At all events it aided him to handle his theme of
"manners" with a competence denied to most writers, and helped
to fuse in him the dual temperament of the artist and satirist with
distinguished results.
"manners" with a competence denied to most writers, and helped
to fuse in him the dual temperament of the artist and satirist with
distinguished results.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v25 - Tas to Tur
He fears everything,-
his father's displeasure, and how his mistress may be disposed
towards him. He loves her to distraction: on her account this
trouble and going abroad took place.
Chremes I know it.
Clitipho-He has just sent a servant into the city to her, and
I ordered our Syrus to go with him.
Chremes-What does Clinia say?
Clitipho-What does he say? That he is wretched.
Chremes-Wretched? Whom could we less suppose so? What
is there wanting for him to enjoy everything that among men,
XXV-917
-
## p. 14658 (#228) ##########################################
14658
TERENCE
in fact, are esteemed as blessings? Parents, a country in pros-
perity, friends, family, relations, riches? And yet, all these are
just according to the disposition of him who possesses them. To
him who knows how to use them, they are blessings; to him
who does not use them rightly, they are evils.
Clitipho-Aye, but he always was a morose old man; and
now I dread nothing more, father, than that in his displeasure
he'll be doing something to him more than is justifiable.
Chremes - What, he? — [Aside. ] But I'll restrain myself; for
that the other one should be in fear of his father is of service
to him.
Clitipho- What is it you are saying to yourself?
Chremes- I'll tell you. However the case stood, Clinia ought
still to have remained at home. Perhaps his father was a little
stricter than he liked: he should have put up with it. For whom
ought he to bear with, if he would not bear with his own father?
Was it reasonable that he should live after his son's humor, or
his son after his? And as to charging him with harshness, it is
not the fact. For the severities of fathers are generally of one
character, those I mean who are in some degree reasonable
men. They do not wish their sons to be always wenching; they
do not wish them to be always carousing; they give a limited
allowance: and yet all this tends to virtuous conduct. But when
the mind, Clitipho, has once enslaved itself by vicious appetites,
it must of necessity follow similar pursuits. This is a wise
maxim: "To take warning from others of what may be to your
own advantage. "
Clitipho-I believe so.
Chremes- I'll now go hence in-doors, to see what we have for
dinner. Do you, seeing what is the time of day, mind and take
care not to be anywhere out of the way. [Goes into his house,
and exit Clitipho. ]
Enter Clitipho
Clitipho [to himself] — What partial judges are all fathers
in regard to all of us young men, in thinking it reasonable for
us to become old men all at once from boys, and not to partici-
pate in those things which youth is naturally inclined to. They
regulate us by their own desires, such as they now are,- not as
they once were. If ever I have a son, he certainly shall find in
## p. 14659 (#229) ##########################################
TERENCE
14659
me an indulgent father, for the means both of knowing and of
pardoning his faults shall be found by me; not like mine, who
by means of another person discloses to me his own sentiments.
I'm plagued to death. When he drinks a little more than usual,
what pranks of his own he does relate to me! Now he says,
"Take warning from others of what may be to your own advan-
tage. " How shrewd! He certainly does not know how deaf I
am at the moment when he's telling his stories. Just now the
words of my mistress make more impression upon me.
"Give me
this, and bring me that," she cries. I have nothing to say to
her in answer, and no one is there more wretched than myself.
But this Clinia, although he as well has cares enough of his
own, still has a mistress of virtuous and modest breeding, and a
stranger to the arts of a courtesan. Mine is a craving, saucy,
haughty, extravagant creature, full of lofty airs. Then all that
I have to give her is-fair words; for I make it a point not to
tell her that I have nothing. This misfortune I met with not
long since, nor does my father as yet know anything of the
matter.
Enter Clinia from the house of Chremes
Clinia [to himself]-If my love affairs had been prosperous
for me, I am sure she would have been here by this; but I'm
afraid that the damsel has been led astray here in my absence.
Many things combine to strengthen this opinion in my mind:
opportunity, the place, her age; a worthless mother, under whose
control she is, with whom nothing but gain is precious.
Enter Clitipho
Clitipho-Clinia!
Clinia Alas! wretched me!
Clitipho-Do, pray, take care that no one coming out of your
father's house sees you here by accident.
Clinia-I will do so; but really my mind presages I know
not what misfortune.
Clitipho-Do you persist in making up your mind upon that,
before you know what is the fact?
Clinia - Had no misfortune happened, she would have been
here by this.
Clitipho-She'll be here presently.
Clinia - When will that presently be?
## p. 14660 (#230) ##########################################
14660
TERENCE
Clitipho-You don't consider that it is a great way from
here. Besides, you know the ways of women: while they are
bestirring themselves, and while they are making preparations, a
whole year passes by.
Clinia-O Clitipho, I'm afraid —
Clitipho-Take courage. Look, here comes Dromo, together
with Syrus: they are close at hand.
[They stand aside.
Enter Syrus and Dromo, conversing at a distance
Syrus-Do you say so?
Dromo-'Tis as I told you; but in the mean time, while we've
been carrying on our discourse, these women have been left be-
hind.
Clitipho [apart] - Don't you hear, Clinia? Your mistress is
close at hand.
Clinia [apart]—Why, yes, I do hear now at last; and I see
and revive, Clitipho.
Dromo-No wonder: they are so incumbered; they are bring-
ing a troop of female attendants with them.
Clinia [apart]—I'm undone! Whence come these female at-
tendants ?
Clitipho [apart] - Do you ask me?
Syrus-We ought not to have left them; what a quantity of
things they are bringing!
Clinia [apart] — Ah me!
Syrus - Jewels of gold, and clothes; it's growing late too, and
they don't know the way. It was very foolish of us to leave
them. Just go back, Dromo, and meet them. Make haste! why
do you delay ?
Clinia [apart]-Woe unto wretched me! From what high
hopes am I fallen!
Clitipho [apart] - What's the matter? Why, what is it that
troubles you?
Clinia [apart]- Do you ask what it is? Why, don't you see?
Attendants, jewels of gold, and clothes;-her too, whom I left
here with only one little servant-girl. Whence do you suppose
that they come ?
Clitipho [apart]-Oh! now at last I understand you.
Syrus [to himself]-Good gods! what a multitude there is!
Our house will hardly hold them, I'm sure. How much they
will eat! how much they will drink! what will there be more
―――――
## p. 14661 (#231) ##########################################
TERENCE
14661
wretched than our old gentleman? [Catching sight of Clinia and
Clitipho. ] But look: I espy the persons I was wanting.
Clinia [apart]-O Jupiter! Why, where is fidelity gone?
While I, distractedly wandering, have abandoned my country for
your sake, you in the mean time, Antiphila, have been enriching
yourself, and have forsaken me in these troubles: you for whose
sake I am in extreme disgrace, and have been disobedient to my
father; on whose account I am now ashamed and grieved that he
who used to lecture me about the manners of these women, ad-
vised me in vain, and was not able to wean me away from her;
which however I shall now do; whereas when it might have
been advantageous to me to do so, I was unwilling. There is no
being more wretched than I.
Syrus [to himself]- He certainly has been misled by our
words which we have been speaking here. -[Aloud. ] Clinia,
you imagine your mistress quite different from what she really
is. For both her mode of life is the same, and her disposition
towards you is the same, as it always was, so far as we could
form a judgment from the circumstances themselves.
Clinia - How so, prithee? For nothing in the world could I
rather wish for just now, than that I have suspected this without
reason.
Syrus-This, in the first place, then (that you may not be
ignorant of anything that concerns her): the old woman, who was
formerly said to be her mother, was not so. She is dead; this
I overheard by accident from her, as we came along, while she
was telling the other one.
Clitipho-Pray, who is the other one?
Syrus-Stay: what I have begun I wish first to relate, Cli-
tipho; I shall come to that afterwards.
Clitipho-Make haste, then.
Syrus-First of all, then, when we came to the house, Dromo
knocked at the door; a certain old woman came out; when
she opened the door, he directly rushed in; I followed; the old
woman bolted the door, and returned to her wool. On this occas-
ion might be known, Clinia, or else on none, in what pursuits she
passed her life during your absence-when we thus came upon
a female unexpectedly. For this circumstance then gave us an
opportunity of judging of the course of her daily life; a thing
which especially discovers what is the disposition of each individ-
ual.
We found her industriously plying at the web; plainly clad
## p. 14662 (#232) ##########################################
14662
TERENCE
in a mourning-dress,-on account of this old woman, I suppose,
who was lately dead; without golden ornaments, dressed besides
just like those who only dress for themselves, and patched up
with no worthless woman's trumpery. Her hair was loose, long,
and thrown back negligently about her temples. -[To Clinia. ]
Do hold your peace.
Clinia My dear Syrus, do not without cause throw me into
ecstasies, I beseech you.
Syrus - The old woman was spinning the woof: there was
one little servant-girl besides; she was weaving together with
them, covered with patched clothes, slovenly, and dirty with filth-
iness.
-
Clitipho- If this is true, Clinia, as I believe it is, who is there
more fortunate than you? Do you mark this girl whom he
speaks of as dirty and drabbish? This too is a strong indica-
tion that the mistress is out of harm's way, when her confidant
is in such ill plight; for it is a rule with those who wish to gain
access to the mistress, first to bribe the maid.
