 gentlest man, old Colonel Newcome, lying, after a life of virtue and devotion, on a poor death-bed within the gloom of the old Charter-house. Amid a crowd of new and striking characters, we find here a lovely picture of womanhood in the sweet Ethel Newcome. A.D. The success of the " English Humourists" induced the lecturer to try his pen a second time in this attractive field. Continuing those light and graceful sketches of later English history which form the ground-work of "Esmond," he produced a series of lectures on The Four Georges, which he delivered first in the States, then in London, and afterwards in several leading cities of Great Britain. These lectures have since appeared in the "Cornhill Magazine." The darker side of the Germanized English Court is here depicted. He tells with great pathos the domestic tragedy of poor old "Farmer George," third of the name, closing the sorrowful story with a passage in his own peculiar vein, full of mournful beauty and deep feeling. But the son of that blind, insane, deaf old king is treated with such contemptuous sarcasm-such fine-pointed, piercing irony, as a Thackeray alone can sprinkle or fling upon his victim. All the poor paints and feathers, in which this royal character is tricked out in contemporary books and records of his reign, shrivel and drop under the fluid flame; and the man, poor and miserable and naked, stands disclosed to view. The Virginians, a continuation of "Esmond," founded like that work on an historical basis, began to appear towards 1857 the close of 1857. The story embraces pictures of life in England during the reign of George the Second, and places before us the literary men and wits who thronged the A.D. coffee-houses of that time. The American War forms a part of the historical ground-work of the plot. Nearly two years ago the "Cornhill Magazine" was started, with Thackeray as its editor. If his position in English letterdom had been a doubtful one, the splendid success of that serial would at once have dissolved all doubts. The circulation of the second number exceeded one hundred thousand; nor was this sudden leap over the heads of all other serials of the day a mere spasmodic effortthe sudden soaring of a blazing rocket which comes down a blackened stick. The position quickly won has been steadily maintained. In addition to his editorial duties, Mr. Thackeray contributes largely to the pages of his magazine. A short story, called Lovel the Widower, rather confused in its plot, and somewhat unpleasant in its heroine, yet bearing witness to the undiminished brilliance of his pen; several chapters of a novel now in progress, entitled Philip, which promises to rank among his finest picturing of life and character; and those queer, delightful, rambling, thoroughly Thackerayesque Roundabout Papers, which many abuse but all delight in-frolics of genius "wandering at its own sweet will" through all wildernesses of topics, past and present,— have been his works since he undertook the literary management of the "Cornhill." one. Thackeray has had his full share of abuse; but he has lived, or rather written it down. "He sees no good in man," cried "Vanitas Vani"Cold, sneering cynic," says another. tatum, and never another theme." Cries like these, which have all but died away, were evoked by the author's earlier works, in which he devoted his pen rather to the humiliation of empty pride and the destruction of those shams which flourish thickly in the atmosphere of London fashion, than to the direct inculcation of virtue by the creation of virtuous models. His genius resembles some tart and sparkling wine, which has ripened with age into a mellow cordial-golden, sweet, and strong. His later works, though somewhat less pungent, possess a deeper human wisdom and a sunnier glow of benevolence. His language is fresh and idiomatic English, abounding in the 492 THE LANGUAGE OF THACKERAY. better coinage from the mint of slang, though never descending to its baser metals. Words that would have shocked Dr. Johnson, and which still startle gentlemen of the old school by their direct expressiveness, rise to his pen continually. And he talks to his readers out of the pleasant page he gives them with a playful, genial artlessness, which not unfrequently changes to a sudden shower of sharp, satiric hits. That which especially distinguishes his works, among the crowd of English novels that load our shelves and tables, lies in his portrayal of human character as it is. Painting men and women as he meets them at dinner or watches them in the park, he gives us no paragons of perfection-forms of exquisite beauty enshrining minds of unsullied purity, or that opposite ideal so familiar to the readers of romance --but men and women, with all their faults and foibles, with their modest virtues shrinking from exhibition, or their meanness well deserving the censor's lash. Illustrations by himself adorn all his larger works, displaying the same tendency to teach by apparent fun-making, and the same dislike of the conventional, which pervade the letter-press. No stranger pencil could so well convey the spirit of that delicate irony and sparkling banter which flow freely from Thackeray's pen. DEATH OF GEORGE THE THIRD. (FROM "THE FOUR GEORGES.") All the world knows the story of his malady: all history presents no sadder figure than that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason, wandering through the rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly courts. I have seen his picture as it was taken at this time, hanging in the apartment of his daughter, the Landgravine of Hesse Hombourg-amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over his breast-the star of his famous Order still idly shining on it. He was not only sightless-he became utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had; in one of which the queen, desiring to see him, entered the room, and found him singing a hymn, and accompanying himself at the harpsichord. When he had finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding with a prayer for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy calamity SPECIMEN OF THACKERAY'S PROSE. 493 from him, but if not, to give him resignation to submit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again fled. What preacher need moralize on this story; what words save the simplest are requisite to tell it? It is too terrible for tears. The thought of such a misery smites me down in submission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of life, death, happiness, victory. "O brothers," I said to those who heard me first in America-"O brothers! speaking the same dear mother tongue-O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to battle! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest: dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne; buffeted by rude hands; with his children in revolt; the darling of his old age killed before him untimely; our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, 'Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little ! ' Vex not his ghost-oh! let him pass-he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Hush, Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, Trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, Dark Curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy!" |