But shutting our hearts to this pathos, what shall we say of him? What should be the judgment of this age, when the passions of his time are cooled and three centuries have tried his work? We cannot compare him with Luther, for his work and Luther's have no common measure. Yet if to his breadth of intellect he could have added Luther's strength of soul, he would have been the greatest man of his century. But we must not forget that he did his own work bravely and wisely, and that his work was good. If this be success, then he succeeded. If to be learned in an age of ignorance command admiration, then we must admire him; if to be virtuous in an age of vice be worthy of honor, then let us honor him; if a life of patient labor for the good of men call for a warmer feeling, that feeling he has deserved; if failure to fill out the measure of his work to the ideal fullness must be censured, let him censure whose mind and soul are perfect and in whom dwells infinite power.

WAS THACKERAY A CYNIC?

"PSHAW!" you exclaim, as your eye

falls upon this title; "only a warmed-over mess from a half-dozen reviews. Turn over."

Well, I can't say it wouldn't be wise; but I protest about the reviews, for I never have found half a dozen critics whose powerful intellects have for a moment entertained such simple opinions as mine. "Thackeray a cynic? Of course he was," these sensitive good people have answered; and no doubt nine-tenths of that author's readers have lent their voices to swell the chorus. "We admire his genius; his touches are those of a master; his humor is delightful; but why will he sneer so bitterly at everything and everybody?" Our own literary oracle in a late issue spoke incidentally of "that inborn cynicism that became Thackeray's second nature.”

I have no wish to question such crushing authorities; much less would I dare to claim a keener insight or peculiar power of appreciation. But, as I have said, it seems that I haven't read Thackeray as most men have. To me, he is certainly not a cynic. Why? as a certain instructor invariably asks.

Between satire and cynicism there is a well-defined, but ill-observed, distinction. Surliness, churlishness, misanthropy, are the components of cynicism, while those of satire are sarcasm, burlesque, and humor. The cynic

grumbles and snarls at his fellow men out of sheer crustiness and spleen, without the shadow of a desire to make them better; indeed, he is rather pleased if they grow worse. The satirist, on the other hand, falls upon the vices and follies of his time, and whatever in private or public life deserves rebuke; he strives, by showing men the foulness of their present lives, to lead them to purer ones. Like a wise and skillful surgeon, the satirist inflicts a deal of pain; he cauterizes the morbid flesh, or lops off the shattered limb, but only that the rest of the body may have a vigorous, healthy growth. He never cuts and

slashes at random; all those piercing thrusts are directed by a steady hand and to a definite purpose.

Among these moral surgeons, then, it seems to me that Thackeray should be ranked. In spirit and practice, he was a consummate satirist. Do you tell me to consider Vanity Fair" and the "Book of Snobs?" Well, what shall I find? In the preface of "Vanity Fair" are these words, which would sound strangely on the lips of a cynic" My kind reader will please to remember that this history has “Vanity Fair" for a title, and that Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions. . . . . People there are living and flourishing in the world . . . with no reverence except for prosperity, and no eyes for anything beyond success, faithless, hopeless, charityless; let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main."

And how did he carry out his professions? He led the very van of crusaders against the shams of his day. In inquiry he is penetrating; in verdict, fearless. He never storms and rants about the dignity of his mission, as too many of his fellow-laborers do; but he, as much as any of them, has heard a voice above him appointing him his work. He has striven manfully to write down the shams of the world. He has done it more effectively, because more intelligibly, than Mr. Carlyle. He has done it, too, in a more catholic spirit, without any violent prejudices and overflowings of bitterness against the great simply because they are great. There is nothing savage in the showman of " Vanity Fair." He is a satirist, but no cynic. He knows no rancor, nor malice, nor uncharitableness. The historian, story-teller, and social-philosopher laughs, it is true; but he has a great mind to weep. He sneers sometimes; but it is because his heart grows hot as he watches the pranks men play before high heaven.

But, it is sometimes objected, Thackeray's most perfect creations are embodiments of vice and folly, selfishness and sensuality. Very true. Whatever is bad and false in mankind he has painted so often and well that his power

has been mistaken for that delight in the contemplation of wickedness and weakness, and that distrust of human goodness, which constitute cynicism. But this is to judge him unfairly. If his touch is more graphic in such characters as Major Pendennis and Becky Sharpe, it is because they present stronger lines than the quiet charities. and homely chivalries that make up the world's every-day life. Such are the men and women who soonest strike the eye in actual society. The Warringtons and Rachel Castlewoods must be nourished with tender care before their true worth will blossom into view. Now, Mr. Thackeray is an honest artist, and accordingly he subɔrdinates this latter class to the amusingly wicked characters. This, indeed, is one of the features that give natural life to his pictures, and which make us feel as if we were moving among men of solid flesh and blood. Here and there, but only too rarely, amidst the struggling and deceiving, the vanity and selfishness of this "naughty world," we chance upon some pure soul shrinking from the gaze of men, and seeking to hide its brave endurance or noble sacrifice. Thus it is in Thackeray's novels. Surely this fidelity to life is not cynicism.

But Thackeray's humor ran naturally into satire? Yes; but it was kind and loving in its moral nature. His laugh was an act of judgment conscientiously passed against the vices and follies of society. Yet, in the midst of his condemnations, he finds room to acknowledge and encourage virtue. He never leaves us alone in the Bedlam he has created, nor suffers us to think that he does not believe in the existence of honor, purity, and self-sacrificing affection. Side by side with the picture of Major Pendennis hangs that of the saintly Helen; and even " Vanity Fair," the most satirical of all his novels, has its loyal, greatsouled Dobbin, and its self-denying Amelia. His writings abound in passages which could come only from a heart as tender as a woman's, and a sensitiveness scarcely less fine-from a depth of charity and pity which authors of more pretense to these qualities never approach.

But after all it is not so strange that Mr. Thackeray is so often condemned. For the foibles and vices which he attacks are the very ones which infect the whole body of society. A man must be in dead earnest who will cut and thrust so unsparingly. At one time or another, he hits the sore spot or weakness in each of us. Like every honest teacher, he necessarily inflicts pain, and hence wounded vanity often embitters the criticism of which he is the subject. It requires both candor and generosity to love the hand that wields the rod, however wholesome and salutary the chastising may be. Can this be the reason why Thackeray is no favorite with most women? Yet he ought to be; for no writer has paid nobler tribute to woman's love and devotion. Witness the scene in “Henry Esmond," when the young soldier has just returned from his first campaign, and the depth of the devotion of Lady Castlewood is for the first time quite revealed to him. "To be rich" (says this cynic of yours), to be famous? What do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? Only true love lives after you-follows your memory with secret blessings—or precedes and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar-if dying I shall yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me."

And this is the man who is set down as nothing but a grumbler, a "modern Diogenes," a sceptical Montaigne.

To find the good and true in life, one must believe heartily in both. Men who shut up their own hearts in cynicism are apt to freeze the fountains of human love and generosity in others. Mr. Thackeray, despite the carping of critics, has found his way to men's hearts and minds, and is helping (is he not?) to make them more humble, more simple, and more sincere, than they would have been but for "Vanity Fair" and the "Book of Snobs." A healthier casuist it would be hard to find in the whole range of popular literature.

SC.