is because we know and respect each other, that the world respects us so much; that we hold such a good position in society, and demean ourselves so irreproachably when there. 66 Literary persons are held in such esteem by the nation, that about two of them have been absolutely invited to Court during the present reign; and it is probable that towards the end of the season, one or two will be asked to dinner by Sir Robert Peel. making them feel neir folly. In good conscience, could she do otherwise? Would it not be on her part a lack of sincerity to affect a gayety which she has not, or a respect which she can not feel? We understand that the poor child is in need of sympathy. When she gave up her dolls, this lov"They are such favourites with the public, ing heart became first enamoured of that they are continually obliged to have their pictures taken and published; and one or two Trenmor, a high-souled convict, the Lould be pointed out, of whom the nation in-fiery Sténio, Prince Djalma, and other sists upon having a fresh portrai: every year Nothing can be more gratifying than this proot of the affectionate regard which the people has for its instructors. "Literature is held in such honour in England, that there is a sum of near twelve hundred pounds per annum set apart to pension leserving persons following that profession. And a great compliment this is, too, to the professors, and a proof of their generally prosperous and flourishing condition. They are generally so rich and thrifty, that scarcely any money is wanted to help them." * We are tempted to make a mistake; and to comprehend this passage, we must remember that, in an aristocraticai and monarchical society, amidst money-worship and adoration of rank, poor and low-born talent is treated as its low-birth and poverty deserve! † What makes these ironies yet stronger, is their length; some are prolonged during a whole tale, like the Fatal Boots. A Frenchman could not keep up a sarcasm so long. It would escape right or left through various emotions; it would change countenance, and not Freserve so fixed an attitude-the mark of such a decided animosity, so calculated and bitter. There are characters which Thackeray develops through three volumes-Blanche Amory, Rebecca Sharp-and of whom he never speaks but with insult; both are base, and he never introduces them without plying them with tendernesses; dear Rebecca ! tender Blanche! The tender Blanche is a sentimental and literary young creature, obliged to live with her parents, who do not understand her. She suffers so much, that she ridicules them aloud before everybody; she is so oppressed by the folly of her mother and father-in-law, that she never omits an opportunity of The Book of Snobs, ch. xvi. ; on Literary Snobs. ↑ Stendhal says: "L'esprit et le génie perdent vingt-cinq pour cent de leur valeur en abordant en Angleterre.' heroes of French novels. Alas, the imaginary world is not sufficient for wounded souls, and to satisfy the crav ing for the ideal, for satiety, the heart at last gives itself up to beings of this world. At eleven years of age Miss Blanche felt tender emotions towards a young Savoyard, an organ-grinder at Paris, whom she persisted in believing to be a prince carried off from his parents; at twelve an old and hideous drawing master had agitated her young heart; at Madame de Carmel's board ing-school a correspondence by letter took place with two young gentlemen of the College Charlemagne. Dear forlorn girl, her delicate feet are already wounded by the briars in her path of life; every day her illusions shed their leaves; in vain she puts them down in verse, in a little book bound in blue velvet, with a clasp of gold, entitled Mes Larmes. In this isolation, what is she to do? She grows enthusiastic over the young ladies whom she meets, feels a magnetic attraction at sight of them, becomes their sister, except that she casts them aside to-morrow like an old dress: we cannot command our feelings, and nothing is more beautiful than the natural. Moreover, as the amiable child has much taste, a lively imagina. tion, a poetic inclination for change, she keeps her maid Pincott at work day and night. Like a delicate person, a genuine dilettante and lover of the beautiful, she scolds her for her heavy eyes and her pale face; you are "Our muse, with the candour which distinguished her, never failed to remind her attendant of the real state of matters. I should send you away, Pincott, for you are a great deal too weak, and your eyes are failing you, and always crying and snivelling, and wanting the doctor; but I wish that your parents at home should be supported, and I go on enduring for their sake, mind,' the dear Blanche would say to her timid little attendant. Or, 'Pincott, sardonic air of the painter, and we conclude that the human race is base and stupid. Other figures less exag gerated, are not more natural. We see that the author throws them ex your w etched appearance and slavish manner, and red eyes, positively give me the migraine; and I think I shall make you wear rouge, so that you may look a little cheerful; or, Pincott, I can't bear, even for the sake of your starving parents, that you should tear my hair out of my head in that manner; and I will thank you to write to them and say that I dis-pressly into palpable follies and markpense with your services.'"