, WOW WLW. LIBRARY yh j t q q i | | 1 fe | , _ { i | a , a i] i t ! i q id ! ! ! Biel al wed | | , | TT Tee te | | | : ii | Novia | 103 693 AYVUEIT IWSYAAINN THACKERAY MACMILLAN AND CO., Limrrep LONDON » BOMBAY + CALCUTTA + MADRAS MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK + BOSTON + CHICAGO DALLAS +» SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO, OF CANADA, Ltn. TORONTO : ENGLISH MEN OF -LETTERS THACKERAY BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1909 RicHARD Clay aND Sons, LIMITED, BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. First Edition, 1879. Reprinted, 1880, 1882, 1886, 1887, r892, 1895, 1QEO, 1905 Library Edition, 1902, 1906. Pocket Edition, 1909. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. BIOGRAPHICAL CHAPTER II. FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH . CHAPTER Iil. Vanity Fair CHAPTER IV. PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES . CHAPTER V. ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS CHAPTER VI. THACKERAYS BURLESQUES . PAGE 1 62 99 103 122 139 vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. THACKERAY’S LECTURES CHAPTER VIII. THACKERAY’S BALLADS CHAPTER IX. THACKERAY S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK PAGE 154 168 184 ‘THACKHRAY. CHAPTER I. BIOGRAPHICAL In the foregoing volumes of this series of English Men of Letters, and in other works of a similar nature which have appeared lately as to the Ancient Classics and Foreign Classics, biography has naturally been, if not the leading, at any rate a considerable element. The desire is common to all readers to know not only what a great writer has written, but also of what nature has been the man who has produced such great work. As to all the authors taken in hand before, there has been extant some written record of the man’s life. Biographical details have been more or less known to the world, so that, whether of a Cicero, or of a Goethe, or of our own Johnson, there has been a story to tell. Of Thackeray no life has been written; and though they who knew him,—and possibly many who did not,—are conversant with anecdotes of the man, who was one so well known in society as to have created many anecdotes, yet there has been no memoir of his life sufficient to supply the wants of even so small a work as this purports to be. n 2 THACKERAY. [CHAP, For this the reason may simply be told. Thackeray, not long before his death, had had his taste offended by some fulsome biography. Paragraphs, of which the eulogy seemed to have been the produce rather of personal love than of inquiry or judgment, disgusted him, and he begged of his girls that when he should have gone there should nothing of the sort be done with his name. We can imagine how his mind had worked, how he had declared to himself that, as by those loving hands into which his letters, his notes, his little details,—his literary remains, as such documents used to be called,— might naturally fall, truth of his foibles and of his short- comings could not be told, so should not his praises be written, or that flattering portrait be limned which biographers are wont to produce. Acting upon these instructions, his daughters,—while there were two living, and since that the one surviving,—have carried out the order which has appeared to them to be sacred. Such being the case, it certainly is not my purpose now to write what may be called a life of Thackeray. In this pre- liminary chapter I will give such incidents and anecdotes of his life as will tell the reader perhaps all about him that a reader is entitled to ask. I will tell how he became an author, and will say how first he worked and struggled, and then how he worked and prospered, and became a household word in English literature ;—how, in this way, he passed through that course of mingled failure and success which, though the literary aspirant may suffer, is probably better both for the writer and for the writings than unclouded early glory. The suffering no doubt is acute, and a touch of melancholy, perhaps of indignation, may be given to words which have been f. | BIOGRAPHICAL. 3 written while the heart has been too full of its own wrongs; but this is better than the continued note of triumph which is still heard in the final voices of the spoilt child of literature, even when they are losing their inusic. Then I will tell how Thackeray died, eariy indeed, but still having done a good life’s work. Some- thing of his manner, something of his appearance IL ean say, something perhaps of his condition of mind; because for some few years he was known to me. But of the continual intercourse of himself with the world, and of himself with his own works, I ean tell little, because no record of his life has been made public. William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Caleutta, on July 18, 1811. His father was Richmond Thackeray, son of W. M. Thackeray of Hadley, near Barnet, in Middlesex. A relation of his, of the same name, a Rev. Mr. Thackeray, I knew well as rector of Hadley, many years afterwards. Him I believe to have been a second cousin of our Thackeray, but I think they had never met each other. Another cousin was Provost of Kings at Cambridge, fifty years ago, as Cambridge men will remember. Clergymen of the family have been numerous in England during the century, and there was one, a Rev. Elias Thackeray, whom I also knew in my youth, a dignitary, if I remember right, in the diocese of Meath. The Thackerays seem to have affected the Church ; but such was not at any period of his life the bias of our novelist’s mind. His father :md grandfather were Indian civil servants. His mother was Anne Becher, whose father was also in the Company’s service. She married early in India, and was only nineteen when her son was born. She was left BY 4 THACKERAY. [ CHAP, a widow in 1816, with only one child, and was married a few years afterwards to Major Henry Carmichael Smyth, with whom Thackeray lived on terms of affectionate inter- course till the major died. All who knew William Makepeace remember his mother well, a handsome, spare, gray-haired lady, whom Thackeray treated with a courtly deference as well as constant affection. There was, however, something of discrepancy between them as to matters of religion. Mrs. Carmichael Smyth was disposed to the somewhat austere observance of the evangelical section of the Church. Such, certainly, never became the case with her son. There was disagreement on the subject, and probably unhappiness at intervals, but never, I think, quarrelling. Thackeray’s house was his mother’s home whenever she pleased it, and the home also of his stepfather. He was brought a child from India, and was sent early to the Charter House. Of his life and doings there his friend and schoolfellow George Venables writes to me as follows ; “My recollection of him, though fresh enough, does not furnish much material for biography. He came to school young,—a pretty, gentle, and rather timid boy. I think his experience there was not generally pleasant. Though he had afterwards a scholarlike knowledge of Latin, he did not attain distinction in the school; and I should think that the character of the head-master, Dr. Russell, which was vigorous, unsympathetic, and stern, though not severe, was uncongenial to hisown. ‘With the boys who knew him, Thackeray was popular; but he had no skill in games, and, I think, no taste for them . He was already known by his faculty of making verses, J BIOGRAPHICAL. 