Clinia [to Syrus]-Go on, I beseech you; and beware of en-
deavoring to purchase favor by telling an untruth. What did she
say when you mentioned me?
Syrus-When we told her that you had returned, and had
requested her to come to you, the damsel instantly put away the
web, and covered her face all over with tears; so that you might
easily perceive that it really was caused by her affection for
you.
――
Clinia So may the Deities bless me, I know not where I am
for joy! I was so alarmed before.
Translation of Henry Thomas Riley.
## p. 14662 (#233) ##########################################
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## p. 14663 (#237) ##########################################
14663
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
(1811-1863)
BY W. C. BROWNELL
HACKERAY shares the reader's interest with his works in a
degree quite unexampled in literature. His works are, in
a more obvious and special sense than is true of those of
most authors, the direct expression of his personality; and this per-
sonality in turn is one of unusually special and conspicuous interest.
He was a man of immense idiosyncratic attractiveness aside from his
literary faculties and equipment, and he endued his writings with
this personal interest to an extent not to be met with elsewhere.
No books are so personal as his. They are full of his ideas, his
notions, his feelings; and they owe to these not only their color and
atmosphere, but a considerable portion of their substance. They not
only tell the story, but draw the moral; and in a large way justify
the title of "week-day preacher," which he gave himself, and of
which he was both fond and proud.
This circumstance has been variously viewed by his readers and
critics, according to their own inclinations towards art or towards
morals, their preferences for "objectivity" in the novelist's attitude
to, and treatment of, his theme, or for the cogent and illuminating
commentary which draws out and sets forth in the telling the typi-
cal and universal interest and value of the story. Taine laments the
consecration of such splendid artistic gifts as are witnessed by the ex-
ceptional 'Henry Esmond' to the service of morals. And on the other
hand, Dr. John Brown both underestimates and undervalues the artis-
tic element in Thackeray, and deems his "moralizing" his great and
real distinction. The inference is, naturally, that Thackeray has a
side which each of these temperaments may admire at its ease. But
it is to be pointed out in addition that he has so fused the two-
which ordinarily exist separately when they exist in any such distinc-
tion as they do in Thackeray - that each enhances and neither dis-
parages the other. The characters of 'Vanity Fair,' 'Pendennis,' or
The Newcomes,' and the story that is evolved out of their study
rather than constructed for their framework, gain greatly in realiza-
tion as well as in significance from the personal commentary by
which they are expressed as well as attended. And the social and
## p. 14664 (#238) ##########################################
14664
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
personal philosophy which springs from their consideration, and to
which they give point, is powerfully enforced by the illustrative,
exemplary, and suggestive service they perform. Both proceed from
the instinctive exercise of Thackeray's mind and temperament, and
therefore coexist harmoniously in his works. Letters has never known
such a combination in one personality of the artist and moralist, the
satirist and poet; and the literature that is the expression of this
unique personality is therefore not to be classed in the customary
category of art or in that of morals, with its complementary qualities
considered correspondingly as defects according to the category to
which the work is ascribed. Hence, moreover, the unusual, the unique
importance and convenience in any critical consideration of Thack-
eray's works, of considering also the personality which not only pene-
trates but characterizes them.
It has become quite superfluous at the present day to point out
that he was very far from being the cynic he passed for with many
readers during his lifetime. He is rather to be defended from the
reproach of sentimentality. But excess in the matter of sentiment
is something that different people will determine differently. Intel-
lectual rectitude distinguished him conspicuously; but he was notably
a man of heart, and exercised his great powers in the service of the
affections. He may be said to have taken the sentimental view of
things, if not to do so implies the dispassionate and detached atti-
tude towards them. He was extremely sensitive, and chafed greatly
under the frequent ascription of cynicism that he had to endure. He
found the problem of reconciling a stoic philosophy and an epicurean
temperament no easier and no harder, probably, than many others to
whom it has been assigned; and his practice was, as usual, a succes-
sion of alternations of indulgence and restraint. But he hoodwinked
himself no more than he was deceived by others; and if few men of
his intellectual eminence - which is the one thing about him we can
now perceive as he could hardly do himself-have been so open to
his particular temptations, few men of his temperament, on the other
hand, have steadfastly and industriously carved for themselves so
splendid a career. He was at the same time the acutest of observers
and eminently a man of the world. He was even in some sense a
man about town. The society he depicted so vividly had marked.
attractions for him. He was equally at home in Bohemia and in
Belgravia,- enough so in the latter to lead the literal to ascribe to
him the snobbishness he made so large a portion of his subject. As
he pointed out, however, no one is free from some touch of this, and
denunciation of it is in peculiar peril from its contagion; and Thack-
eray had the courage of his tastes in valuing what is really valuable
in the consideration which society bestows. On its good side this
## p. 14665 (#239) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14665
consideration is certainly to be prized by any one not a snob; for it
means a verdict often more impartial and independent than that of
any other tribunal. Society is a close corporation; and petty as are
many of its standards, and vulgar as is much of its application of
them, it has its ideal of the art of life: and what it really worships
is real power,-power that is independent of talent, accomplishment,
or worth, often, very likely; but power that, adventitious or other,
is almost an automatic measure of an individual's claims upon it.
Really to contribute to the life of society implies a special, disinter-
ested, and æsthetic talent like another; and Thackeray's gift in this
respect is properly to be associated with his literary and more largely
human ones.
At all events it aided him to handle his theme of
"manners" with a competence denied to most writers, and helped
to fuse in him the dual temperament of the artist and satirist with
distinguished results.
This combination of the artist and the satirist is the ideal one for
the novelist; and Thackeray's genius, varied as it is, is pre-eminently
the genius of the born novelist. It is singular, but it is doubtless
characteristic of a temperament destined to such complete matur-
ity, that he should have waited so long before finding his true field
of effort, and that he should not have begun the work upon which
his fame rests until he had reached an age at which that of not a
few men of genius has ended: he was thirty-six before his first great
work was published. He was born July 18th, 1811, in Calcutta; and
was sent home to England to school, upon his father's death when
he was five years old. From 1822 to 1828 he was at Charterhouse
School, the famous "Grey Friars" of The Newcomes. ' He spent
two years at Cambridge, leaving without a degree to travel abroad,
where he visited the great European capitals, and saw Goethe at
Weimar. He traveled in the real sense, and used perceptive faculties
such as are given to few observers, to the notable ends subsequently
witnessed in his books. He was from the first always of the world
as well as in it, and understood it with as quick sympathy in one
place as in another. At Weimar he meditated translating Schiller;
but- no doubt happily-nothing came of the rather desultory design.
In 1831 he went into chambers in the Temple; but not taking kindly
to law, and losing a small inherited fortune, he followed his native
bent, which led him into journalism, literature, and incidentally into
art. He began his serious literary work as a contributor to Fra-
ser's Magazine in 1835, after some slight preliminary experience; and
thenceforth wrote literary miscellany of extraordinary variety — sto-
ries, reviews, art criticisms, foreign correspondence, burlesques, bal-
lads for all sorts of periodicals.
In 1836 he made an effort to obtain work as an illustrator, but
without success,- one of his failures being with Dickens, whose refusal
--
-
--
## p. 14666 (#240) ##########################################
14666
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
was certainly justified. In 1838 he illustrated Jerrold's 'Men of
Character'; but in the main he was forced to content himself with
his own works in this respect, and most of these he did illustrate.
Pictorial art was clearly not his vocation. His drawings have plenty
of character; and it is not unfortunate, perhaps, that we have his
pictorial presentment rather than another's, of so many of his person-
ages.
But he not only lacked the skill that comes of training,- he
had no real gift for representation, and for the plastic expression of
beauty he had no faculty; the element of caricature is prominent in
all his designs. He did them with great delight and ease, whereas
literary work was always drudgery to him; but of course this is the
converse of witness to their merit.
His poetry, which he wrote at intervals, and desultorily through-
out his career, is on a decidedly higher plane. It is of the kind
that is accurately called "verses," but it is as plainly his own as his
prose; and some of it will always be read, probably, for its feeling
and its felicity. It is the verse mainly but not merely of the impro-
visatore. It never oversteps the modesty becoming the native gift
that expresses itself in it. Most of it could not have been as well
said in prose; and its title is clear enough, however unpretentious.
Metrically and in substance the 'Ballads' are excellent balladry. They
never rise to Scott's level of heroic bravura, and though the contem-
plative ones are deeper in feeling than any of Scott's, they are poet-
ically more summary and have less sweep; one hardly thinks of the
pinions of song at all in connection with them. Prose was distinctly
Thackeray's medium more exclusively than it was Scott's. But com-
pare the best of the 'Ballads' with Macaulay's 'Lays,' to note the
difference in both quality and execution between the verse of a writer
with a clear poetic strain in his temperament, and that of a pure
rhetorician whose numbers make one wince. The White Squall' is
a tour de force of rhyme and rhythm, the Ballad of Bouillabaisse '
has a place in every reader's affections, Mr. Moloney's Account of the
Ball' is a perpetual delight, even 'The Crystal Palace' is not merely
clever; and 'The Pen and the Album' and notably the Vanitas
Vanitatum' verses have an elevation that is both solemn and moving,
— a sustained note of genuine lyric inspiration chanting gravely the
burden of all the poet's prose.
