which Thackeray deliberately laid aside this very legitimate instrument. I suppose that all will allow that Thackeray's greatest power lay in the delineation of character. Sometimes a few lines will suffice for a complete portrait, just as his great colleague and illustrator Richard Doyle will dash off a figure with a few scratches of his wondrous pencil; and these we have with marvellous individuality in the host of personages who fill that amusing picture-gallery the Book of Snobs. But what our author seems especially to delight in is the gradual development of character, which grows up so naturally from chapter to chapter; here one feature showing itself under the force of circumstances, and there another coming out prominently, until in the end we so thoroughly know every person in the story that we seem to be able to forecast, not only what they will do and say, but how they will do and say it. We know them in the truest sense of the word; not so much because our author has spoken about them, as because he has left them to speak for themselves; not so much because he has told us what kind of persons he intends them to be, as because he has shown them to us really such. The characters grow up under our eyes; many from childhood to maturity, others, whom we first meet in middle age, live out their allotted space and die in due time, while some pass quite through the whole of life ere we lose sight of them, like Beatrix Esmond, who enters upon the scene a child of four years and dies in almost second childhood the Baroness Bernstein.

This elaborate delineation of character seems to have grown in our author, if not with his power, at least with the high polish and refinement which characterised its progress. In his earlier writings, when the pages of Punch were enriched with his sketches, we have, as circumstances almost necessitated, figures as varied and as crowded as in an instantaneous photogragh of a London street; the vigour of his hand wrought in a paragraph what his artist eye had caught in a single glance. Pictures so life-like were appreciated at their high value and recognised for their truth. But, when our author had thus gained his public, and could follow at leisure the instincts of his higher nature, we find him elaborating, on a wider canvas, and with a minuteness which only love could dictate, those characters which have taken their place in our heart of hearts, or if not all admitted to that inner temple, at least into those haunts of memory where we store up what genius has wrought for us, and what we have by its magic power been enabled to make our own. I think I am not saying too much when I call such writings a labour of love,

for what other word will serve to characterise that affectionate lingering over the personages he has set before us, that working out with untiring zeal every trait which will make the image more distinct to the mental eye, that leading on from scene to scene which brings out by new combinations of circumstances the features which individualise; and which, when the story comes to an end, will not even then allow them to pass from our view, but which, when the required volumes are filled and closed, opens the tale again in another novel, and brings back once more the old familiar faces to charm again, and now in a double manner, in that they are old friends with new claims upon our friendship? And this indeed, which is a special peculiarity of Thackeray, is a sure token of that love of his subject, which I claim as one of his inspiring principles. He has grown to love the creations of his own intellect, these children of his brain become endeared to him as children of his heart, and with the affection of a father he clings to them and dwells upon their individual characters with a partiality which never tires; and so, as I have said, they reappear, it may be but in a passing word, when fresh characters and circumstances bring us amid old haunts, and we catch just a glimpse of those he has taught us to connect with the scene, and whose very presence gives an additional truthfulness to the new incidents amid which we find ourselves; or they reappear to play, as of old, leading parts in the new novel, but under fresh circumstances. We have many instances of this, which no doubt suggest themselves to most minds. The one to which I have already alluded is a case in point, wherein Beatrix, the heroine, or at least one of the heroines, of Esmond, reappears in old age as the Baroness Bernstein in the Virginians. Again, in Thackeray's last completed work, the Adventures of Philip, we have a whole novel built up upon a foundation raised in early years; indeed, to understand Philip thoroughly, and enjoy it completely, we have need to read as its introduction what our author quaintly calls A Shabby Genteel Story, one of his earliest lengthened sketches.

Once more. Arthur Pendennis is not only the hero of the story which bears his name, but he is made the author of the Newcomes, and as such plays his part in the drama itself, and figures, as the author in Thackeray's works must ever do, in those "memoirs of a most respectable family;" and, not content with this, Arthur Pendennis once more crops up and plays as chronicler a still more important part in the Adventures of Philip -thus tying up the series into a kind of classic trilogy, and

leaving the reader under a confirmed conviction that he has not merely made some very amusing and interesting acquaintances, but that he counts them among his most intimate friends, of whom indeed he knows far more than of any of the so-called real people about him, and with whom he has absolutely lived whole years not to say whole lives-in the closest and most confidential manner. And so I think it will not be too much to say that our author threw his whole heart into his work, bestowing upon it a care and finishing it with a polish that nothing but enthusiastic love could inspire or sustain.

Now, surely when an author finds out—it may be after several attempts in other directions, wherein the success which attends him is enough for ordinary ambition, but not enough for one who is conscious of great powers within him-when, I say, such an author finds out the one line in which he will best excel, when he hits upon the vein of precious metal which he can most successfully work, surely he is not only justified, but is morally bound to pursue it, though it may lead him from the ordinary track which others had marked out, and carry him beyond the limits and away from the contrivances which are ordinarily used. Such contrivances include what is called the plot in a novel, and this, I contend, would have been a hindrance to our author, a trammel which would have chained down his powers and eaten out his heart; but his vigorous will set him free-it was the Hercules which delivered our Prometheus from the critic's Caucasus. Surely he did well in casting aside what after all is not an essential to a novel, when by retaining it he would render well-nigh impossible the end and aim of his labour.