5 chiefly parodies. I only remember one line of one parody ona poem of L. E. L.’s, about ‘ Violets, dark blue violets ;’ Thackeray’s version was ‘ Cabbages, bright green cabbages,’ and we thought it very witty. He took part in a scheme, which came to nothing, for a school magazine, and he wrote verses for it, of which I only remember that they were yood of their kind. When I knew him better, in later years, I thought I could recognise the sensitive nature which he had as a boy . . . . His change of retrospective feeling about his school days was very characteristic. In his earlier books he always spoke of the Charter House as Slaughter House and Smithfield. As he became famous and prosperous his memory softened, and Slaughter House was changed into Grey Friars where Colonel Newcome ended his life.” In February, 1829, when he was not as yet eighteen, Thackeray went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was, I think, removed in 1830. It may be presumed, therefore, that his studies there were not very serviceable to him. There are few, if any, records left of his doings at the university,—unless it be the fact that he did there commence the literary work of his life. The line about the cabbages, and the scheme of the school magazine, can hardly be said to have amounted even to a commencement. In 1829 a little periodical was brought out at Cambridge, called The Snob, with an assurance on the title that it was not conducted by members of the university. It is presumed that Thackeray took a hand in editing this, He certainly wrote, and published in the little paper, some burlesque lines on the subject which was given for the Chaneellor’s prize poem of the year. This was Timbuctoo, and Tennyson was the victor on the occasion. 8 THACKERAY.: fear, There is,some good fun in the four first and four last lines of Thackeray’s production. In Africa,—a quarter of the world,— Men’s skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled; And somewhere there, unknown to public view A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo. a % # I see her tribes the hill of glory mount, And sell their sugars on their own account ; While round her throne the prostrate nations come, Sue for her rice, and barter for her rum. I cannot find in The Snob internal evidence of much literary mevit beyond this, But then how many great writers have there been from whose early lucubrations no future literary excellence could be prognosticated ? There is something at any rate in the name of the pub- lication which tells of work that did come. Thackeray’s mind was at all times peculiarly exercised with a sense of snobbishness. His appreciation of the vice grew ab- normally, so that at last he had a morbid horror of a snob —a morbid fear lest this or the other man should turn snob on his hands. Itis probable that the idea was taken from the early Snod at Cambridge, either from his own participation in the work or from his remembrance of it. The Snob lived, I think, but nine weeks, and was followed at an interval, in 1830, by The Gownsman, which lived to the ‘seventeenth number, and at the opening of which Thackeray no doubt had a hand. It professed to be a continuation of Zhe Snol. It contains a dedication to all proctors, which I should not be sorry to attribute to him. “To all Proctors, past, present, and future— ' Whose taste. it is our privilege to follow, Whose virtue it is our duty to imitate, Whose presence it i ig our interest to avoid.” ° ee | There is, however, nothing beyond fancy to induce me 3 to tJ BIOGRAPHICAL. 7 believe that Thackeray was the author of the dedication, and I do not know that there is any evidence to show that he was connected with The Snob beyond the writing of Timbuctoo. In 1830 he left Cambridge, and went to Weimar either in that year or in 1831. Between Weimar and Paris he spent some portion of his earlier years, while his family, —his mother, that is, and his stepfather,—were living in Devonshire. It was then the purport of his life to become an artist, and he studied drawing at Paris, affecting especially Bonnington, the young English artist who had himself painted at Paris and who had died in 1828. He never learned to draw,—perhaps never could have learned. That he was idle, and did not do his best, we may take for granted. He was always idle, and only on some occasions, when the spirit moved him thoroughly, did he do his best even in after life. But with drawing, —or rather without it,—he did wonderfully well even when he did his worst. He did illustrate his own books, and everyone knows how incorrect were his delineations. But as illustrations they were excellent, How often have I wished that characters of my own creating might be sketched as faultily, if with the same appreciation of the intended purpose. Let anyone look at the “plates,” as they are called in Vanity Furr, and compare each with the scenes and the characters intended to be displayed, and there see whether the artist, —if we may call him so,—has not managed to convey in the picture the exact feeling which he has described in the text. I have a little sketch of his, in which a cannon- ball is supposed to have just carried off the head of an aide-de-camp,—messenger I had perhaps better say, lust I might affront military feelings,—who is kneeling on the field of battle and delivering a despatch to Marlborough 8 THACKERAY. [CHAP. on horseback. The graceful ease with which the duke receives the message though the messenger’s head be gone, and the soldier-like precision with which the headless hero finishes his last effort of military obedience, may not have been portrayed with well-drawn figures, but no finished illustration ever told its story better. Dickens