WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

NOTWITHSTANDING the assertion of Pope, that the life of a wit is a warfare upon earth, there are examples of wits who have lived as quietly as other people. The author of 'Vanity Fair' was one of them. His life was quiet and uneventful, although he held a very high place amongst the wits of his time. The personal career of William Makepeace Thackeray was simply that of a private gentleman, emphatically marked by the special characteristics which are popularly understood to distinguish the English variety of the species. His biography yields no materials out of which the most lively imagination could manufacture a striking narrative. The action of the life-drama of which he was the hero is entirely mental; and if it be asked what manner of man he was, and wherein lay the difference between him and the crowds of educated and intelligent gentlemen who, like him, have passed through the usual curriculum of the university, the clubs, and the salons, and who, when he had attained celebrity, still haunt the shadowy places in society, the inquirer must simply be referred to his writings.

To the bleak wolds of Yorkshire contemporary biographers have traced the family from which William Makepeace Thackeray was descended. His great-grandfather was Dr. Thackeray, Head Master of Harrow School, an excellent scholar, who is best known and remembered as having introduced at Harrow the Eton system; his epitaph was written by his pupil, Dr. Parr. There are numerous descendants of Dr. Thackeray in the Church and in the Indian Service, and traces of the influence of his family connections are found in many of the writings of the subject of this memoir.

Thackeray's father, and his grandfather before him, held civil appointments in India, and the novelist was born at Calcutta in 1811. India, however, had no further claim upon him than that of having given him birth. He was bred and trained under English skies, receiving the rudiments of his education at the Charterhouse, which was then presided over by the late Dr. Russell, who had the honour of launching into the world several pupils who ultimately won their spurs in different walks of life. Mr. Thackeray afterwards went to Cambridge; but at the end of two years he left the University without taking out a degree.

The literary foundations which were thus laid do not appear to have exercised much influence over his early tastes, or to have guided him in the choice of a pursuit. Art, and not literature, was the mistress to whom he offered up his first love. His ambition was to become a painter. He resembled Hazlitt in this particular, that his passion lay in one direction, and his power in another. But there the comparison ends. Hazlitt failed; and Thackeray gave abundant evidence of a faculty for art which, with perseverance, must have achieved success. He was so much in earnest about it upon leaving the University that he made a tour to Italy, and to Rome, where for some time he led the most delightful of all lives, known only to the enthusiastic student who, with easy resources at his command, is master of sufficient leisure to enable him to dream away whole days in the studios, listening to the talk of artists, and watching the canvas growing into life under their hands.

That luxury of thoughtful idleness, in which fancy builds up a future never destined to be realized, was of short duration, Rome was exchanged for London, and the palette was abandoned for the pen. How this transition came to pass is of less moment than the fact that the embryo artist had now become an author, and that, instead of following the course to which his inclination led him in the first instance, he occupied himself in working out the new vein which he had subsequently discovered, most probably by

accident.

The early labours of men who have finally achieved distinction, present obvious materials for critical speculation, but they can seldom be traced with certainty. The difficulty is greatest in the case of writers who, like Mr. Thackeray, began in the journals,

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and who had long contributed to periodical literature before they obtained a reputation which made it worth their while to count up their fugitive productions. It is by no means unlikely that heaps of articles may have been published by Mr. Thackeray in the commencement of his literary life, which he himself forgot, and which, from the nature of the form which they took, will never be recovered. He is said to have been a writer in the 'Times' when that journal was under the editorship of Barnes; and at a later period he was a constant contributor to the 'Chronicle,' before the traditions of the age of Perry had quite passed away. Of these contributions we know little, except that they embraced a wide variety of subjects, and that criticisms on books and elaborate essays on art were mingled with leading articles on society and politics.

It was in Fraser's Magazine' that, under the pseudonym of 'Michael Angelo Titmarsh,' the author of 'Vanity Fair' first became a recognized power in periodical literature. The power was not of a kind that always succeeded in conciliating the good-will of the reader. The papers of Michael Angelo Titmarsh were tinged with what seemed a sinister spirit of sarcasm, which gave great offence in some quarters. But everybody acknowledged the originality and, so to speak, depth of their humour; while a better knowledge of the writer, and the fuller development of his genius, enables us now to discover in the quips and cranks of Mr. Titmarsh a wiser purpose and a kindlier intention than anybody was then disposed to give him credit for.

To that period belong several volumes of travels, embracing Ireland, France, and the East, and written in a vein as unlike any other book of travels, as travels are unlike epic poems. The paramount interest of such works as the 'Paris Sketch-book,' the 'Irish Sketch-book,' and the Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo,' arises from the circumstance that they could not have been written by any one else, and that they bear the visible impress of their authorship. Marked by a keen insight into character, a quick appreciation of the ridiculous, and a humour at once subtle and brilliant, they are by no means of equal merit, nor are they sustained at an equal height throughout. But, although we could not have predicted from any of them the series of famous works by which they have been succeeded, it is easy to perceive in them the germs of something higher than themselves. Mr. Thackeray

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seemed at this time to be playing with his resources, and to be pruning his wings for higher flights. His contributions to 'Punch' were more or less preparatory exercises; and the 'Snob Papers,' 'Jeames's Diary,' and the 'Fat Contributor,' may be regarded, like the Kickleburys on the Rhine,' and other sketches from life, as rough studies for the larger pictures that were to be afterwards executed by the maturer judgment of the experienced artist.

The opening number of 'Vanity Fair' appeared in 1846. It is said to have been rejected by the first publisher to whose opinion it was submitted; but it soon had its revenge in full. The town felt that there was a capable hand in its pages before it had run into its third number, and six months had not elapsed when the author took his place amongst the foremost novelists, not of our day alone, but of our language. The progress of the work gradually unfolded a greater variety of powers than had been previously combined in a story of modern life, and Waterloo divided the applause of the critics with Becky Sharpe and the dens of fashionable life. The severity of the satire in Vanity Fair,' and in all the subsequent novels by the same author, is vindicated by its justice. Nor is there any more conclusive test of the effect left by these works upon the public mind than the fact that Mr. Thackeray was familiarly known in his own generation not as the "Great Satirist," but as the "Great Novelist."

son.

'Pendennis' succeeded Vanity Fair,' but cannot be said to have reached its excellence. Comparisons of this kind, however, involve questions of taste very difficult of decision; and, in spite of abstract canons of criticism, readers will be found who maintain predilections for which they cannot render a satisfactory reaUpon the merits of the next novel, Esmond,' nearly all classes of readers are agreed. Even they who hate Beatrix, and do not like the complexion of the narrative, and who think that the structure is a mere piece of affectation, like a modern young lady dressed up in stiff brocade and Elizabethan lace, are compelled to admit that the English is pure and idiomatic. In this respect Esmond' is a remarkable and instructive work; it stands apart, in our time, for the beauty of its diction. Mr. Thackeray's style unites many of the highest excellences of our best writers, and it is shown in its perfection in Esmond,'-strength, ease, and simplicity are amongst its conspicuous qualities; there is no