M. de Pressensé on the Church and the French Revolution 400 402 Mr. Barff's Introduction to Scientific Chemistry The Femall Glory . Anne Séverin. By the Author of Le Récit d'une Sœur. Chapters XLVI., XLVII., XLVIII., XLIX. (and last) 422 The First Red-Breast: A Legend of Good Friday 437 On the Definitions of the Church and the Knowledge of the Life of Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan Mr. Herman Merivale on the Reductions of Paraguay M. Guizot's Great Christians of France 459 461 480 486 The Day Sanctified 505 Party in England Father Séguin's Tobie Sermons by Fathers of the Society of Jesus Mr. Maskell on the Present Position of the High Church 506 506 507 CONTENTS OF THE JUNE NUMBER. On Thackeray's place among English Writers Loomland Papers.-III. Spindles and Looms Louis the Fourteenth and the Holy See Mr. Wallace's Malay Archipelago Father Waterworth's Church of St. Patrick. Mr. Pye's Why do we Believe? On Thackeray's place among English Writers. WHEN the works upon which a name is built have been collected, duly edited, and supplemented, it may be, by an accurate and critical life, when the world has formed its judgment thereon, and time has confirmed that estimate, there is no great difficulty in placing before the mind's eye a portrait of the intellectual man sufficiently clear and well defined. But when these, and such like helps, are wanting; while the world is yet arguing what a writer's place is to be on our modern Parnassus; while some would lead him crowned to the highest summits, and others would admit him but to the lower slopes; while the man and his works are yet so close upon us that we can hardly master the details, and certainly want distance to regard the whole from a fitting point of view—the critic's task is less easy. Still, I am about to attempt something like an estimate of William Makepeace Thackeray; but as his position must still be left for posterity alone to determine, it will be enough for me to examine some of the grounds upon which I believe his claim to renown rests, and to vindicate him from certain literary charges which, if well founded, would go far to make void that claim. My object, then, in the following pages, will be to consider the value of these charges in themselves, and how far our author is amenable to them, and thus I shall have to deal with what are considered his faults rather than with his merits-it may be, to show that these so-called faults are in truth merits, or at any rate that they will admit of a far more favourable interpretation than some of his critics have been inclined to concede to them. It would, of course, be an easier task to launch out into a panegyric of his acknowledged merits, and to dwell in glowing terms upon his obvious beauties; but, I believe, the course I have marked out will be more useful in a literary point of view. It has been objected to Thackeray that he does not keep himself sufficiently in the background, but, like a fidgetty manager of a theatre, rushes forward on all and no occasions to the foot-lights with a speech to the audience, thus destroying the illusion of the VOL. X. JUNE, 1869. M M scene and marring the effect of the story. I acknowledge the fact. Indeed, Thackeray himself, early in Vanity Fair, claims this privilege- 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. Otherwise you might fancy it was I who was sneering at the practice of devotion, which Miss Sharp finds so ridiculous; that it was I who laughed good-humouredly at the reeling old Silenus of a baronet-whereas the laughter comes from one who has no reverence except for prosperity, and no eye for anything but success. Such people there are living, and flourishing in the world-faithless, hopeless, charityless: let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and fools; and it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, that Laughter was made. Thackeray will often speak in his own person and interrupt the story to moralise with the reader. I might plead in excuse the example of the Greek chorus, but I prefer giving not only, as I have done, the reason which he himself laughingly urges, but another which, I believe, was far more likely to influence such a mind as Thackeray's-and this is, the earnestness with which he wrote, and the high purpose which he ever set before him. He was a novel writer, but he was something more--he was in a high sense a moralist. He wrote to please; but he had a higher aim, he wrote to instruct. The novel was the instrument by which he wrought; it was a wand of power with which he raised the creations of his genius, the beings of his mind; but his work did not cease, it only began, in those creatings, for through them he worked his higher purpose and made them subservient to a nobler end. It might have been more artistically correct to speak only through them; but regarding them but as puppets to be moved at his own pleasure, and with his heart full of the higher mission he recognised as his own, can we wonder if at times he seemed to throw aside the skilful workings of his own hands, and, in the full tide of deeper feelings, speak directly out of his own large heart to those whose amusement was at best but a means to an end? Indeed, I am not sure but that some of these sudden apostrophes were of design, as others were of irresistible impulse, as though the moralist would at times bring before the reader's mind the higher object of his work, and thus elevate what might have been begun as an amusement into a nobler occupation. This habit grew upon Thackeray as his office of teacher became more generally recognised; his later works abound with such passages, and now perhaps it is that they are best appreciated. He seemed to feel, as years went on, that he must speak more earnestly, and so the familiar address "brother" became of more frequent occurrence; and now, who that loves him, that is, who that knows and appreciates him, does not prize those personal admonitions as words of wisdom and truth? He was in some sense a lay preacher-doubtless a dangerous vocation unless a real one, but then perhaps it is very high. It is dangerous, because it may so easily degenerate into a mere string of phrases, which perhaps is of all shams the worst. But in one so real as Thackeray it could never become a sham, and when used as he used it, it is a power which sometimes works where more canonical preaching somehow fails. We are, it must be confessed, perverse beings; we seem best fitted to receive instruction out of time and place, and often find ourselves in better dispositions over the pages of a novel than under the teachings of a more regular preacher. We listen to Thackeray when he is in. this mood. Why? Because we believe him to be in earnest ; because we know him to be real: did we doubt this, we should turn away impatiently, if not in contempt and disgust, from one who assumes so high and sacred an office. Another objection which is brought against Thackeray's novels is, that they are deficient in plot. There is scarcely in one of them—I think I may say there is not in any one of them—a temptation to peep into the last few pages of vol. iii. to see how the story ends. Nay, so far from depending upon the interest which may, legitimately enough, be thus excited, he frequently goes out of his way to tells us parenthetically what that end will be. Is his hero in difficulties? he takes pains to assure us that they are but of a passing nature; does the course of his true love not run smooth? he fails not to inform us that he has long since been married, and is now smiling over woes which once he believed severe. In short, he deliberately, and surely with a purpose, lays aside an instrument which with many popular writers is the chief means of success, resolving to trust altogether to something else, in which he feels his strength to lie, and which might only be marred by an involved and exciting plot. Now this, I think, could only be done by a great writer, who, as such, is thoroughly conscious of his own power, and self-reliant enough to depend upon it. Nor need we go far, I think, to discover the purpose with |