He joined the staff of Punch almost immediately upon its estab-
lishment, and was long one of its strongest contributors. The following
year, 1843, he went to Ireland, and published his 'Irish Sketch-Book. '
In 1844 he made the Eastern journey chronicled in 'From Cornhill
to Grand Cairo,' and published 'Barry Lyndon' in Fraser. In 1846
'The Book of Snobs' appeared; and the next year 'Vanity Fair,'
which made him famous and the fashion. Pendennis' followed
in 1848-49. Next came The English Humorists of the Eighteenth
## p. 14667 (#241) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14667
Century' (1851), delivered with great success to the exacting London
world of society and letters; 'Henry Esmond,' and his first trip to
America (1852), where he repeated the lectures, and where he was
greeted universally with a friendliness he thoroughly returned; The
Newcomes (1853-5); his second American trip (1855), when he first
read his lectures on 'The Four Georges'; 'The Virginians' (1857-9);
the establishment of the Cornhill Magazine with Thackeray as editor
(1860), and the publication in its pages during his last three years
of the 'Roundabout Papers,' 'Lovel the Widower,' 'Philip,' and the
beginning of the unfinished 'Denis Duval. ' In 1857 he had contested
a seat in Parliament for Oxford in the Liberal interest, but had been
defeated by a vote of 1018 to 1085 for his opponent. His health had
been far from good for some years; and during the night of Decem-
ber 23d, 1863, he died in his sleep.
Loosely speaking, his work may be said to be divided into two
classes, miscellany and novels, by the climacteric date of his career-
January 1847 - when the first number of 'Vanity Fair' appeared. No
writer whose fame rests, as Thackeray's larger fame does, on nota-
ble works of fiction, has written miscellaneous literature of the qual-
ity of his. Taken in connection with the novels, it ranks him as the
representative English man of letters of his time. There is extraor-
dinarily little "copy" in it. It is the lighter work of a man born
for greater things, and having therefore in its quality something
superior to its genre. In the first place, it has the style which in its
maturity led Carlyle to say, "Nobody in our day wrote, I should say,
with such perfection of style;" and as Thackeray observes of Gib-
bon's praise of Fielding, "there can be no gainsaying the sentence
of this great judge» in such a matter. It has too his qualities of
substance, which were to reach their full development later. The
Great Hoggarty Diamond' is rather small-beer, but it communi-
cates that sense of reality which is to be sought for in vain among
its contemporaries: compare the consummate Brough in this respect
with one of Dickens's ideal hypocrites. The 'Sketch-Books' will
always be good reading. The Book of Snobs' enlarged the con-
fines of literature by the discovery and exploration of a new domain.
'Barry Lyndon' is a masterpiece of irony comparable with Swift and
'Jonathan Wild' alone, and to be ranked rather among the novels.
Such burlesques as 'Rebecca and Rowena' and the 'Novels by Emi-
nent Hands' of Punch, the various essays in polite literature of Mr.
Yellowplush, the delightful extravagance The Rose and the Ring,'
the admirable account of 'Mrs. Perkins's Ball,' and many other trifles
which it is needless even to catalogue here, illustrate in common a
quality of wit, of unexpectedness, of charm, as conspicuous as their
remarkable variety. And as to the later 'Lectures' on the Queen
## p. 14668 (#242) ##########################################
14668
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Anne humorists and the Georges, and the inimitable Roundabout
Papers,' nothing of the kind has ever been done on quite the same
plane.
It is, however, to the elaborate and exquisitely commented picture
of life which the novels present, that Thackeray owes his fellow-
ship with the very greatest figures of literature outside the realm
of poetry. The four most important,-'Vanity Fair,' 'Pendennis,'
'Henry Esmond,' and 'The Newcomes,'-especially, enable him
to take his place among these with the ease of equality. Vanity
Fair' perhaps expresses his genius in its freest spontaneity. Thack-
eray himself spoke of it-to Dr. Merriman -as his greatest work.
And though he declared 'Henry Esmond'— which, as the dedicator
states, "copies the manners and language of Queen Anne's time” —
"the very best that I can do," the two remarks are not inconsistent:
they aptly distinguish between his most original substance and his
most perfect form. 'Pendennis' and 'The Newcomes' are social
pictures on a larger scale, of less dramatic and more epic interest.
'The Virginians' is only less important; but it loses something of
the relief which the remoteness of its epoch gives 'Henry Esmond,'
and something of the actuality that its other predecessors owe to
their modernness. 'Lovel the Widower' is an admitted failure,
largely though not splendidly redeemed by Philip' which followed
it. But the beginnings of Denis Duval' are enough to show that
the level of The Virginians,' at least, might have been reached
again; and make the writer's death at fifty-two indisputably and
grievously premature.
Charlotte Bronté, who dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre'
to Thackeray, maintaining that "No commentator upon his writings.
has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly
characterize his talent," spoke of him as "the first social regenerator
of the day. " She had herself, however, correctly divined his talent:
it was at once social and moral. She objected to his association
with Fielding, whom she declared he resembled "as an eagle does
a vulture," and charged Fielding with having "stooped on carrion. "
Fielding was undoubtedly his model. He regretted that he had not
read him more in early years. And Fielding is undoubtedly a writer
of both social and moral quality. But his moral range is narrow,
and there is a grave lack in his equipment considered as that of a
great writer, he lacks spirituality altogether. And spirituality is a
quality that Thackeray possessed in a distinguished degree. It is
his spirituality that Charlotte Bronté really had in mind in contrast-
ing him in her trenchant, passionate way with his predecessor. The
difference is fundamental. It is far deeper than mere choice of
material. Thackeray himself says regretfully, in the preface to
## p. 14669 (#243) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14669
'Pendennis': "Since the author of 'Tom Jones' was buried, no writer
of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power
a man. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional
simper. " He would have liked, clearly, a wider range and a freer
hand; and Charlotte Bronté would have been less pleased with him
had he enjoyed them. But he would never have "sunk with his sub-
ject," because his imagination had so strong a spiritual side.
On the other hand, what distinguishes him from such a novelist as
George Eliot is the preoccupation of his imagination with the heart
rather than the mind. Instinctively his critics agree in characteriz-
ing his dominant faculty as "insight into the human heart. " There
is no question anywhere as to the depth and keenness of this insight
in him, at all events,- however one regards the frequent statement
that it was deeper and keener than that of any other writer, “Shake-
speare and Balzac perhaps excepted. " The exception of Shakespeare
is surely as sound as it is mechanical. That of Balzac may be
disputed. Balzac's insight proceeds from his curiosity, that of Thack-
eray from his sympathy. If always as keen, Balzac's is never quite
as deep. It is perhaps wider. Curiosity in the artist means an
unlimited interest in men and things; which it regards as all, and
more or less equally, material. Sympathy necessarily selects — sympa-
thy, or even antipathy if one chooses; but in selecting it concentrates.
'La Comédie Humaine' is a wonderful structure. It parallels the exist-
ing world, one may almost say. The psychologist, the sociologist,
the specialist of nearly any description, may study it with zest and
ponder it profitably. It is a marvelously elaborate framework filled
in with an astonishing variety of both types and individuals. One
may seek in it not vainly for an analogue of almost anything act-
ual. But though less multifarious, Thackeray's world is far more real.
His figures are far more alive. Their inner springs are divined, not
studied. They make the story themselves, not merely appear in it.
We have no charts of their minds and qualities, but we know them
as we know our friends and neighbors.
This sense of reality and vitality, in which the personages of
Thackeray excel those of any other prose fiction, proceeds from that
unusual association in the author's own personality of the spiritual
and sentimental qualities with great intellectual powers- to which
I have already referred. For character - the subject par excellence
of the great writers of fiction as distinguished from the pure roman-
ticists depends upon the heart. It is comparatively independent
of psychology. For a period so given over to science as our own,
so imbued with the scientific spirit, and so concentrated upon the
scientific side of even spiritual things, psychological fiction - such
as George Eliot's inevitably possesses a special, an almost esoteric,
――――――
## p. 14670 (#244) ##########################################
14670
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
interest. But it is nevertheless true that the elemental, the tempera-
mental, the vital idiosyncrasies of character depend less directly upon
mental than upon moral qualities. Men are what they are through
their feeling, not through their thinking except in so far as their
thinking modifies their feeling. At the same time it is to be borne
in mind that Thackeray does not neglect the mental constitution of
his characters. It cannot be said of his Rebecca, for example, as
Turgénieff is said to have observed of Zola's Gervaise Coupeau, that
"he tells us how she feels, never what she thinks. " We have a
complete enough picture of what is going on in her exceedingly
active mind; only in the main we infer this indirectly from what she
does, as we do in the case of Shakespeare's characters, rather than
from an express scrutiny of her mental mechanism. Her human and
social side is uppermost in her creator's presentation of her, though
she is plainly idiosyncratic enough to reward the study and even the
speculation of the most insistent psychologist.
