positively disgusting to some, they are undoubtedly and largely popular. After "Vanity Fair," except in "Esmond" he contented himself (at the bidding of Life again) with the most ordinary incident; he never attempted bizarre or ornate style, elaborate pictorial descriptions, insinuation or proclamation of problems, meddling with topics or fashions of the day, or any other tricks of what may be called the "fly-paper" kind.

And if, in this way, many people did not find in him what they wanted, the same and many more also did find in him things they did not want and did not understand. The abstract critical objection to the parabases, or addresses to the reader, has always seemed to me utterly unsound and not quite intelligible; but I am fully prepared to acknowledge that there is a large number of people, unpretentious and uncritical, but not contemptible, who are honestly bored, provoked, or otherwise made uncomfortable by them. I never forget the perfectly genuine remark (not to be brushed aside or sneered at) of such a person that "there is too much in Thackeray"-a remark which does not apply merely to these abused digressions. And the "too much" is not in quantity only. I should be prepared to admit that Thackeray is one of the most thoroughly undemocratic of writers, for all his curious political affichage of democratic principles. Although not in the least posing as a superior person himself (he would probably have been found more forgivable, or at least have imposed more, if he had), he is perpetually pointing out to every one of the forty (or is it now fifty?) millions that he is mostly a fool, and if not exactly a rascal, a poor creature as well. Now this is perfectly true; but few there are who like to be told of it, not in the form of pulpit warning or pamphlet abuse-that is not much

minded-but by a cunning process of artistic and inevitable exhibition. He is always hitting people "on the angles of the moral oxygen"-angles which are as sensitive as funny-bones. He is. without being bookish, literary, and you must have something of letters yourself to understand him. He does not, like some famous writers who have sometimes exchanged unpopularity for its opposite, flaunt "obscurity," and so tickle the vanity of those who think they have cleared him up. And yet only an exceedingly superficial reader will find Thackeray superficial. Above all he is, beyond question or cavil, one of the greatest and, except Swift and Fielding, one of the most profuse users and masters of irony. And there is nothing more certain than that not merely the average woman, as is so often said, but, to almost as great an extent, the average man, regards irony with a feeling which is always one of suspicion and discomfort, not unfrequently rising to something that is positive fear and is very like hatred.

All these be truths, and the Devil's Advocate need not adopt his client's favorite weapon of not-truth in order even to add to them. But do they matter? Do they interfere with the canonization, now and for ever, of Thackeray as one of the very greatest of great English writers and (not to be unnecessarily contentious for the present) one of the very greatest of the far smaller body of great English novelists? Never, for a moment! On the head of "writing" in the strict sense, indeed, things have actually improved of late years, as they usually do. A settled estimate of an author in the widest sense may (it has been said) never be reached, and always takes a long time to reach. But it is curious how often styles, which have been denounced as bad by short-sighted or pedantic critics at first appearance, have righted themselves in the eyes of

The

succeeding generations. There is nothing which frightens critics more than novelty or unconventionality of style, but they soon get over it. very censors, nowadays, who have allowed the parrot-cry of "Sentimentality" to take the place with them of the older parrot-cry of "Cynicism" are often good enough to acknowledge that Thackeray could write. But it would hardly be fulfilling the duty of this paper not to go on and inquire what he could write-what his contribution to English novel-writing and English literature is in substance as well as in form.

Something has been said already as to what that contribution was notalways, to fairly logical minds, the readiest way to apprehension if not to comprehension of what it was. But it would be pusillanimous, and in fact absurd, to keep to negatives; and the positive has been already foreshadowed. His contribution was that of the novelist proper; that is to say, the depicting or re-creating of Life by imaginative presentment, but without the embellishments and the intoxication of poetry, or the factitious accessories of the drama, and with something less than the embellishments and accessories of romance, though with something of these also. The art of novelwriting is not old-it is barely at the beginning of its third century, strictly speaking; and already there has fallen, between Thackeray and that one of his predecessors who was most like him in kind and degree of greatness-Fielding-one of those curious veils which Time drops now and then, but at quite uncertain intervals, and through which we can only see darkly, and by a certain effort and calculation. Of the great English dealers with Life through fiction who are this side that veil, Scott, though he is still on the right side of it to all but very poor and unhappy optics, seems to have been

partly entangled in its folds to some, and undoubtedly, pioneer as he was, and dealing as he did mainly with romance itself and with past times, gives only partial play to the actually intimate knowledge of pure Life that he possessed.

Bulwer

our

Miss Austen, almost as absolutely lifelike as Thackeray, has, we are told, her lifelikeness obscured by a partly obsolete style, and she certainly limited and "miniatured" her presentments. pink friend's "greatest living novelist"-did know Life; but he chose to adulterate his knowledge to an intolerable degree with all sorts of conventions, tricks, fashions. Dickens knew it better-in flashes indeed perfectly; but he, again, chose to subordinate his knowledge, itself very partial, to a perpetual glamour of comic or tragic fantasy-not real at all-as well as to worse things, such as political and social prejudice and crotchet, teasing mannerisms of style, hampering disqualifications of literary and other ignorance.

