courage in that craven battle, so much endurance in that strange and selfish martyrdom. Newman said once, I believe, "Evil always fails by over-leaping its aim and good by falling short of it." Whether true or not this might almost be a motto for "Vanity Fair." Here Thackeray is right in calling himself so constantly a moralist. He is genuinely a moralist in this essential sense that he insists that actions shall be judged not by their energy, but by their aim.

Many strenuous critics have sneered at the softness of Amelia Sedley and openly exalted Rebecca along lines of the will to live. It would be hard to persuade modern critics that Thackeray may be deeper or even more daring than they are. But I hardly think that they see Thackeray's point. His point surely is that Amelia was a fool; but that there is a certain sanative and antiseptic element in virtue, by which even a fool manages to live longer than a knave. For after all when Amelia and Becky meet at the end, Amelia has much less energy, but she has much more life. She is younger; she has not lost her power of happiness; her stalk is not broken. She could really, to use Thackeray's own metaphor, grow green again. But the energy of Becky is the energy of a dead woman; it is like the rhythmic kicking of some bisected insect. The life of the wicked works outwards and goes to waste. The life of the innocent, even the stupidly innocent, is within; if anyone dislikes the battered sentiment of the word "love," I will say that innocence has more zest, more power of tasting things. Hence Thackeray's thought is really suggestive; that perhaps even softness is a sort of superiority; it is better to be open to all emotions as they come than to reach the hell of Rebecca; the hell of having all outward forces open, but all receptive organs closed. For the very definition of hell must be energy without joy.

ears.

It was very specially in connection with "Vanity Fair" that the great accusation of "cynicism" broke about Thackeray's The argument is a mere logomachy, the trick of taking a vague word and then asking if it applies precisely. If cynicism means a war on comfort, then Thackeray, to his eternal honour, was the reverse of a cynic. It is absurd, in

this sense, to call a man cynical whose whole object it is to show that goodness, even when it is silly, is a healthier thing than wickedness when it is sensible. The truth in the accusation is probably this; that his vile characters are drawn a little more vididly than his virtuous characters. So, in the small artistic sense, Dante is more successful with hell than with the beatific vision. Virtuous characters are always drawn less vividly than other characters; because they are so much more worth drawing. From the Introduction to "Thackeray" in "Masters of Literature" (1909).

A

VIII

BY HAROLD WILLIAMS

BEAUTIFUL vein of genius lay struggling about in him." said Carlyle of Thackeray, with an aptness which does not always belong to his comments upon his contemporaries. Thackeray was a shy and diffident man, reserved and very sensitive, and we feel that never, either on paper or to his friends, did he wholly reveal himself; he was garrulous and wrote diffusively, he constantly made personal intrusions into his books, he is the most charming of friends and guides through the narrative, but something is kept back from us, and to the last page there is still an unknown element in the personality of the man who has talked so much about himself and of his books. Dickens showed what he was, and the least percipient could divine what his opinion would be on any given subject, what his mental attitude was to life in general. But Thackeray was a riddle; he was alternately accused of cynicism and sentimentalism: at one time he was unfeeling and represented life as worse than it was: at another he was inclined to hope too much in human nature. And why not? Every man who both thinks and feels will have his alternations of hope and depression, tender-heartedness and stoical contempt. And, though Thackeray mixed with his fellows in crowded places all his life, though he was a man of cities and a frequenter of clubs, an indolent Epicurean who loved to talk and lounge through

life, he kept a chamber of his soul closed to the world; he was never completely off his guard, he never set the whole of his genius free. It was always, as Carlyle said, struggling about in him. For, though everyday philosophy was one of his weaknesses, he never conceived a whole and clear view of what life meant for him; and he appears, according to the mood of the moment, as the censor of morals, the indifferent cynic, the sentimentalist, the large-hearted man sensitive to the pain rather than the joy of life, and the Epicurcan dil

ettante.