Mr. Henry James acutely observes of Hawthorne's characters, that
with the partial exception of Donatello in the 'Marble Faun,' there
are no types among them. And it is assuredly for this reason that
they appear to us so entirely the creations of Hawthorne's fancy, so
much a part of the insubstantial witchery of his genius, that they
seem as individuals so unreal. Thackeray, on the other hand, has
been reproached with creating nothing but types. But the truth is
that a character of fiction, in order to make the impression of indivi-
duality, must be presented as a type. It is through its typical quali-
ties that it attains a definition which is neither insubstantial like that
of Hawthorne's personages, nor a caricature like that of so many
of Dickens's. Its typical qualities are those that persuade us of its
truth, and create the convincing illusion of its reality. A type in
fiction is a type in the sense in which the French use the term in
speaking of a real person,- a synthesis of representative traits, more
accentuated than the same characteristics as they are to be found in
general; a person, that is to say, of particularly salient individuality.
Only in this way do real persons who are not also eccentric persons
leave a striking and definite impression on us; and only in this
way do we measure that correspondence of fictitious to real charac-
ter which determines the reality of the former.
-
Of course in thus eschewing psychology and dealing mainly with
types, in occupying himself with those elemental traits of charac-
ter that depend upon the heart rather than the mind,—a realist
like Thackeray renounces a field so large and interesting as justly
to have his neglect of it accounted to him as a limitation. And
Thackeray still further narrows his field by confining himself in the
main to character not merely in its elemental traits, but in its morally
## p. 14671 (#245) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14671
significant ones as well. The colorless characters, such as Tom Tul-
liver for a single example, in which George Eliot is so strong, the
irresponsible ones, such as Dickens's Winkles and Swivellers, have
few fellows in his fiction, from which the seriousness of his satiric
strain excludes whatever is not significant as well as whatever is
purely particular. The loss is very great, considering his world as a
comédie humaine. It involves more than the elimination of psychol-
ogy,—it diminishes the number of types; and all types are interesting,
whether morally important or not. But in Thackeray's case it has
two great compensations. In the first place, the greater concentra-
tion it involves notably defines and emphasizes the net impression
of his works. It unifies their effect; and sharply crystallizes the mes-
sage to mankind, which, like every great writer in whatever branch
of literature he may cultivate, it was the main business, the aim
and crown and apology of his life, to deliver. There is no missing
the tenor of his gospel, which is that character is the one thing of
importance in life; that it is tremendously complex, and the easiest
thing in the world to misconceive both in ourselves and in others;
that truth is the one instrument of its perfecting, and the one subject
worthy of pursuit; and that the study of truth discloses littlenesses
and futilities in it at its best for which the only cloak is charity, and
the only consolation and atonement the cultivation of the affections.
It
In the second place, it is his concentration upon the morally sig-
nificant that places him at the head of the novelists of manners.
is the moral and social qualities, of course, that unite men in society,
and make it something other than the sum of the individuals com-
posing it. Far more deeply than Balzac, Thackeray felt the relations
between men that depend upon these qualities; and consequently
his social picture is, if less comprehensive and varied, far more vivid
and real. It is painted directly, and lacks the elaborate structural
machinery which makes Balzac's seem mechanical in composition
and artificial in spirit. Thackeray's personages are never portrayed
in isolation. They are a part of the milieu in which they exist, and
which has itself therefore much more distinction and relief than an
environment which is merely a framework. How they regard each
other, how they feel toward and what they think of each other, the
mutuality of their very numerous and vital relations, furnishes an im-
portant strand in the texture of the story in which they figure. Their
activities are modified by the air they breathe in common. Their con-
duct is controlled, their ideas affected, even their desires and ambi-
tions dictated, by the general ideals of the society that includes them.
In a more extended sense than Lady Kew intended in reminding
Ethel Newcome of the fact, they "belong to their belongings. " So
far as it goes, therefore,- and it would be easy to exaggerate its
## p. 14672 (#246) ##########################################
14672
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
limitations, which are trivial in comparison,- Thackeray's picture
of society is the most vivid, as it is incontestably the most real, in
prose fiction. The temperament of the artist and satirist combined,
the preoccupation with the moral element in character,- and in logi-
cal sequence, with its human and social side,-lead naturally to the
next step of viewing man in his relations, and the construction of a
miniature world. And in addition to the high place in literature
won for him by his insight into the human heart, Thackeray's social
picture has given him a distinction that is perhaps unique. In vir-
tue of it, at any rate, the writer who passed his life in rivalry with
Dickens and Bulwer and Trollope and Lever, belongs with Shake-
speare and Molière.
Woe Brownell
BEATRIX ESMOND
From The History of Henry Esmond'
A$
S THEY came up to the house at Walcote, the windows from
within were lighted up with friendly welcome; the supper
table was spread in the oak parlor: it seemed as if for-
giveness and love were awaiting the returning prodigal. Two
or three familiar faces of domestics were on the lookout at the
porch: the old housekeeper was there, and young Lockwood from
Castlewood in my lord's livery of tawny and blue. His dear
mistress pressed his arm as they passed into the hall. Her
eyes beamed out on him with affection indescribable. "Welcome,"
was all she said, as she looked up, putting back her fair curls
and black hood. A sweet rosy smile blushed on her face; Harry
thought he had never seen her look so charming. Her face was
lighted with a joy that was brighter than beauty; she took a
hand of her son, who was in the hall waiting his mother — she
did not quit Esmond's arm.
-
"Here
"Welcome, Harry! " my young lord echoed after her.
we are all come to say so. Here's old Pincot: hasn't she grown
handsome? " and Pincot, who was older and no handsomer than
usual, made a curtsy to the captain, -as she called Esmond,-and
told my lord to "Have done, now. "
"And here's Jack Lockwood. He'll make a famous grenadier,
Jack; and so shall I we'll both 'list under you, cousin. As soon
## p. 14673 (#247) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14673
as I am seventeen, I go to the army-every gentleman goes to
the army.
Look! who comes here: ho, ho! " he burst into a
laugh. "Tis Mistress 'Trix, with a new ribbon: I knew she
would put one on as soon as she heard a captain was coming to
supper. "
This laughing colloquy took place in the hall of Walcote
House, in the midst of which is a staircase that leads from
an open gallery, where are the doors of the sleeping-chambers;
and from one of these, a wax candle in her hand and illuminat-
ing her, came Mistress Beatrix,- the light falling indeed upon the
scarlet ribbon which she wore, and upon the most brilliant white
neck in the world.
Esmond had left a child, and found a woman; grown beyond
the common height, and arrived at such a dazzling completeness
of beauty that his eyes might well show surprise and delight
at beholding her. In hers there was a brightness so lustrous and
melting that I have seen a whole assembly follow her as if by
an attraction irresistible; and that night the great duke was at
the playhouse after Ramillies, every soul turned and looked (she
chanced to enter at the opposite side of the theatre at the same
moment) at her, and not at him. She was a brown beauty;
that is, her eyes, hair, and eyebrows and eyelashes were dark, her
hair curling with rich undulations and waving over her shoulders;
but her complexion was as dazzling white as snow in sunshine,
except her cheeks which were a bright red, and her lips which
were of a still deeper crimson. Her mouth and chin, they said,
were too large and full; and so they might be for a goddess.
in marble, but not for a woman whose eyes were fire, whose look
was love, whose voice was the sweetest low song, whose shape
was perfect symmetry, health, decision, activity, whose foot as
it planted itself on the ground was firm but flexible, and whose
motion, whether rapid or slow, was always perfect grace: agile as
a nymph, lofty as a queen,- now melting, now imperious, now
sarcastic, there was no single movement of hers but was beau-
tiful. As he thinks of her, he who writes feels young again, and
remembers a paragon.
―――
So she came holding her dress with one fair rounded arm, and
her taper before her, tripping down the stair to greet Esmond.
"She hath put on her scarlet stockings and white shoes," says
my lord, still laughing. "Oh, my fine mistress! is this the way
you set your cap at the captain? " She approached, shining smiles
XXV-918
## p. 14674 (#248) ##########################################
14674
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
upon Esmond, who could look at nothing but her eyes. She
advanced, holding forward her head, as if she would have him
kiss her as he used to do when she was a child.
"Stop," she said, "I am grown too big! Welcome, Cousin
Harry," and she made him an arch curtsy, sweeping down to
the ground almost with the most gracious bend, looking up the
while with the brightest eyes and sweetest smile. Love seemed
to radiate from her. Harry eyed her with such a rapture as the
first lover is described as having by Milton.
"N'est-ce pas ? " says my lady, in a low, sweet voice, still hang-
ing on his arm.
Esmond turned round with a start and a blush, as he met his
mistress's clear eyes. He had forgotten her, rapt in admiration
of the filia pulcrior.
"Right foot forward, toe turned out, so; now drop the
curtsy and show the red stockings, "Trix. They're silver clocks,
Harry. The dowager sent 'em. She went to put 'em on,” cries
my lord.
"Hush, you stupid child! " says miss, smothering her brother
with kisses; and then she must come and kiss her mamma, look-
ing all the while at Harry over his mistress's shoulder. And if
she did not kiss him, she gave him both her hands and said, "O
Harry, we're so, so glad you're come! "
"There are woodcocks for supper," says my lord. « Huzzay!