For I venture to think that we are generally disposed to lay too much stress upon the importance of the story or plot in literature of this kind. Of course some kind of plot is necessary, and Thackeray is never wanting in a sufficient plot; sufficient, I mean, for his purpose, though certainly not sufficient for the requirements of those who dote upon a mystery and pass sleepless nights while the doughty knight and the beauteous damsel are struggling through the superhuman difficulties which for a time for three volumes-keep them apart, or, in more popular form, while the detective is on the track of the high-minded housebreaker, or searching for the customary poison in the boudoir of the fascinating murderess. For what is a plot but the scaffolding by help of which the literary edifice is constructed? It serves at best but to enable the author to put each portion of his work in its right place; its use is to afford

him a ready access to every part, that he may group its members as his eye suggests, and place each ornament where it will tell to best advantage; it is the machinery which raises and lowers the scenes in his drama, the stage upon which his human characters play their part: but can we rest content with a drama of carpenter's work, or think more of these subsidiaries than of the human passions which the author depicts, or of the beings whom those passions sway?

Doubtless, there is a skill in the construction of these lesser things. None can question the value of good scenery in the one › case, or of a firm scaffolding in the other; but may not the former by its excess or over-elaboration mar the effect of the play itself— as in modern instances has been more than once observed? while the latter, the scaffolding, surely should be so secondary that it may be cast aside, that the building, which it surrounds and conceals, may be laid open in all its beauty. What should we think of the builder who should expend the time and means which the edifice itself requires upon the scaffolding, and who should point to its elaborate intertwining of poles and planks when we ask for the building we have ordered? Should we not justly complain that the skill and experience we had bargained for had been misapplied, and that the means had been mistaken for the end?

I must frankly confess that I regard much in the same light many of our modern sensational novels and plays, wherein there seems more of the carpenter than of the man of letters; we may be amused and interested for the time-there is too much talent -employed for it to be otherwise-but I own I come from the scene, or lay down the volume, wearied and disheartened: wearied at mere mechanical skill so misapplied, and disheartened at the wanton waste of intellectual power, when there is so much noble work at hand neglected and undone. The fashion of the day-I had almost said the passion of the day—seems to be to sacrifice all to sensational effect, or to the elaboration of a complicated plot. In both cases the individuál characters suffer, in that they play but a secondary part; they are but as puppets in the hands of the vigorous manipulator, and so are jerked hither and thither at his will, without much consideration as to the consistency and grace of their actions. Enough if a sensation can be produced, or an elaborate knot untied. And thus it is that even in the cleverest novels of either of those popular classes so little of real character is to be found.

And what is the consequence of this kind of writing? As

soon as the story is read, as soon as the plot is unravelled, we throw the book aside, and never think of returning to it again, unless it be to settle some disputed point of detail, or to try and bring back to our minds some vague image of the shadows which have flitted before us. In truth, in most cases such return is but waste of time; for the puppets, on closer inspection, are found to be but poor stuffed dolls of rag and sawdust, which the misused power of a clever hand jerked into a semblance of life, that passed muster in the artificial light which his practised skill cast around them. With how much truth may be said of this what Thackeray said of a far different performance, "Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out."

How unlike to these are our feelings when we have finished a novel of Thackeray's—at least, if I may judge of my own experience, pretty often renewed, and ever with the same result. The work is closed simply because the author thought fit to bring it to an end; indeed, we know that he often returned to it again, and carried it on with undiminished interest. And why is this? Because there is but little plot to bring to an end, and because the interest does not depend upon the plot, but upon the people depicted. The characters which are therein drawn engage all our attention; the circumstances that bring them together are but of secondary interest. They do not seem created for those circumstances, and therefore our interest in them does not pass away with time and place. We think of them as of persons we have met in our journey of life, and so we look, it may be, to see them again. We leave them, and thus lose sight of them, not because their course is over, but because our paths have separated; and so, when we close the book, we think of them as still existing, we speculate upon what they are now doing, and, because we knew them so intimately, because we loved them, or, at any rate, because they amused us, we hope to meet them again.

Have we not been the gainers by such a course as this? If we have lost the passing excitement of a strong or elaborate plot,. have we not been more than compensated by well-developed and exquisitely-drawn characters? And who shall venture to prefer the pullies and cords, the tin thunder and the resin lightning of the machinist, or the Chinese puzzle of the ingenious plotcontriver, to the men and women of flesh and blood, of warm hearts and honest purposes, with whom the pen of Thackeray has made us familiar?