has in- formed us that he first met Thackeray in 1835, on which occasion the young artist aspirant, looking no doubt after profitable employment, “proposed to become the illustrator of my earliest book.” It is singular that such should have been the first interview between the two great novelists. We may presume that the offer was rejected. In 1832, Thackeray came of age, and inherited his fortune,—as to which various stories have been told. I+ seems to have amounted to about five hundred a year, and to have passed through his hands in a year or two, interest and principal. It has been told of him that it was all taken away from him at cards, but such was not the truth. Some went in an Indian bank in which he invested it. A portion was lost at ecards, But with some of it,—the larger part as I think,—he endeavoured, in concert with his stepfather, to float a newspaper, which failed. There seem to have been two newspapers in which he was so concerned, The National Standard and The Constitutional. On the latter he was engaged with his stepfather, and in carrying that on he lost the last of his money. The National Standard had been running for some weeks when Thackeray joined it, and lost his money in it. It ran only for little more than iwelve months, and then, the money having gone, the periodical came to an end. I know no road to fortune more tempting to a young man, or one that with more certainty leads to ruin. Thackeray, who in a way more or 1] BIOGRAPHICAL. 9 less correct, often refers ‘im his writings, if not to the incidents, at any rate to the remembrances of his own life, tells us much of the story of this newspaper in Lovel the Widower. “They are welcome,” says the bachelor, “to make merry at my charges in respect of a certain bargain which I made on coming to London, and in which, had I been Moses Primrose purchasing green spectacles, I could scarcely have been more taken in. My Jenkinson was an old college acquaintance, whom I was idiot enough to imagine a respectable man. The fellow had a very smooth tongue and sleek sanctified exterior. He was rather a popular preacher, and used to ery a good deal in the pulpit. He and a queer wine merchant and bill dis- counter, Sherrick by name, had somehow got possession of that neat little literary paper, Zhe Museum, which per- haps you remember, and this eligible literary property my friend Honeyman, with his wheedling tongue, induced me to purchase.” Here is the history of Thackeray's money, told by himself plainly enough, but with no intention on his part of narrating an incident in his own life to the public. But the drollery of the circumstances, his own mingled folly and young ambition, struck him as being worth narration, and the more forcibly as he remembered all the ins and outs of his own reflections at the time,— how he had meant to enchant the world, and make his fortune. There was literary capital in it of which he could make use after so many years. Then he tells us of this ambition, and of the folly of it; and at the same time puts forward the excuses to be made for it. “I daresay I gave myself airs as editor of that confounded Museum, and proposed to educate the public taste, to diffuse morality and sound literature throughout the nation, and to pocket a liberal salary in return for my services. J daresay I printed my own sonnets, my own 10 ‘THACKERAY. ' (crap, tragedy, my own verses... . I daresay I wrote satirical articles. . . . I daresay I made a gaby of myself to the world. Pray, my good friend, hast thou never done likewise? If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.” Thackeray was quite aware of- his early weaknesses, and in the maturity of life knew well that he had not been precociously wise. He delighted so to tell his friends, and he delighted also to tell the public, not meaning that any but an inner circle should know that he was speaking of himself. . But the story now is plain to all who can read." It was thus that he lost his money; and then, not having prospered very well with his drawing lessons in Paris or elsewhere, he was fain to take up literature as a profession. It is a business which has its allurements, It requires no capital, no special education, no training, and may be taken up at any time without a moment’s delay. If a man can command a table, a chair, pen, paper, and ink, he can commence his trade as literary man. It is thus that aspirants generally do commence it. A man may or may not have another employment to back him, or means of his own; or,—-as was the case with Thackeray, when, after his first misadventure, he had to look about him for the means of living,—he may have nothing but his intellect and his friends. But the idea comes to the man that as he has the pen and ink, + The report that he had lost all his money and was going to live by painting in Paris, was still prevalent in London in 1886. Macready, on the 27th April of that year, says in his Diary; “At Garrick Club, where I dined and saw the papers. Met Thackeray, who has spent all his fortune, and is now about to settle in Paris, I believe as an artist.” But at this time he was. in truth. tnrming to literature as a profession. Ly BIOGRAPHICAL. 11 and time on his hand, why should he not write and make money ? It is an idea that comes to very many men and women, old as well as young,—to many thousands who at last are crushed by it, of whom the world knows nothing. I doubt that Thackeray did not write the Latin epitaph, but I hardly dare suggest the name of any author. The “vixit avidus” is quite worthy of Thackeray; but had he tried his hand at such mode of expression he would have done more of it. I should like to know whether he had been in company with Father Prout at the time. vr] THACKERAY’S BURLESQUES. 149 The next chapter begins naturally as follows ; “I trust nobody will suppose, from the events described in the last chapter, that our friend Ivanhoe is really dead.” He is of course cured of his wounds, though they take six years in the curing. And then he makes his way back to Rotherwood, in a friar’s disguise, much as he did on that former occasion when we first met him, and there is received by Athelstane and Rowena,—and their boy ! — while Wamba sings him a song: Then you know the worth of a lass, Once you have come to forty year! No one, of course, but Wamba knows Ivanhoe, who roams about the country, melancholy,—as he of course would be,—charitable,—as he perhaps might be,—for we are specially told that he had a large fortune and nothing to do with it, and slaying robbers wherever he met them ;— but sad at heart all the time. Then. there comes a little burst of the author’s own feelings, while he is burlesquing. “Ah my dear friends and British public, are there not others who are melancholy under a mask of gaiety, and who in the midst of crowds are lonely? Liston was a most melanchcly man ; Grimaldi had feelings ; and then others I wot of. But psha!