* . ed contradictions. Such is Miss Craw This fool of a Pincott does not appre- and a free-thinker, who praises un ley, an old maid, without any morals, ciate her good fortune. Can one be equal marriages, and falls into a fit sad in serving such a superior being as when on the next page her nephew Miss Blanche? How delightful to makes one; who calls Rebecca Sharp furnish her with subjects for her style! her equal, and at the same time bids for, to confess the truth, Miss Blanche her "put some coals on the fire:" has not disdained to write "some who, on learning the departure of her very pretty verses about the lonely favorite, cries with despair, "Gracious little tiring-maid, whose heart was far goodness, and who's to make my chocaway," ""sad exile in a foreign land." olate?" These are comedy scenes, Alas! the slightest event suffices to and not pictures of manners. wound this too sensitive heart. At are twenty such. You see an excellent the least emotion her tears flow, her aunt, Mrs. Hoggarty, of Castle Hog feelings are shaken, like a delicate but-garty, settling down in the house of terfly, crushed as soon as touched. There she goes, aerial, her eyes fixed on heaven, a fairt smile lingering round her rosy lips, a couching sylphide, so consoling to all who surround her, that every one wishes her at the bottom of a well. One step added to serious irony leads us to serious caricature. Here, as before, the author pleads the rights of his neighbor; the only difference is, that he pleads them with too much warmth; it is insult upon insult. Under this head it abounds in Thackeray. Some of his grotesques are outrageous: for instance, M. Alcide de Mirobolant, a French cook, an artist in sauces, who declares his passion to Miss Blanche through the medium of symbolic dishes, and thinks himself a gentleman; Mrs. Major O'Dowd, a sort of female grenadier, the most pompous and talkative of Irishwomen, bent on ruling the regiment, and marrying the bachelors will they nill they; Miss Briggs, an old companion born to receive insults, to make phrases and to shed tears; the Doctor, who proves to his scholars who write bad Greek, that habitual idleness and bad construing lead to the gallows. These calculated deformities only excite a sad smile. We always perceive behind the oddity of the character the These remarks are only to be found in the actavo edition of Pendennis.-TR. There her nephew Titmarsh, throw him into vast expenses, persecute his wife, drive away his friends, make his marriage unhappy. The poor ruined fellow is thrown into prison. She denounces him to the creditors with genuine indignation, and reproaches him with perfect sincerity. The wretch has been his aunt's executioner; she has been dragged by him from her home, tyrannized over by him, robbed by him, outraged by his wife. She writes: "Such waist and extravygance never, never, never did I see. Butter waisted as if it had been dirt, coles flung away, candles burned as both ends;. and now you have the audassaty, being placed in prison justly for your You crimes, for cheating me of £3000. come upon me to pay your detts! No, sir, it is quite enough that your mother should go on the parish, and that your wife should sweep the streets, to which you have indeed brought have some of the com them; I, at least forts to which my rank entitles me. The furni tur in this house is mine; and as I presume you intend your lady to sleep in the streets, I give you warning that I shall remove it all to intended to leave you my intire fortune. I have morrow. Mr. Smithers will tell you that I had this morning, in his presents, solamly toar up my will, and hereby renounce all connection with you and your beggarly family. P. S.-I took a viper into my bosom, and it stung me." finds her match, a pious man, Johr. The History of Samuel Titmarsh and thu Life Insurance Company. This virtuous Christian has sniffed from afar the cheering odor of her lands, houses, stocks, and other landed and personal prope by He pounces upon the fine property of Mrs. Hoggarty, is sorry to see that it only brings that lady four per cent., and resolves to double her income. He calls upon her at her lodgings when her face was shockingly Bwelled and bitten by- never mind what: quirer into manners and countries "Gracious heavens!'shouted John Brough, Esquire, a lady of your rank to suffer in this way!-the excellent relative of my dear boy, Titmarsh! Never, madam-never let it be said that Mrs. Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty should be subject to such horrible humiliation, while John Brough has a home to offer her-a humble, happy Christian home, madam, though unlike, perhaps, the splendour to which you have been accustomed in the course of your distinguished career. Isabella, my love I-Belinda!lery produces so original and biting an speak to Mrs. Hoggarty. Tell her that John Brough's house is hers from garret to cellar. I repeat it, madam, from garret to cellar. I de sire-I insist-I order, that Mrs. Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty's trunks should be placed this instant in my carriage!'"* This style raises a laugh, if you will, but a sad laugh. We have just learned that man is a hypocrite, unjust, tyrannical, blind. In our vexation we turn to the author, and we see on his lips only sarcasms, on his brow only chagrin. V. Let us look carefully; perhaps in less grave matters we shall find subject of genuine laughter. Let us consider, not a rascality, but a misadventure; rascality revolts, a misadventure might amuse. But amusement alone is not here; even in a diversion the satire retains its force, because reflection retains its intensity. There is in English fun a seriousness, an effort, in application that is marvellous, and heir comicalities are composed with as much klowledge as their sermons. The powerful attention decomposes its object in all its parts, and reproduces it with illusive detail and relief. Swift describes the land of speaking horses, the politics of Lilliput, the