It was such a hungry sermon. ”
"And it is the 29th of December, and our Harry has come
home. "
་་
Huzzay, old Pincot! " again says my lord; and my dear lady's
lips looked as if they were trembling with prayer.
his father's displeasure, and how his mistress may be disposed
towards him. He loves her to distraction: on her account this
trouble and going abroad took place.
Chremes I know it.
Clitipho-He has just sent a servant into the city to her, and
I ordered our Syrus to go with him.
Chremes-What does Clinia say?
Clitipho-What does he say? That he is wretched.
Chremes-Wretched? Whom could we less suppose so? What
is there wanting for him to enjoy everything that among men,
XXV-917
-
## p. 14658 (#228) ##########################################
14658
TERENCE
in fact, are esteemed as blessings? Parents, a country in pros-
perity, friends, family, relations, riches? And yet, all these are
just according to the disposition of him who possesses them. To
him who knows how to use them, they are blessings; to him
who does not use them rightly, they are evils.
Clitipho-Aye, but he always was a morose old man; and
now I dread nothing more, father, than that in his displeasure
he'll be doing something to him more than is justifiable.
Chremes - What, he? — [Aside. ] But I'll restrain myself; for
that the other one should be in fear of his father is of service
to him.
Clitipho- What is it you are saying to yourself?
Chremes- I'll tell you. However the case stood, Clinia ought
still to have remained at home. Perhaps his father was a little
stricter than he liked: he should have put up with it. For whom
ought he to bear with, if he would not bear with his own father?
Was it reasonable that he should live after his son's humor, or
his son after his? And as to charging him with harshness, it is
not the fact. For the severities of fathers are generally of one
character, those I mean who are in some degree reasonable
men. They do not wish their sons to be always wenching; they
do not wish them to be always carousing; they give a limited
allowance: and yet all this tends to virtuous conduct. But when
the mind, Clitipho, has once enslaved itself by vicious appetites,
it must of necessity follow similar pursuits. This is a wise
maxim: "To take warning from others of what may be to your
own advantage. "
Clitipho-I believe so.
Chremes- I'll now go hence in-doors, to see what we have for
dinner. Do you, seeing what is the time of day, mind and take
care not to be anywhere out of the way. [Goes into his house,
and exit Clitipho. ]
Enter Clitipho
Clitipho [to himself] — What partial judges are all fathers
in regard to all of us young men, in thinking it reasonable for
us to become old men all at once from boys, and not to partici-
pate in those things which youth is naturally inclined to. They
regulate us by their own desires, such as they now are,- not as
they once were. If ever I have a son, he certainly shall find in
## p. 14659 (#229) ##########################################
TERENCE
14659
me an indulgent father, for the means both of knowing and of
pardoning his faults shall be found by me; not like mine, who
by means of another person discloses to me his own sentiments.
I'm plagued to death. When he drinks a little more than usual,
what pranks of his own he does relate to me! Now he says,
"Take warning from others of what may be to your own advan-
tage. " How shrewd! He certainly does not know how deaf I
am at the moment when he's telling his stories. Just now the
words of my mistress make more impression upon me.
"Give me
this, and bring me that," she cries. I have nothing to say to
her in answer, and no one is there more wretched than myself.
But this Clinia, although he as well has cares enough of his
own, still has a mistress of virtuous and modest breeding, and a
stranger to the arts of a courtesan. Mine is a craving, saucy,
haughty, extravagant creature, full of lofty airs. Then all that
I have to give her is-fair words; for I make it a point not to
tell her that I have nothing. This misfortune I met with not
long since, nor does my father as yet know anything of the
matter.
Enter Clinia from the house of Chremes
Clinia [to himself]-If my love affairs had been prosperous
for me, I am sure she would have been here by this; but I'm
afraid that the damsel has been led astray here in my absence.
Many things combine to strengthen this opinion in my mind:
opportunity, the place, her age; a worthless mother, under whose
control she is, with whom nothing but gain is precious.
Enter Clitipho
Clitipho-Clinia!
Clinia Alas! wretched me!
Clitipho-Do, pray, take care that no one coming out of your
father's house sees you here by accident.
Clinia-I will do so; but really my mind presages I know
not what misfortune.
Clitipho-Do you persist in making up your mind upon that,
before you know what is the fact?
Clinia - Had no misfortune happened, she would have been
here by this.
Clitipho-She'll be here presently.
Clinia - When will that presently be?
## p. 14660 (#230) ##########################################
14660
TERENCE
Clitipho-You don't consider that it is a great way from
here. Besides, you know the ways of women: while they are
bestirring themselves, and while they are making preparations, a
whole year passes by.
Clinia-O Clitipho, I'm afraid —
Clitipho-Take courage. Look, here comes Dromo, together
with Syrus: they are close at hand.
[They stand aside.
Enter Syrus and Dromo, conversing at a distance
Syrus-Do you say so?
Dromo-'Tis as I told you; but in the mean time, while we've
been carrying on our discourse, these women have been left be-
hind.
Clitipho [apart] - Don't you hear, Clinia? Your mistress is
close at hand.
Clinia [apart]—Why, yes, I do hear now at last; and I see
and revive, Clitipho.
Dromo-No wonder: they are so incumbered; they are bring-
ing a troop of female attendants with them.
Clinia [apart]—I'm undone! Whence come these female at-
tendants ?
Clitipho [apart] - Do you ask me?
Syrus-We ought not to have left them; what a quantity of
things they are bringing!
Clinia [apart] — Ah me!
Syrus - Jewels of gold, and clothes; it's growing late too, and
they don't know the way. It was very foolish of us to leave
them. Just go back, Dromo, and meet them. Make haste! why
do you delay ?
Clinia [apart]-Woe unto wretched me! From what high
hopes am I fallen!
Clitipho [apart] - What's the matter? Why, what is it that
troubles you?
Clinia [apart]- Do you ask what it is? Why, don't you see?
Attendants, jewels of gold, and clothes;-her too, whom I left
here with only one little servant-girl. Whence do you suppose
that they come ?
Clitipho [apart]-Oh! now at last I understand you.
Syrus [to himself]-Good gods! what a multitude there is!
Our house will hardly hold them, I'm sure. How much they
will eat! how much they will drink! what will there be more
―――――
## p. 14661 (#231) ##########################################
TERENCE
14661
wretched than our old gentleman? [Catching sight of Clinia and
Clitipho. ] But look: I espy the persons I was wanting.
Clinia [apart]-O Jupiter! Why, where is fidelity gone?
While I, distractedly wandering, have abandoned my country for
your sake, you in the mean time, Antiphila, have been enriching
yourself, and have forsaken me in these troubles: you for whose
sake I am in extreme disgrace, and have been disobedient to my
father; on whose account I am now ashamed and grieved that he
who used to lecture me about the manners of these women, ad-
vised me in vain, and was not able to wean me away from her;
which however I shall now do; whereas when it might have
been advantageous to me to do so, I was unwilling. There is no
being more wretched than I.
Syrus [to himself]- He certainly has been misled by our
words which we have been speaking here. -[Aloud. ] Clinia,
you imagine your mistress quite different from what she really
is. For both her mode of life is the same, and her disposition
towards you is the same, as it always was, so far as we could
form a judgment from the circumstances themselves.
Clinia - How so, prithee? For nothing in the world could I
rather wish for just now, than that I have suspected this without
reason.
Syrus-This, in the first place, then (that you may not be
ignorant of anything that concerns her): the old woman, who was
formerly said to be her mother, was not so. She is dead; this
I overheard by accident from her, as we came along, while she
was telling the other one.
Clitipho-Pray, who is the other one?
Syrus-Stay: what I have begun I wish first to relate, Cli-
tipho; I shall come to that afterwards.
Clitipho-Make haste, then.
Syrus-First of all, then, when we came to the house, Dromo
knocked at the door; a certain old woman came out; when
she opened the door, he directly rushed in; I followed; the old
woman bolted the door, and returned to her wool. On this occas-
ion might be known, Clinia, or else on none, in what pursuits she
passed her life during your absence-when we thus came upon
a female unexpectedly. For this circumstance then gave us an
opportunity of judging of the course of her daily life; a thing
which especially discovers what is the disposition of each individ-
ual.
We found her industriously plying at the web; plainly clad
## p. 14662 (#232) ##########################################
14662
TERENCE
in a mourning-dress,-on account of this old woman, I suppose,
who was lately dead; without golden ornaments, dressed besides
just like those who only dress for themselves, and patched up
with no worthless woman's trumpery. Her hair was loose, long,
and thrown back negligently about her temples. -[To Clinia. ]
Do hold your peace.
Clinia My dear Syrus, do not without cause throw me into
ecstasies, I beseech you.
Syrus - The old woman was spinning the woof: there was
one little servant-girl besides; she was weaving together with
them, covered with patched clothes, slovenly, and dirty with filth-
iness.
-
Clitipho- If this is true, Clinia, as I believe it is, who is there
more fortunate than you? Do you mark this girl whom he
speaks of as dirty and drabbish? This too is a strong indica-
tion that the mistress is out of harm's way, when her confidant
is in such ill plight; for it is a rule with those who wish to gain
access to the mistress, first to bribe the maid.