—let us have the next chapter.” In all of which there was a touch of earnestness. Ivanhoe’s griefs were enhanced by the wickedness of king John, under whom he would not serve. ‘It was Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, I need scarcely say, who got the Barons of England to league together and extort from the king that famous instrument and palladium of our liberties, at present in the British Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury,—The Magna Charta.” Athelstane also quarrels with the king, whose orders he disobeys, ana Rotherwood is attacked by the royal army. No one was 150 THACKERAY. [ CHAP. of real service in the way of fighting except Ivanhoe,— and how could he take up that cause? ‘No; be hanged to me,” said the knight bitterly. “This is a quarrel in which I can’t interfere. Common politeness forbids. Let yonder ale-swilling Athelstane defend his,—ha, ha !—wife ; and my Lady Rowena guard her,—ha, ha !—son /” and he laughed wildly and madly. But Athelstane is killed,—this time in earnest,—and then Ivanhoe rushes to the rescue. He finds Gurth dead at the park-lodge, and though he is all alone,—having outridden his followers,—he rushes up the chestnut avenue to the house, which is being attacked. “An Ivanhoe ! an Ivanhoe !” he bellowed out with a shout that overcame all the din of battle;—‘* Notre Dame & la recousse ?” and to hurl his lance through the midriff of Reginald de Bracy, who was commanding the assault,— who fell howling with anguish,—to wave his battle-axe over his own head, and to cut off those of thirteen men- at-arms, was the work of an instant. ‘An Ivanhoe! an Jvanhoe !” he still shouted, and down went a man as sure as he said “ hoe!” Nevertheless he is again killed by multitudes, or very nearly,—and has again to be cured by the tender nursing of Wamba. But Athelstane is really dead, and Rowena and the boy have to be found. He does his duty and finds them,—just in time to be present at Rowena’s death. She has been put in prison by king John, and is in extremis when her first husband gets to her. “ Wilfrid, my early loved,”* slowly gasped she removing her gray * There is something almost illnatured in his treatment of Rowena, who is very false in her declarations of love ;—and it is to be feared that by Rowena, the autho intends the normal married lady of English society. vis} THACKERAY’S BURLESQUES. 151 hair from her furrowed temples, and gazing on her boy fondly as he nestled on Ivanhoe’s knee,—“ promise me by St. Waltheof of Templestowe,—promise me one boon !” “I do,” said Ivanhoe, clasping the boy, and thinking that it was to that little innocent that the promise was intended to apply. “ By St. Waltheof ?” “By St. Waltheof !” “ Promise me then,” gasped Rowena, staring wildly at him, “ that you will never marry a Jewess !” “By St. Waltheof!” cried Ivanhoe, “but this is too much,” and he did not make the promise. “Having placed young Cedric at school at the Hall of Dotheboys, in Yorkshire, and arranged his family affairs, Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe quitted a country which had no longer any charm for him, as there was no fighting to be done, and in which his stay was rendered less agreeable by the notion that king John would hang him.” So he goes forth and fights again, in league with the Knights of St. John,—the Templars naturally having a dislike to him because of Brian de Bois Guilbert. ‘The only fault that the great and gallant, though severe and ascetic Folko of Heydenbraten, the chief of the Order of St. John, found with the melancholy warrior whose lance did such service to the cause, was that he did not persecute the Jews as so religious a knight should. So the Jews, in cursing the Christians, always excepted the name of the Desdichado, —or the double disinherited, as he now was,—the Des- dichado Doblado.” Then came the battle of Alarcos, and the Moors were all but in possession of the whole of Spain. Sir Wilfrid, like other good Christians, cannot endure this, so he takes ship in Bohemia, where he happens to be quartered, and has himself. carried to Barcelona, and 152 THACKERAY. {owar. proceeds “ to slaughter the Moors forthwith.” Then there is a scene in which Isaac of York comes on as a messenger, to ransom from a Spanish knight, Don Beltram de Cuchilla y Trabuco, y Espada, y Espelon, a little Moorish girl. The Spanish knight of course murders the little girl instead of taking the ransom. Two hundred thousand dirhems are offered, however much that may be; but the knight, who happens to be in funds at the time, prefers to kill the little girl. All this is only necessary to the story as intro- ducing Isaac of York. Sir Wilfrid is of course intent upon finding Rebecca. Through all his troubles and triumphs, from his gaining and his losing of Rowena, from the day on which he had been “locked up with the Jewess in the tower,” he had always been true to her. “Away from me !” said the old Jew, tottering. ‘Away, Rebecca is,—dead !” Then Ivanhoe goes out and kills fifty thousand Moors, and there is the picture of him,—killing them. But Rebecca is not dead at all. Her father had said so because Rebecca had behaved very badly to him, She had refused to marry the Moorish prince, or any of her own. people, the Jews, and had gone as far as to declare her passion for Ivanhoe and her resolution to be a Christian. All the Jews and Jewesses in Valencia turned against her,—so that she was locked up in the back-kitchen and almost starved to death. But Ivanhoe found her of course, and makes her Mrs. Ivanhoe, or Lady Wilfrid the second. Then Thackeray tells us how for many years he, Thackeray, had not ceased to feel that it ought to be so. ‘“‘ Indeed I have thought of it any time these five-and-twenty years,—ever since, as a boy at school, I commenced the noble study of novels,—ever since the day when, lying on sunny slopes, of half-holidays, the fair Vi.j THACKERAY’S BURLESQUES. 