Thackeray described himself as carried away by his characters till he lost control over their movements. The statement may be accepted and the inconsequent movement of the narrative goes to prove it; but it may be doubted whether he ever lost himself so completely as Dickens, who wept and laughed with the characters he created. There is always a degree of aloofness in Thackeray's attitude; even Arthur Pendennis is not so much to him, not so dear to his heart and his memories of youth, as David Copperfield was to Dickens. Thackeray's interest in his characters is the interest of the student, the analyst, and the theorist: he did not possess the faculty of absorption and identification. He consistently acts the part of censor and showman. He is always at our elbow, nudging and jogging us, pointing out and supplying, sometimes, it must be confessed, rather commonplace reflections we are to draw from the narrative. His pages are liberally provided with rubrics, stage-directions, marginal annotations, and textual commentary. We are, for instance, told that "the present chapter is very mild." Well and good, but the discovery might have been left to the perspicuity of the reader. The part of showman is deliberately and unashamedly adopted.

"And as we bring our characters forward, I will ask leave, as a man and a brother, not only to introduce them, but occasionally to step down from the platform, and talk about them: if they are good and kindly to love them and shake them by the hand; if they are silly, to laugh at them confidentially in the reader's sleeve; if they are wicked and heartless, to abuse them in the strongest terms which politeness admits of."

It is the mere pedantry of criticism to insist upon the artistic impertinence of this lecturer-with-pointer attitude of Thackeray's. We have learned to prefer the absence of the author; and in the majority of cases he is well-advised not to appear; but few would wish to see Thackeray out of his books. There may be books we can read without any desire for personal acquaintanceship with the author. If Thackeray were not in the habit of breaking off into commentary and personal intrusion, we should begin to wish for it; it is impossible to read his novels without a sense of personal interest in the figure of the author standing behind the narrative. But, as it is, he is always at hand as a delightful guide and instructor and friend.-From "Two Centuries of the English Novel" (1911).

LIST OF CHARACTERS

MISS BARBARA PINKERTON, presiding over an Academy for Young Ladies.

JEMIMA PINKERTON, her sister.

AMELIA SEDLEY, afterwards Mrs. George Osborne, an accomplished young lady, yet with more heart than brains.

JOHN SEDLEY, Esq., of the Stock Exchange, father of Amelia.
MRS. SEDLEY, his wife.

JOSEPH SEDLEY, older brother of Amelia, in the East India Company's
Civil Service.

MRS. BLENKINSOP, housekeeper of the Sedleys.

SAMBO, coloured servant of the Sedleys.

REBECCA SHARP, afterwards Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, daughter of a poor English artist and a French dancer. A fascinating, clever and unscrupulous adventuress.

MISS SWARTZ, a mulatto heiress from St. Kitt's, a school friend of Amelia's.

SIR PITT CRAWLEY, a miserly, hard-drinking, disreputable old baronet. ROSA GRAFTON, second wife of Sir Pitt-a colourless and neglected invalid.

Rose,

VIOLET, daughters of Sir Pitt by his second wife.

PITT CRAWLEY, a convertional prig-elder son of Sir Pitt by his first wife.

RAWDON CRAWLEY, younger son of Sir Pitt Crawley by his first wife -a heavy young rake in the Dragoons.

HORROCKS, Sir Pitt Crawley's butler.

MISS HORROCKS, his daughter.

REV. BUTE CRAWLEY, younger brother of Sir Pitt Crawley--a worldly

minded country parson.

MRS. BUTE CRAWLEY, his wife, a managing, scheming little woman.
JAMES,
FRANK,
Fo

children of Bute Crawley.

MR. OSBORNE, a prosperous merchant in the city, who owes his start in life to Mr. Sedley.

JANE, spinster daughter and slave of Mr. Osborne.

MARIA, afterwards Mrs. Frederick Bullock, younger daughter of Mr. Osborne.

GEORGE OSBORNE, son of Mr. Osborne, and godson of Mr. Sedley, a conceited young officer.

MISS WIRT, a "raw-honed vestal," governess to the Misses Osborne. MISS CRAWLEY, half-sister to Sir Pitt Crawley, a shrewd rich old

spinster.