Clinia [to Syrus]-Go on, I beseech you; and beware of en-
deavoring to purchase favor by telling an untruth. What did she
say when you mentioned me?
Syrus-When we told her that you had returned, and had
requested her to come to you, the damsel instantly put away the
web, and covered her face all over with tears; so that you might
easily perceive that it really was caused by her affection for
you.
――
Clinia So may the Deities bless me, I know not where I am
for joy! I was so alarmed before.
Translation of Henry Thomas Riley.
## p. 14662 (#233) ##########################################
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## p. 14663 (#237) ##########################################
14663
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
(1811-1863)
BY W. C. BROWNELL
HACKERAY shares the reader's interest with his works in a
degree quite unexampled in literature. His works are, in
a more obvious and special sense than is true of those of
most authors, the direct expression of his personality; and this per-
sonality in turn is one of unusually special and conspicuous interest.
He was a man of immense idiosyncratic attractiveness aside from his
literary faculties and equipment, and he endued his writings with
this personal interest to an extent not to be met with elsewhere.
No books are so personal as his. They are full of his ideas, his
notions, his feelings; and they owe to these not only their color and
atmosphere, but a considerable portion of their substance. They not
only tell the story, but draw the moral; and in a large way justify
the title of "week-day preacher," which he gave himself, and of
which he was both fond and proud.
This circumstance has been variously viewed by his readers and
critics, according to their own inclinations towards art or towards
morals, their preferences for "objectivity" in the novelist's attitude
to, and treatment of, his theme, or for the cogent and illuminating
commentary which draws out and sets forth in the telling the typi-
cal and universal interest and value of the story. Taine laments the
consecration of such splendid artistic gifts as are witnessed by the ex-
ceptional 'Henry Esmond' to the service of morals. And on the other
hand, Dr. John Brown both underestimates and undervalues the artis-
tic element in Thackeray, and deems his "moralizing" his great and
real distinction. The inference is, naturally, that Thackeray has a
side which each of these temperaments may admire at its ease. But
it is to be pointed out in addition that he has so fused the two-
which ordinarily exist separately when they exist in any such distinc-
tion as they do in Thackeray - that each enhances and neither dis-
parages the other. The characters of 'Vanity Fair,' 'Pendennis,' or
The Newcomes,' and the story that is evolved out of their study
rather than constructed for their framework, gain greatly in realiza-
tion as well as in significance from the personal commentary by
which they are expressed as well as attended. And the social and
## p. 14664 (#238) ##########################################
14664
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
personal philosophy which springs from their consideration, and to
which they give point, is powerfully enforced by the illustrative,
exemplary, and suggestive service they perform. Both proceed from
the instinctive exercise of Thackeray's mind and temperament, and
therefore coexist harmoniously in his works. Letters has never known
such a combination in one personality of the artist and moralist, the
satirist and poet; and the literature that is the expression of this
unique personality is therefore not to be classed in the customary
category of art or in that of morals, with its complementary qualities
considered correspondingly as defects according to the category to
which the work is ascribed. Hence, moreover, the unusual, the unique
importance and convenience in any critical consideration of Thack-
eray's works, of considering also the personality which not only pene-
trates but characterizes them.
It has become quite superfluous at the present day to point out
that he was very far from being the cynic he passed for with many
readers during his lifetime. He is rather to be defended from the
reproach of sentimentality. But excess in the matter of sentiment
is something that different people will determine differently. Intel-
lectual rectitude distinguished him conspicuously; but he was notably
a man of heart, and exercised his great powers in the service of the
affections. He may be said to have taken the sentimental view of
things, if not to do so implies the dispassionate and detached atti-
tude towards them. He was extremely sensitive, and chafed greatly
under the frequent ascription of cynicism that he had to endure. He
found the problem of reconciling a stoic philosophy and an epicurean
temperament no easier and no harder, probably, than many others to
whom it has been assigned; and his practice was, as usual, a succes-
sion of alternations of indulgence and restraint. But he hoodwinked
himself no more than he was deceived by others; and if few men of
his intellectual eminence - which is the one thing about him we can
now perceive as he could hardly do himself-have been so open to
his particular temptations, few men of his temperament, on the other
hand, have steadfastly and industriously carved for themselves so
splendid a career. He was at the same time the acutest of observers
and eminently a man of the world. He was even in some sense a
man about town. The society he depicted so vividly had marked.
attractions for him. He was equally at home in Bohemia and in
Belgravia,- enough so in the latter to lead the literal to ascribe to
him the snobbishness he made so large a portion of his subject. As
he pointed out, however, no one is free from some touch of this, and
denunciation of it is in peculiar peril from its contagion; and Thack-
eray had the courage of his tastes in valuing what is really valuable
in the consideration which society bestows. On its good side this
## p. 14665 (#239) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14665
consideration is certainly to be prized by any one not a snob; for it
means a verdict often more impartial and independent than that of
any other tribunal. Society is a close corporation; and petty as are
many of its standards, and vulgar as is much of its application of
them, it has its ideal of the art of life: and what it really worships
is real power,-power that is independent of talent, accomplishment,
or worth, often, very likely; but power that, adventitious or other,
is almost an automatic measure of an individual's claims upon it.
Really to contribute to the life of society implies a special, disinter-
ested, and æsthetic talent like another; and Thackeray's gift in this
respect is properly to be associated with his literary and more largely
human ones.
At all events it aided him to handle his theme of
"manners" with a competence denied to most writers, and helped
to fuse in him the dual temperament of the artist and satirist with
distinguished results.
This combination of the artist and the satirist is the ideal one for
the novelist; and Thackeray's genius, varied as it is, is pre-eminently
the genius of the born novelist. It is singular, but it is doubtless
characteristic of a temperament destined to such complete matur-
ity, that he should have waited so long before finding his true field
of effort, and that he should not have begun the work upon which
his fame rests until he had reached an age at which that of not a
few men of genius has ended: he was thirty-six before his first great
work was published. He was born July 18th, 1811, in Calcutta; and
was sent home to England to school, upon his father's death when
he was five years old. From 1822 to 1828 he was at Charterhouse
School, the famous "Grey Friars" of The Newcomes. ' He spent
two years at Cambridge, leaving without a degree to travel abroad,
where he visited the great European capitals, and saw Goethe at
Weimar. He traveled in the real sense, and used perceptive faculties
such as are given to few observers, to the notable ends subsequently
witnessed in his books. He was from the first always of the world
as well as in it, and understood it with as quick sympathy in one
place as in another. At Weimar he meditated translating Schiller;
but- no doubt happily-nothing came of the rather desultory design.
In 1831 he went into chambers in the Temple; but not taking kindly
to law, and losing a small inherited fortune, he followed his native
bent, which led him into journalism, literature, and incidentally into
art. He began his serious literary work as a contributor to Fra-
ser's Magazine in 1835, after some slight preliminary experience; and
thenceforth wrote literary miscellany of extraordinary variety — sto-
ries, reviews, art criticisms, foreign correspondence, burlesques, bal-
lads for all sorts of periodicals.
In 1836 he made an effort to obtain work as an illustrator, but
without success,- one of his failures being with Dickens, whose refusal
--
-
--
## p. 14666 (#240) ##########################################
14666
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
was certainly justified. In 1838 he illustrated Jerrold's 'Men of
Character'; but in the main he was forced to content himself with
his own works in this respect, and most of these he did illustrate.
Pictorial art was clearly not his vocation. His drawings have plenty
of character; and it is not unfortunate, perhaps, that we have his
pictorial presentment rather than another's, of so many of his person-
ages.
But he not only lacked the skill that comes of training,- he
had no real gift for representation, and for the plastic expression of
beauty he had no faculty; the element of caricature is prominent in
all his designs. He did them with great delight and ease, whereas
literary work was always drudgery to him; but of course this is the
converse of witness to their merit.
His poetry, which he wrote at intervals, and desultorily through-
out his career, is on a decidedly higher plane. It is of the kind
that is accurately called "verses," but it is as plainly his own as his
prose; and some of it will always be read, probably, for its feeling
and its felicity. It is the verse mainly but not merely of the impro-
visatore. It never oversteps the modesty becoming the native gift
that expresses itself in it. Most of it could not have been as well
said in prose; and its title is clear enough, however unpretentious.
Metrically and in substance the 'Ballads' are excellent balladry. They
never rise to Scott's level of heroic bravura, and though the contem-
plative ones are deeper in feeling than any of Scott's, they are poet-
ically more summary and have less sweep; one hardly thinks of the
pinions of song at all in connection with them. Prose was distinctly
Thackeray's medium more exclusively than it was Scott's. But com-
pare the best of the 'Ballads' with Macaulay's 'Lays,' to note the
difference in both quality and execution between the verse of a writer
with a clear poetic strain in his temperament, and that of a pure
rhetorician whose numbers make one wince. The White Squall' is
a tour de force of rhyme and rhythm, the Ballad of Bouillabaisse '
has a place in every reader's affections, Mr. Moloney's Account of the
Ball' is a perpetual delight, even 'The Crystal Palace' is not merely
clever; and 'The Pen and the Album' and notably the Vanitas
Vanitatum' verses have an elevation that is both solemn and moving,
— a sustained note of genuine lyric inspiration chanting gravely the
burden of all the poet's prose.