inventors of the Flying Island, with details as precise and harmonious as an experienced traveller, an exact in The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond, ch. ix. impression, and we will find here the attentive energy as in the foregoing same degree of study and the same ironies and exaggerations: his humor is as reflective as his hatred; he has changed his attitude, not his faculty: self-laudation consumedly; but I can't help re"I am naturally averse to egotism, and hate lating here a circumstance illustrative of the point in question, in which I must think I acted with considerable prudence. Being at Constantinople a few years since -(on a delicate mission)-the Russians were playing a double game, between ourselves, and it became necessary on our part to employ an extra negotiator Leckerbiss Pasha of Roumelia, then Chief Galeongee of the Porte, gave a diplomatic banquet at his summer palace at Bujukdere. I was on the left of the Galeongee; and the Russian agent Count de Diddloff on his dexter side. Diddloff is a dandy who would have me assassinated three times in the course die of a rose in aromatic pain: he had tried to of the negotiation: but of course we were friends in public, and saluted each other in the most cordial and charming manner. string has done for him-a staunch supporter of "The Galeongee is or was, alas! for a bowthe old school of Turka politics. We dined with our fingers, and had flaps of bread for plates; the only innovation he admitted was dulged with great gusto. He was an enor the use of European liquors, in which he inmous eater. Amongst the dishes a very large one was placed before him of a lamb dressed in capsicums, and other cendiments, the most its woo!, stuffed with prunes, garlic, assafoetida, abominable mixture that ever mortal smelt or tasted. The Galeongee ate of this hugely; and, pursuing the Eastern fashion, insisted on helping his friends right and left, and when he came to a particularly spicy morsel, would push it with his own hands into his guests' very mouths. "When it came to my turn, I took down the rondiment with a smile, said Bismillah,' icked my lips with easy gratification, and when the next dish was served, made up a ball myself so dexterously, and popped it down the old Galeongee's mouth with so much grace, that his heart was won. Russia was put out of Court at once, and the treaty of Kabobanople was signed. As for Diddloff, all was over with him, he was recalled to St. Petersburg, and Sir Roderick Murchison saw him, under the No. 3967, working in the Ural mines." The anecdote is evidently authentic; and when De Foe related the apparition of Mrs. Veal, he did not better imitate the style of an authenticated account. "I never shall forget the look of poor Didd-| wood, so good and te der, is enamored loff, when his Excellency, rolling up a large like Amelia, of a drunken and imbecile quantity of this into a ball, and exclaiming, Buk, Buk (it is very good), administered boor; and her wild jealousy, exasper the horrible bolus to Diddloff. The Russian's ated on the slightest suspicion, implaceyes rolled dreadfully as he received it: he able against her husband, giving utterswallowed it with a grimace that I thought must precede a convulsion, and seizing a bottle next ance violently to cruel words, shows him, which he thought was Sauterne, but which tha. her love springs not_from virtue turned out to be French brandy, he drank off but from mood. Helen Pendennis, a rearly a pint before he knew his error. It model mother, is a somewhat silly finished him; he was carried away from the lining-room almost dead, and laid out to cool country prude, of narrow education, in a summer-house on the Bosphorus. jealous also, and having in her jealousy all the harshness of Puritanism and passion. She faints on learning that her son has a mistress: it is "such a sin, such a dreadful sin. I can't bear to think that my boy should commit such a crime. I wish he had died, almost, before he had done it."* Whenever she is spoken to of little Fanny, "the widow's countenance, always soft and gentle, assumed a cruel and inexorable expression." † Meeting Fanny at the bedside of the sick young man, she drives her away, as if she were a prostitute and a servant. ternal love, in her as in the others, is an incurable blindness: her son is her idol; in her adoration she finds the means of making his lot unbearable, and himself unhappy. As to the love of the men for the women, if we judge from the pictures of the author, we can but feel pity for it, and look on it as ridiculous. At a certain age, according to Thackeray, nature speaks: we meet Somebody; a fool or not, good or bad, we adore her; it is a fever. At the age of six months dogs have their disease; man has his at twenty. If a man loves, it is not because the lady is lovable, but because it is his nature so to do. "Do you suppose you would drink if you were not thirsty, or eat if you were not hungry?"