153 chivalrous figures and beautiful shapes of knights and ladies were visible to me, ever since I grew to love Rebecca, that sweetest creature of the poet’s fancy, and longed to see her righted.” And so, no doubt, it had been. The very burlesque had grown from the way in which his young imagination had been moved by Scott’s romance. He had felt from the time of those happy half-holidays in which he had been lucky enough to get hold of the novel, that according to all laws of poetic justice, Rebecca, as being the more beautiful and the more interesting of the heroines, was entitled to the possession of the hero. We have all of us felt the same. But to him had been present at the same time all that is ludicrous in our ideas of middle-age chivalry ; the absurdity of its recorded deeds, the blood- thirstiness of its recreations, the selfishness of its men, the falseness of its honour, the cringing of its loyalty, the tyranny of its princes. And so there came forth Rebecca and Rowena, all broad fun from beginning to end, but never without a purpose,—the best burlesque, as { think, in our language. CHAPTER VII. THACKERAY 'S LECTURES. Tw speaking of Thackeray’s life I have said why and how, it was that he took upon himself to lecture, and have. also told the reader that he was altogether successful in carrying out the views proposed to himself. Of his peculiar manner of lecturing I have said but little, never having heard him. ‘He pounded along,—very clearly,” I have been told; from which I surmise that there was no special grace of eloquence, but that he was always audible. I cannot imagine that he should have been ever eloquent. He could not have taken the: trouble. necessary with his voice, with his cadences, or with his outward appearance. I imagine that they who seem so naturally to fall into the proprieties of elocution have generally taken a great deal of trouble beyond that which the mere finding of their words has cost them. It is clearly to the matter of what he then gave the world, and not to the manner, that we must look for what interest is to be found in the lectures. Those on The English Humorists were given first. The second set was on The Four Georges. In the volume now before us The Georges are printed first, and the whole is produced simply as a part of Thackeray’s literary work, Looked at, however, in that light the merit of the CHAD. VII] THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 155 two sets of biographical essays is very different. In the one we have all the anecdotes which could be brought together respecting four of our kings,—who as men were not peculiar, though their reigns were, and will always be, famous, because the country during the period was in- creasing greatly in prosperity and was ever strengthening the hold it had upon its liberties. In the other set the lecturer was a man of letters dealing with men of letters, and himself a prince among humorists is dealing with the humorists of his own country and language. One could not imagine a better subject for such discourses from Thackeray’s mouth than the latter. The former was not, I think, so good. In discussing the lives of kings the biographer may trust to personal details or to historical facts. He may take the man, and say what good or evil may be said of him as a man ;—or he may take the period, and tell his readers what happened to the country while this or the other king was on the throne. In the case with which we are dealing, the lecturer had not time enough or room enough for real history. His object was to let his audience know of what nature were the men; and we are bound to say that the pictures have not on the whole been flattering. It was almost necessary that with such a subject such should be the result. A story of family virtues, with princes and princesses well brought up, with happy family relations, all couleur de rose,—as it would of course become us to write if we were dealing with the life of a living sovereign,—would not be inte- resting. No one on going to hear Thackeray lecture on the Georges expected that. There must be some piquancy given, or the lecture would be dull ;—and the eulogy of personal virtues can seldom be piquant. It is difficult to 156 THACKERAY. [oar. speak fittingly of a sovereign, either living or not long since gone, You can hardly praise such a one without flattery. You can hardly censure him without injustice. We are either ignorant of his personal doings or we know them as secrets, which have been divulged for the most part either falsely or treacherously,—often both falsely and treacherously. It is better, perhaps, that we should not deal with the personalities of princes. I believe that Thackeray fancied that he had spoken well of George IIL, and am sure that it was his intention to do so. But the impression he leaves is poor. “ He is said not to have cared for Shakespeare or tragedy much ; farces and pantomimes were his joy ;—and especially when clown swallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, he would laugh so outrageously that the lovely princess by his side would have to say, ‘My gracious monarch, do compose yourself’ ‘George, be a king!’ were the words which she,”—his mother,—“ was ever croaking in the ears of her son; and a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried to be.” “He did his best ; he worked according to his lights; what virtues he knew he tried to practise ; what knowledge he could master he strove to acquire.” If the lectures were to be popular, it was absolutely necessary that they should be written in this strain, A lecture simply laudatory on the life of St. Paul would not draw even the bench of bishops to listen to it; but were . a flaw found in the apostle’s life, the whole Church of England would be bound to know all about it. I am quite sure that Thackeray believed every word that he said in the lectures, and that he intended to put in the good and the bad, honestly, as they might come to his hand. We may be quite sure that he did not intend to flatter the royal family ;—equally sure that he would not Vit. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 157 calumniate. There were, however, so many difficulties to be encountered that I cannot but think that the subject was ill-chosen. In making them so amusing as he did and so little offensive great ingenuity was shown. I will now go back to the first series, in which the lecturer treated of Swift, Congreve, Addison, Steele, Prior, Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett, Fielding, Sterne, and Goldsmith. All these Thackeray has put in their proper order, placing the men from the date of their birth, except Prior, who was in truth the eldest of the lot, but whom it was necessary to depose, in order that the great Swift might stand first on the list, and Smollett, who was not born till fourteen years after Fielding, eight years after Sterne, and who has been moved up, I presume, simply from caprice. From the birth of the first to the death of the last, was a period of nearly a hundred years, They were never absolutely all alive together ; but it was nearly so, Addison and Prior having died before Smollett was born. Whether we should accept as humorists the full cata- logue, may be a question ; though we shall hardly wish to eliminate any one from such a dozen of names. Pope we should hardly define as a humorist, were we to be seek- ing for a definition specially fit for him, though we shall certainly not deny the gift of humour to the author of The Rape of the Lock, or to the translator of any portion of The Odyssey. Nor should we have included Fielding or Smollett, in spite of Parson Adams and Tabitha Bramble, unless anxious to fill a good company. That Hogarth was specially a humorist no one will deny; but in speak- ing of humorists we should have presumed, unless other- wise notified, that humorists in letters only had been intended. As Thackeray explains clearly what he means by a humorist, I may as well here repeat the passage, 158 THACKERAY. [onap, ‘Tf humour only meant laughter, you would scarcely feel more interest about humorous writers than about the private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who pos- sesses in common with these the power of making you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories your kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness,—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture, —your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability ho comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, and speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem him,—sometimes love him. And as his business is to marx other people’s lives and peculiarities, we moralise upon his life when he is gone,—and yesterday’s preacher becomes the text for to-day’s sermon.” Having thus explained his purpose, Thackeray begins his task, and puts Swift in his front rank as a humorist. The picture given of this great man has very manifestly the look of truth, and if true, is terrible indeed. “We do, in fact, know it to be true,—even though it be admitted that there is still room left for a book to be written on the life of the fearful dean. Here was a man endued with an intellect pellucid as well as brilliant; who could not only conceive but see also,—with some fine instincts too; whom fortune did not flout; whom circumstances fairly served ; but who, from first to last, was miserable himself, who made others miserable, and who deserved misery. Our business, during the page or two which we can give to the _ vir. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 159 subject, is not with Swift but with Thackeray’s picture of Swift. It is painted with colours terribly strong and with shadows fearfully deep. “Would you like to have lived with him?” Thackeray asks. Then he says how pleasant it would have been to have passed some time with Field- ing, Johnson, or Goldsmith. “TI should like to have been Shakespeare’s shoeblack,” he says. “But Swift! If you had been his inferior in parts,—and that, with a great respect for all persons present, I fear is only very likely,— his equal in mere social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted you. If, undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him like a man, he would have quailed before you and not had the pluck to reply,—and gone home, and years after written a foul epigram upon you.” Thereisa picture! “Ifyou had been a lord with a blue riband, who flattered his vanity, or could help his ambition, he would have been the most delightful com- pany in the world. .... How he would have torn your enemies to pieces for you, and made fun of the Opposition ! His servility was so boisterous that it looked like inde- pendence.” He was a man whose mind was never fixed on high things, but was striving always after something which, little as 16 might be, and successful as he was, should always be out of his reach. It had been his mis- fortune to become a clergyman, because the way to church preferment seemed to be the readiest. He became, as we all know, a dean,—but never a bishop, and was therefore wretched. Thackeray describes him asa clerical highway- man, seizing on all he could get. But “the great prize has not yet come. The coach with the mitre and crozier in it, which he intends to have for his share, has been delayed on the way from St. James’s; and he waits and waits till nightfall, when his runners come and tell bim that the 160 THACKERAY. [oHar, coach has taken a different way and escaped him. So he fires his pistol into the air with a curse, and rides away into his own country ;”—or, in other words, takes a poor deanery in Ireland. Thackeray explains very correctly, as I think, the nature of the weapons which the man used,—namely, the words and style with which he wrote. “That Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey’s Court, Dublin, on November 30, 1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody will deny the sister-island the honour and glory; but it seems to me he was no more an Irishman than a man born of English parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo. Goldsmith was an Irishman and always an Irishman ; Steele was an Irishman -and always an Irishman; Swift’s heart was English and in England, his habits English, his logic eminently English ; his statement is elaborately simple; he shuns tropes and metaphors, and uses his ideas and words with a wise thrift and economy, as he used his money ;-——with which he could be generous and splendid upon great occasions, but which he husbanded when there was no need to spend it. He never indulges in needless extrava- gance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, profuse imagery. He lays his opinions before you with a grave simplicity and a perfect neatness.” This is quite true of him, and the result is that though you may deny him sincerity, simplicity, humanity, or good taste, you can hardly find fault with his language. Swift was a clergyman, and this is what Thackeray says of him in regard to his sacred profession. “I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of Swift’s religion, than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the Bench! Gay, the author of The Beggar's Opera; Gay, the VII. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 161 wildest of the wits about town! It was this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take orders, to mount in a cassock and bands,—just as he advised him to husband his shillings, and put his thousand pounds out to interest,” It was not that he was without religion,—or without, rather, his religious beliefs and doubts, “‘for Switt,” says Thackeray, “was a reverent, was a pious spirit. For Swift could love and could pray.” Left to himself and to the natural thoughts of his mind, with- out those “orders” to which he had bound himself as a necessary part of his trade, he could have turned to his God with questionings which need not then have been heartbreaking. ‘It is my belief,” says Thackeray, “that he suffered frightfully from the consciousness of his own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far down as to put his apostasy out to hire.” I doubt whether any of Swift’s works are very much read now, but perhaps Gulliver’s travels are oftener in the hands of modern readers than any other. Of all the satires in our language it is probably the most cynical, the most abso- lutely illnatured, and therefore the falsest. Let those who care to form an opinion of Swift’s mind from the best known of his works, turn to Thackeray’s account of Gulliver. J can imagine no greater proof of misery than to have been able to write such a book as that. It is thus that the lecturer concludes his lecture about Swift. “ He shrank away from all affections sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both died near him, and away from him. He had not heart enough to see them die.. He broke from his fastest friend, Sheridan. He slunk away from his fondest admirer, Pope. His laugh jars on one’s ear after seven-score years. He was always alone,---~ M 162 THACKERAY. [onar. alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella’s sweet smile came and shone on him. When that went, silence and utter night closed over him. An immense genius, an awful downfall and ruin! So great a man he seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling. We have other great names to mention,— none I think, however, so great or so gloomy.” And so we pass on from Swift, feeling that though the man was eertainly a humorist, we have had as yet but little to do with humour. Congreve is the next who, however truly he may have been a humorist, is described here rather as a man of fashion. A man of fashion he certainly was, but is best known in our literature as a comedian,—worshipping that comic Muse to whom Thackeray hesitates to introduce his audience, because she is not only merry but shameless also. Congreve’s muse was about as bad as any muse that ever misbehaved herself,—and I think, as litile amusing. “‘ Reading in these plays now,” says Thackeray, “is like shutting your ears and looking at people dancing. What does it mean?+—the measures, the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling, and retreating, the cavaliers seuls ad- vancing upon their ladies, then ladies and men twirling round at the end in a mad galop, after which everybody bows and the quaint rite is celebrated?” It is always so with Congreve’s plays, and Etherege’s and Wycherley’s. The world we meet there is not our world, and as we read the plays we have no sympathy with these unknown people. It was not that they lived so long ago. They are much nearer to us in time than the men and women who figured on the stage in the reign of James I. But their nature is farther from our nature. They sparkle but never warm. They are witty but leave no impres- VI. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 163 sion. I might almost go further, and say that they are wicked but never allure. “When Voltaire came to visit the Great Congreve,” says Thackeray, “the latter rather affected to despise his literary reputation ; and in this, perhaps, the great Congreve was not far wrong, A touch of Steele’s tenderness is worth all his finery ; a flash of Swift's lightning, a beam of Addison’s pure sunshine, and his tawdry playhouse taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him, and he was undoubtedly a pretty fellow.” There is no doubt as to the true humour of Addison, who next comes up before us, but I think that he makes hardly so good a subject for a lecturer as the great gloomy. man of intellect, or the frivolous man of pleasure. Thackeray tells us all that is to be said about him asa humorist in so few lines that I may almost insert them on this page: “But it is not for his reputation as the great author of Cato and The Campaign, or for his merits as Secretary of State, or for his rank and high distinction as Lady Warwick’s husband, or for his eminence as an examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a guardian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tattler of small talk and a Spectator of mankind that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble natural voice. He came the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge, who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about hanging and ruthless, a literary Jeffreys, in Addison’s kind court only minor cases were tried ;—only peccadilloes and small sins against society, only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and hoops, or a nuisance in the abuse of beaux canes and m2 164, THACKERAY. [oiar. enuffboxes.” Steele set The Tatler a going. “ But with his friend’s discovery of Zhe Tatler, Addison’s calling was found, and the most delightful Tattler in the world began to speak. He does not go very deep. Let gentle- men of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinking that he couldn’t go very deep. There is no trace of suffering in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish,—if I must use the word !” Such was Addison as a humorist; and when the hearer shall have heard also,—or the reader read,—that this most charming Tattler also wrote Cato, became a Secretary of State, and married a countess, he will have learned all that Thackeray had to tell of him. Steele was one who stood much less high in the world’s esteem, and who left behind him a much smaller name,—but was quite Addison’s equal as a humorist and a wit. Addison, though he had the reputation of a toper, was respectability itself. Steele was almost always disreputable. He was brought from Ireland, placed at the Charter House, and then transferred to Oxford, where he became acquainted with Addison. Thackeray says that “Steele found Addison a stately college don at Oxford.” The stateliness and the don’s rank were attributable no doubt to the more sober character of the English lad, for, in fact, the two men were born in the same year, 1672. Steele, who during his life was affected by various different tastes, first turned himself to literature, but early in life was bitten by the hue of a red coat and became a trooper in the Horse Guards. To the end he vacillated in the same way. “In that charming paper in Zhe Tatler, in which he records his father’s death, his mother’s griefs, his own most solemn Vit. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 165 and tender emotions, he says he is interrupted by the arrival of a hamper of wine, ‘the same as is to be sold at Garraway’s next week ;’ upon the receipt of which he sends for three friends, and they fall to instantly, drinking two bottles apiece, with great benefit to them- selves, and not separating till two o’clock in the morning.” He had two wives, whom he loved dearly and treated badly. He hired grand houses, and bought fine horses for which he could never pay. He was often religious, but more often drunk. As a man of letters, other men of letters who followed him, such as Thackeray, could not be very proud of him. But everybody loved him; and he seems to have been the inventor of that flying literature which, with many changes in form and manner, has done so much for the amusement and edification of readers ever since his time. He was always commencing, or carrying on,—often editing,—some one of the numerous periodicals which appeared during his time. Thackeray mentions seven: Zhe Tatler, The Spectator, The Guardian, The Englishman, The Lover, The Reader, and The Theatre; that three of them are well known ‘to this day,—the three first named,—and are to be found in all libraries, is proof that his life was not thrown away. I almost question Prior’s right to be in the list, unless indeed the mastery over well-turned conceits is to be included within the border of humour. But Thackeray had a strong liking for Prior, and in his own humorous way rebukes his audience for not being familiar with Zhe ‘Town and Country Mouse. He says that Prior’s epigrams have the genuine sparkle, and compares Prior to Horace, «¢ His song, his philosophy, his good sense, ‘his happy easy 166 THACKERAY. [oHar. turns and melody, his loves and his epicureanism bear a great resemblance to that most delightful and accom- plished master.” I cannot say that I agree with this. Prior is generally neat in his expression. Horace is happy,—which is surely a great deal more. All that is said of Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett, and Fielding is worth reading, and may be of great value both to those who have not time to study the authors, and to those who desire to have their own judgments somewhat guided, somewhat assisted. That they were all men of humour there can be no doubt. Whether either of them, except perhaps Gay, would have been specially ranked as a humorist among men of letters, may be a question. Sterne was a humorist, and employed his pen in that line, if ever a writer did so, and so was Goldsmith. Of the excellence and largeness of the disposition of the one, and the meanness and littleness of the other, it is not necessary that I should here say much. But I will give a short passage from our author as to each. He has been ‘quoting somewhat at length from Sterne, and thus he ends; “And with this pretty dance and chorus the volume artfully concludes. Even here one can’t give the whole description. There is not a page in Sterne’s writing but has something that were better away, a latent cor- ruption,—a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours,—but not all. The foul satyr’s eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon.” Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I will then let my reader go to the volume and study the lectures for himself. ‘The poor fellow was never so friendless vit. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 167 but that he could befriend some one; never so pinched and wretched but he could give of his crust, and speak his word of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he would give that, and make the children happy in the dreary London. courts.” Of this too I will remind my readers,—those who have bookshelves well-filled to adorn their houses,—that Gold- smith stands in the front where all the young people see the volumes. There are few among the young people who do not refresh their sense of humour occasionally from that shelf, Sterne is relegated to some distant and high corner. The less often that he is taken down the better. Thackeray makes some half excuse for him because of the greater freedom of the times. But “the times” were the same for the two. Both Sterne and Goldsmith wrote ‘in the reion of George IL. ; both died in the reign of George ITT. CHAPTER VIIL THACKERAY ’S ‘BALLADS. © We have a volume of Thackeray’s poems, republished under the name of Ballads, which is, I think, to a great extent a misnomer. They are all readable, almost all good,.full of humour, and with some fine touches of pathos, most happy in their versification, and, with a few exceptions, hitting well on the head the nail which he in- tended to hit. But they are not on that account ballads. Literally, a ballad isa song, but it has come to signify a short chronicle in verse, which may be political, or pathetic, or grotesque,—or it may have all three character- istics or any two of them; but not on that account is any grotesque poem a ballad,—nor, of course, any pathetic orany political poem. Jacob Omnium’s Hoss may fairly be called a ballad, containing as it does a chronicle of a certain well-defined transaction; and the story of King Canute is a ballad,—one of the best that has been produced in our language in modern years. But such pieces as those called The Hnd of the Play and Vanitas Vanitatum, which are didactic as well as pathetic, are not ballads in the common sense; nor are such songs as The Mahogany Tree, or the little collection called Love Songs made Hasy. The majority of the pieces are not CMAP. VIII. } THACKERAY’S BALLADS. 169 ballads, but if they be good of the kind we should be ungrateful to quarrel much with the name. How very good most of them are, I did not know till I re-read them for the purpose of writing this chapter. There is a manife:t falling off in some few,—which has come from that source of literary failure which is now so common, Ifa man write a book or a poem because it is in him to write it,—the motive power being altogether in himself and coming from his desire to express himself,— he will write it well, presuming him to be capable of the effort. But if he write his book or poem simply because a book or poem is required from him, let his capability be what it may, it is not unlikely that he will do it badly. Thackeray occasionally suffered from the weakness thus produced.