He joined the staff of Punch almost immediately upon its estab-
lishment, and was long one of its strongest contributors. The following
year, 1843, he went to Ireland, and published his 'Irish Sketch-Book. '
In 1844 he made the Eastern journey chronicled in 'From Cornhill
to Grand Cairo,' and published 'Barry Lyndon' in Fraser. In 1846
'The Book of Snobs' appeared; and the next year 'Vanity Fair,'
which made him famous and the fashion. Pendennis' followed
in 1848-49. Next came The English Humorists of the Eighteenth
## p. 14667 (#241) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14667
Century' (1851), delivered with great success to the exacting London
world of society and letters; 'Henry Esmond,' and his first trip to
America (1852), where he repeated the lectures, and where he was
greeted universally with a friendliness he thoroughly returned; The
Newcomes (1853-5); his second American trip (1855), when he first
read his lectures on 'The Four Georges'; 'The Virginians' (1857-9);
the establishment of the Cornhill Magazine with Thackeray as editor
(1860), and the publication in its pages during his last three years
of the 'Roundabout Papers,' 'Lovel the Widower,' 'Philip,' and the
beginning of the unfinished 'Denis Duval. ' In 1857 he had contested
a seat in Parliament for Oxford in the Liberal interest, but had been
defeated by a vote of 1018 to 1085 for his opponent. His health had
been far from good for some years; and during the night of Decem-
ber 23d, 1863, he died in his sleep.
Loosely speaking, his work may be said to be divided into two
classes, miscellany and novels, by the climacteric date of his career-
January 1847 - when the first number of 'Vanity Fair' appeared. No
writer whose fame rests, as Thackeray's larger fame does, on nota-
ble works of fiction, has written miscellaneous literature of the qual-
ity of his. Taken in connection with the novels, it ranks him as the
representative English man of letters of his time. There is extraor-
dinarily little "copy" in it. It is the lighter work of a man born
for greater things, and having therefore in its quality something
superior to its genre. In the first place, it has the style which in its
maturity led Carlyle to say, "Nobody in our day wrote, I should say,
with such perfection of style;" and as Thackeray observes of Gib-
bon's praise of Fielding, "there can be no gainsaying the sentence
of this great judge» in such a matter. It has too his qualities of
substance, which were to reach their full development later. The
Great Hoggarty Diamond' is rather small-beer, but it communi-
cates that sense of reality which is to be sought for in vain among
its contemporaries: compare the consummate Brough in this respect
with one of Dickens's ideal hypocrites. The 'Sketch-Books' will
always be good reading. The Book of Snobs' enlarged the con-
fines of literature by the discovery and exploration of a new domain.
'Barry Lyndon' is a masterpiece of irony comparable with Swift and
'Jonathan Wild' alone, and to be ranked rather among the novels.
Such burlesques as 'Rebecca and Rowena' and the 'Novels by Emi-
nent Hands' of Punch, the various essays in polite literature of Mr.
Yellowplush, the delightful extravagance The Rose and the Ring,'
the admirable account of 'Mrs. Perkins's Ball,' and many other trifles
which it is needless even to catalogue here, illustrate in common a
quality of wit, of unexpectedness, of charm, as conspicuous as their
remarkable variety. And as to the later 'Lectures' on the Queen
## p. 14668 (#242) ##########################################
14668
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Anne humorists and the Georges, and the inimitable Roundabout
Papers,' nothing of the kind has ever been done on quite the same
plane.
It is, however, to the elaborate and exquisitely commented picture
of life which the novels present, that Thackeray owes his fellow-
ship with the very greatest figures of literature outside the realm
of poetry. The four most important,-'Vanity Fair,' 'Pendennis,'
'Henry Esmond,' and 'The Newcomes,'-especially, enable him
to take his place among these with the ease of equality. Vanity
Fair' perhaps expresses his genius in its freest spontaneity. Thack-
eray himself spoke of it-to Dr. Merriman -as his greatest work.
And though he declared 'Henry Esmond'— which, as the dedicator
states, "copies the manners and language of Queen Anne's time” —
"the very best that I can do," the two remarks are not inconsistent:
they aptly distinguish between his most original substance and his
most perfect form. 'Pendennis' and 'The Newcomes' are social
pictures on a larger scale, of less dramatic and more epic interest.
'The Virginians' is only less important; but it loses something of
the relief which the remoteness of its epoch gives 'Henry Esmond,'
and something of the actuality that its other predecessors owe to
their modernness. 'Lovel the Widower' is an admitted failure,
largely though not splendidly redeemed by Philip' which followed
it. But the beginnings of Denis Duval' are enough to show that
the level of The Virginians,' at least, might have been reached
again; and make the writer's death at fifty-two indisputably and
grievously premature.
Charlotte Bronté, who dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre'
to Thackeray, maintaining that "No commentator upon his writings.
has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly
characterize his talent," spoke of him as "the first social regenerator
of the day. " She had herself, however, correctly divined his talent:
it was at once social and moral. She objected to his association
with Fielding, whom she declared he resembled "as an eagle does
a vulture," and charged Fielding with having "stooped on carrion. "
Fielding was undoubtedly his model. He regretted that he had not
read him more in early years. And Fielding is undoubtedly a writer
of both social and moral quality. But his moral range is narrow,
and there is a grave lack in his equipment considered as that of a
great writer, he lacks spirituality altogether. And spirituality is a
quality that Thackeray possessed in a distinguished degree. It is
his spirituality that Charlotte Bronté really had in mind in contrast-
ing him in her trenchant, passionate way with his predecessor. The
difference is fundamental. It is far deeper than mere choice of
material. Thackeray himself says regretfully, in the preface to
## p. 14669 (#243) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14669
'Pendennis': "Since the author of 'Tom Jones' was buried, no writer
of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power
a man. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional
simper. " He would have liked, clearly, a wider range and a freer
hand; and Charlotte Bronté would have been less pleased with him
had he enjoyed them. But he would never have "sunk with his sub-
ject," because his imagination had so strong a spiritual side.
On the other hand, what distinguishes him from such a novelist as
George Eliot is the preoccupation of his imagination with the heart
rather than the mind. Instinctively his critics agree in characteriz-
ing his dominant faculty as "insight into the human heart. " There
is no question anywhere as to the depth and keenness of this insight
in him, at all events,- however one regards the frequent statement
that it was deeper and keener than that of any other writer, “Shake-
speare and Balzac perhaps excepted. " The exception of Shakespeare
is surely as sound as it is mechanical. That of Balzac may be
disputed. Balzac's insight proceeds from his curiosity, that of Thack-
eray from his sympathy. If always as keen, Balzac's is never quite
as deep. It is perhaps wider. Curiosity in the artist means an
unlimited interest in men and things; which it regards as all, and
more or less equally, material. Sympathy necessarily selects — sympa-
thy, or even antipathy if one chooses; but in selecting it concentrates.
'La Comédie Humaine' is a wonderful structure. It parallels the exist-
ing world, one may almost say. The psychologist, the sociologist,
the specialist of nearly any description, may study it with zest and
ponder it profitably. It is a marvelously elaborate framework filled
in with an astonishing variety of both types and individuals. One
may seek in it not vainly for an analogue of almost anything act-
ual. But though less multifarious, Thackeray's world is far more real.
His figures are far more alive. Their inner springs are divined, not
studied. They make the story themselves, not merely appear in it.
We have no charts of their minds and qualities, but we know them
as we know our friends and neighbors.
This sense of reality and vitality, in which the personages of
Thackeray excel those of any other prose fiction, proceeds from that
unusual association in the author's own personality of the spiritual
and sentimental qualities with great intellectual powers- to which
I have already referred. For character - the subject par excellence
of the great writers of fiction as distinguished from the pure roman-
ticists depends upon the heart. It is comparatively independent
of psychology. For a period so given over to science as our own,
so imbued with the scientific spirit, and so concentrated upon the
scientific side of even spiritual things, psychological fiction - such
as George Eliot's inevitably possesses a special, an almost esoteric,
――――――
## p. 14670 (#244) ##########################################
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WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
interest. But it is nevertheless true that the elemental, the tempera-
mental, the vital idiosyncrasies of character depend less directly upon
mental than upon moral qualities. Men are what they are through
their feeling, not through their thinking except in so far as their
thinking modifies their feeling. At the same time it is to be borne
in mind that Thackeray does not neglect the mental constitution of
his characters. It cannot be said of his Rebecca, for example, as
Turgénieff is said to have observed of Zola's Gervaise Coupeau, that
"he tells us how she feels, never what she thinks. " We have a
complete enough picture of what is going on in her exceedingly
active mind; only in the main we infer this indirectly from what she
does, as we do in the case of Shakespeare's characters, rather than
from an express scrutiny of her mental mechanism. Her human and
social side is uppermost in her creator's presentation of her, though
she is plainly idiosyncratic enough to reward the study and even the
speculation of the most insistent psychologist.