‡ VI. Such attentive reflection is a source of sadness. To amuse ourselves with human passions, we must consider them as inquisitive men, like shifting puppets, or as learned men, like regulated wheels, or as artists, like powerful springs. If we only consider them as virtuous or vicious, our lost illusions will enchain us in gloomy thoughts, and we will find in man only weakness and ugliness. This is why Thackeray depreciates our whole nature. He does as a novelist what Hobbes does as a philosopher. Almost everywhere, when he describes fine sentiments, he derives them from an ugly source. Tenderness, kindness, love, are in his characters the effect of the nerves, of instinct, or of a moral disease. Amelia Sedley, his favorite, and one of his masterpieces, is a poor little woman, snivelling, incapable of reflection and decision, blind, a superstitious adorer of a coarse and selfish husband, always sacrificed by her own will and fault, whose love is made up of folly and weakness, often unjust, accustomed to see falsely, and more worthy of compassion than respect. Lady Castle *The Book of Snøbs, ch. i. ; The Snob playfully dea: with. Ma He ex He relates the history of this hunger and thirst with a bitter vigor. He seems like an intoxicated man grown sober, railing at drunkenness. plains at length, in a half sarcastic tone, the follies which Major Dobbin com mits for the sake of Amelia; how the Major buys bad wines from her father; how he tells the postillions to make haste, how he rouses the servants, persecutes his friends, to see Amelia more quickly; how, after ten years of sacri *Pendennis, ch. liv. Ibid. ch. ii. ↑ Ibid. ch. H In an vice of his age and his country aristocratical and commercial society, this vice is selfishness and pride! Thackeray therefore extols sweetness and tenderness. Let love and kindness be blind, instinctive, unreasoning, ridiculous, it matters little: such as they are, he adores them; and there is no more singular contrast than that of his heroes and of his admiration. He creates foolish women, and kneels be fore them; the artist within him con fice, tenderness, and service, he sees that he is held second to an old portrait of a faithless, coarse, selfish, and dead husband. The saddest of these accounts is that of the first love of Pendennis-Miss Fotheringay, the actress, whom he loves, a matter-of-fact person, a good housekeeper, who has the mind and education of a kitchen-maid. She speaks to the young man of the fine weather, and the pie she has just been making Pendennis discovers in these wo phrases a wonderful depth of in-tradicts the commentator: the first tellect and a superhuman majesty of devotion. He asks Miss Fotheringay, who has just been playing Ophelia, if the latter loved Hamlet. Miss Fotheringay answers: "In love with such a little ojous wretch as that stunted manager of a Bingley?' She bristled with indignation at the thought. Pen explained it was not of her he spoke, but of Ophelia of the play. 'Oh, indeed; if no offence was meant, none was taken: but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him-not that glass of punch.' Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. "Kotzebue? who was he?' 'The author of the play in which she had been performing so admirably.' 'She did not know that-the man's name at the beginning of the book was Thompson,' she said. Pen laughed at her adorable simplicity." "How beautiful she is,' thought Pen, cantering homewards. 'Pendennis, Pendennishow she spoke the word! Emily, Emily! how good, how noble, how beautiful, how perfect she is!""* The first volume runs wholly upon this contrast; it seems as though Thackeray says to his reader: "My dear brothers in humanity, we are rascals forty-nine days in fifty; in the fiftieth, if we escape pride, vanity, wickedness, selfishness, it is because we fall into a hot fever: our folly causes our devotion." VII. Yet, short of being Swift, a man must love something; he cannot always be wounding and destroying; and the heart, wearied of scorn and hate, needs repose in praise and tenderness. Moreover, to blame a fault is to laud the contrary quality; and a man cannot sacrifice a victim without raising an altar it is circumstance which fixes on the one, and which builds up the other; and the moralist who combats the dominant vice of his country and his age. preaches the virtue contrary to the * Pendennis, ch. v. on is ironical, the second laudatory; the first represents the pettiness of love, the second writes its panegyric; the top of the page is a satire in action, the bottom is a dithyramb in periods. The compliments which he lavishes Amelia Sedley, Helen Pendennis, Laura, are infinite; no author ever more visibly and incessantly paid court to his female creations; he sacrifices his male creations to them, not once. but a hundred times: 66 Very likely female pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of their young ones: it is certain that women do. There must be some sort of pleasure which we men don't understand, which accompanies the pain of being sacrificed.* . . . Do not let us men despise these instincts because we cannot fee them. These women were made for our com fort and delectation, gentlemen, with all the rest of the minor animals.... Be it for a reckless husband, a dissipated son, a darling scapegrace of a brother, how ready their hearts benefit of the cherished person; and what a are to pour out their best treasures for the deal of this sort of enjoyment are we, on our side, ready to give the soft creatures! There istered pleasure in that fashion to his womanis scarce a man that reads this, but has admin. kind, and has treated them to the luxury of for giving him." + When he enters the room of a good mother, or of a young honest girl, he casts down his eyes as on the threshold of a sanctuary. In the presence of Laura resigned, pious, he checks him self: "And as that duty was performed quite noiselessly-while the supplications which en dowed her with the requisite strength for fulfilling it, also took place in her own chamber, away from all mortal sight, we, too, must be perforce silent about these virtues of hers, which no more bear public talking about than a flower will bear to bloom in a ball-room."§ Pendennis, ch. xxi. This passage is only found in the octavo edition.-T. t Ibid. ch. xxi. Ibid. ch. xxi. These words are only found in the octavo edition.-TR. Ibid. ch. li. |