Mr. Henry James acutely observes of Hawthorne's characters, that
with the partial exception of Donatello in the 'Marble Faun,' there
are no types among them. And it is assuredly for this reason that
they appear to us so entirely the creations of Hawthorne's fancy, so
much a part of the insubstantial witchery of his genius, that they
seem as individuals so unreal. Thackeray, on the other hand, has
been reproached with creating nothing but types. But the truth is
that a character of fiction, in order to make the impression of indivi-
duality, must be presented as a type. It is through its typical quali-
ties that it attains a definition which is neither insubstantial like that
of Hawthorne's personages, nor a caricature like that of so many
of Dickens's. Its typical qualities are those that persuade us of its
truth, and create the convincing illusion of its reality. A type in
fiction is a type in the sense in which the French use the term in
speaking of a real person,- a synthesis of representative traits, more
accentuated than the same characteristics as they are to be found in
general; a person, that is to say, of particularly salient individuality.
Only in this way do real persons who are not also eccentric persons
leave a striking and definite impression on us; and only in this
way do we measure that correspondence of fictitious to real charac-
ter which determines the reality of the former.
-
Of course in thus eschewing psychology and dealing mainly with
types, in occupying himself with those elemental traits of charac-
ter that depend upon the heart rather than the mind,—a realist
like Thackeray renounces a field so large and interesting as justly
to have his neglect of it accounted to him as a limitation. And
Thackeray still further narrows his field by confining himself in the
main to character not merely in its elemental traits, but in its morally
## p. 14671 (#245) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14671
significant ones as well. The colorless characters, such as Tom Tul-
liver for a single example, in which George Eliot is so strong, the
irresponsible ones, such as Dickens's Winkles and Swivellers, have
few fellows in his fiction, from which the seriousness of his satiric
strain excludes whatever is not significant as well as whatever is
purely particular. The loss is very great, considering his world as a
comédie humaine. It involves more than the elimination of psychol-
ogy,—it diminishes the number of types; and all types are interesting,
whether morally important or not. But in Thackeray's case it has
two great compensations. In the first place, the greater concentra-
tion it involves notably defines and emphasizes the net impression
of his works. It unifies their effect; and sharply crystallizes the mes-
sage to mankind, which, like every great writer in whatever branch
of literature he may cultivate, it was the main business, the aim
and crown and apology of his life, to deliver. There is no missing
the tenor of his gospel, which is that character is the one thing of
importance in life; that it is tremendously complex, and the easiest
thing in the world to misconceive both in ourselves and in others;
that truth is the one instrument of its perfecting, and the one subject
worthy of pursuit; and that the study of truth discloses littlenesses
and futilities in it at its best for which the only cloak is charity, and
the only consolation and atonement the cultivation of the affections.
It
In the second place, it is his concentration upon the morally sig-
nificant that places him at the head of the novelists of manners.
is the moral and social qualities, of course, that unite men in society,
and make it something other than the sum of the individuals com-
posing it. Far more deeply than Balzac, Thackeray felt the relations
between men that depend upon these qualities; and consequently
his social picture is, if less comprehensive and varied, far more vivid
and real. It is painted directly, and lacks the elaborate structural
machinery which makes Balzac's seem mechanical in composition
and artificial in spirit. Thackeray's personages are never portrayed
in isolation. They are a part of the milieu in which they exist, and
which has itself therefore much more distinction and relief than an
environment which is merely a framework. How they regard each
other, how they feel toward and what they think of each other, the
mutuality of their very numerous and vital relations, furnishes an im-
portant strand in the texture of the story in which they figure. Their
activities are modified by the air they breathe in common. Their con-
duct is controlled, their ideas affected, even their desires and ambi-
tions dictated, by the general ideals of the society that includes them.
In a more extended sense than Lady Kew intended in reminding
Ethel Newcome of the fact, they "belong to their belongings. " So
far as it goes, therefore,- and it would be easy to exaggerate its
## p. 14672 (#246) ##########################################
14672
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
limitations, which are trivial in comparison,- Thackeray's picture
of society is the most vivid, as it is incontestably the most real, in
prose fiction. The temperament of the artist and satirist combined,
the preoccupation with the moral element in character,- and in logi-
cal sequence, with its human and social side,-lead naturally to the
next step of viewing man in his relations, and the construction of a
miniature world. And in addition to the high place in literature
won for him by his insight into the human heart, Thackeray's social
picture has given him a distinction that is perhaps unique. In vir-
tue of it, at any rate, the writer who passed his life in rivalry with
Dickens and Bulwer and Trollope and Lever, belongs with Shake-
speare and Molière.
Woe Brownell
BEATRIX ESMOND
From The History of Henry Esmond'
A$
S THEY came up to the house at Walcote, the windows from
within were lighted up with friendly welcome; the supper
table was spread in the oak parlor: it seemed as if for-
giveness and love were awaiting the returning prodigal. Two
or three familiar faces of domestics were on the lookout at the
porch: the old housekeeper was there, and young Lockwood from
Castlewood in my lord's livery of tawny and blue. His dear
mistress pressed his arm as they passed into the hall. Her
eyes beamed out on him with affection indescribable. "Welcome,"
was all she said, as she looked up, putting back her fair curls
and black hood. A sweet rosy smile blushed on her face; Harry
thought he had never seen her look so charming. Her face was
lighted with a joy that was brighter than beauty; she took a
hand of her son, who was in the hall waiting his mother — she
did not quit Esmond's arm.
-
"Here
"Welcome, Harry! " my young lord echoed after her.
we are all come to say so. Here's old Pincot: hasn't she grown
handsome? " and Pincot, who was older and no handsomer than
usual, made a curtsy to the captain, -as she called Esmond,-and
told my lord to "Have done, now. "
"And here's Jack Lockwood. He'll make a famous grenadier,
Jack; and so shall I we'll both 'list under you, cousin. As soon
## p. 14673 (#247) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14673
as I am seventeen, I go to the army-every gentleman goes to
the army.
Look! who comes here: ho, ho! " he burst into a
laugh. "Tis Mistress 'Trix, with a new ribbon: I knew she
would put one on as soon as she heard a captain was coming to
supper. "
This laughing colloquy took place in the hall of Walcote
House, in the midst of which is a staircase that leads from
an open gallery, where are the doors of the sleeping-chambers;
and from one of these, a wax candle in her hand and illuminat-
ing her, came Mistress Beatrix,- the light falling indeed upon the
scarlet ribbon which she wore, and upon the most brilliant white
neck in the world.
Esmond had left a child, and found a woman; grown beyond
the common height, and arrived at such a dazzling completeness
of beauty that his eyes might well show surprise and delight
at beholding her. In hers there was a brightness so lustrous and
melting that I have seen a whole assembly follow her as if by
an attraction irresistible; and that night the great duke was at
the playhouse after Ramillies, every soul turned and looked (she
chanced to enter at the opposite side of the theatre at the same
moment) at her, and not at him. She was a brown beauty;
that is, her eyes, hair, and eyebrows and eyelashes were dark, her
hair curling with rich undulations and waving over her shoulders;
but her complexion was as dazzling white as snow in sunshine,
except her cheeks which were a bright red, and her lips which
were of a still deeper crimson. Her mouth and chin, they said,
were too large and full; and so they might be for a goddess.
in marble, but not for a woman whose eyes were fire, whose look
was love, whose voice was the sweetest low song, whose shape
was perfect symmetry, health, decision, activity, whose foot as
it planted itself on the ground was firm but flexible, and whose
motion, whether rapid or slow, was always perfect grace: agile as
a nymph, lofty as a queen,- now melting, now imperious, now
sarcastic, there was no single movement of hers but was beau-
tiful. As he thinks of her, he who writes feels young again, and
remembers a paragon.
―――
So she came holding her dress with one fair rounded arm, and
her taper before her, tripping down the stair to greet Esmond.
"She hath put on her scarlet stockings and white shoes," says
my lord, still laughing. "Oh, my fine mistress! is this the way
you set your cap at the captain? " She approached, shining smiles
XXV-918
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14674
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
upon Esmond, who could look at nothing but her eyes. She
advanced, holding forward her head, as if she would have him
kiss her as he used to do when she was a child.
"Stop," she said, "I am grown too big! Welcome, Cousin
Harry," and she made him an arch curtsy, sweeping down to
the ground almost with the most gracious bend, looking up the
while with the brightest eyes and sweetest smile. Love seemed
to radiate from her. Harry eyed her with such a rapture as the
first lover is described as having by Milton.
"N'est-ce pas ? " says my lady, in a low, sweet voice, still hang-
ing on his arm.
Esmond turned round with a start and a blush, as he met his
mistress's clear eyes. He had forgotten her, rapt in admiration
of the filia pulcrior.
"Right foot forward, toe turned out, so; now drop the
curtsy and show the red stockings, "Trix. They're silver clocks,
Harry. The dowager sent 'em. She went to put 'em on,” cries
my lord.
"Hush, you stupid child! " says miss, smothering her brother
with kisses; and then she must come and kiss her mamma, look-
ing all the while at Harry over his mistress's shoulder. And if
she did not kiss him, she gave him both her hands and said, "O
Harry, we're so, so glad you're come! "
"There are woodcocks for supper," says my lord. « Huzzay!
It was such a hungry sermon. ”
"And it is the 29th of December, and our Harry has come
home. "
་་
Huzzay, old Pincot! " again says my lord; and my dear lady's
lips looked as if they were trembling with prayer.