Charles Reade, a genius certainly, never could get that genius into any organic condition, and latterly hampered it and choked it by flinging on and into it masses of superfluous information. Charlotte Brontë, a genius likewise, had too short and cramped an existence, too narrow an experience, too little critical faculty, and perhaps a temper none too genial. George Eliot bound herself to the schools and the systems till she be came little more than a mere eyeless grinder at the mill with scientific slaves. And the late Mr. George Meredith, himself a novelist, be it remembered, of the 'fifties, handed over in no dissimilar way his subtle and eccentric but real life-knowledge as a familiar spirit to jargon and play to coterie-galleries, and subtle cobwebspinning to catch the flies of foolish cleverness. It would be absurd to say

with the poet that in this case as in another

everywhere

The Knights came foiled from the

great quest,

for all these and some others did great things and achieved great adventures. But none of them ever quite mastered the problem, the quest of the novelist proper which is the presentation and criticism, without wandering from it or adding to it, of human Life and character by the way of fiction. Thackeray did. That he saw Life whole is not true. Who has, in the words of the great Platonic conclusion, "except God"? Not Sophocles, certainly; that, with all respect to Mr. Arnold, is absurd. Of even Shakespeare, near as he has come to it, it is well to remember that Dryden (with that critical finger of his which was unerring when he would let it be so) pointed Shakespeare out as "the most comprehensive soul." His universality is comparative, is indeed superlative; but it is not absolute. So, and much more so, there are parts of Life which Thackeray does not touch: large parts, some may say; most interesting parts, others; even the best parts, some. So be it; he was human. But the almost superhuman thing about him is that in nothing that he does touch-after he has attained his majority at least-is he ever unlifelike, as, from different reasons and in different manners, all the great rivals and contemporaries mentioned above are sometimes. No other writer with whom I am acquainted, save Shakespeare himself, and no other novelist at The Bookman.

all, has this infallible and almost divine power of infusing life-life absolute and quintessential-into every human figure that he creates, or that he even touches for a momentary purpose. It is a power which seems specially to be long to ironists-Lucian seems to me to have had more of it than any ancient-yet there is always a danger of their misusing it, as Swift certainly did to some extent. But Thackeray did not. The two parrot-cries above referred to the old cry of "Cynic!" and the new one of "Sentimentalist!"-are actually testimonies to the fact: for those who utter them unconsciously say, "This cynicism, this sentimentalism, touches us too much on the raw— is too true to life, and therefore too contrary to what we should like life to be."

Some people hold that the novel, having come late, will complete the old joke by going early-that it has not, like poetry and drama and romance, deep enough roots to last. I do not know; I am a critic, not a prophet. But, as a critic, I know that the greatest things and persons in literature never die and are never excelled in themselves. And whether the novel goes or stays, I am pretty sure that Thackeray will never lose, with those who can see, his position (with only the limits noted above) as the Master of Life in the creation of novel-character. Periods which themselves allow the absolute to be obscured by the temporary Life may overlook or undervalue him; but Time and Life and he will abide together.

not allowed to interfere with private friendships. Over and over again visitors of other nationalities have expressed to me in the past their surprise

at meeting leading statesmen of opposing parties at the same London dinner-parties; at the obvious friendship existing between men, in the lobbies and smoking-rooms of the House of Commons, who have but recently taken violently different sides in debates within the Chamber; at the curious and remarkable evidences of the esprit de corps which obtains among the rank and file of our representatives even though their political objectives may Idemand the maximum of reciprocal hostility during the actual hours of business. Such an aperçu of our political temperament has certainly been both merited and just during the past generation-a period which has seen the acerbities of party hostility sensibly diminished and the rigid formalities of party address almost universally foregone. It is now quite usual for politesses, of quite other than a perfunctory character, to be exchanged between the two front benches both in the Commons and the Lords; the Leader of the Opposition may indulge without remark in praise of "the lucid and brilliant speech" of his most formidable antagonist; whilst the Prime Minister may return the compliment, and express his full appreciation of "the eminently fair and impartial survey of the situation" just completed by the champion of those who are hourly anxious to sit upon the Government benches, without fear or reproach from his own side. I believe, however, that these friendly habits of speech are of comparatively recent birth, and did not exist in the days of Mr. Disraeli, who once soundly rated a junior supporter for referring to a Liberal as "my honorable friend," and who, when Prime Minister, never dined with a political opponent if he could possibly avoid it. Those were the strenuous days when parties were only two in number and they were sharply separated the one from the other; when political feeling

ran at fever heat through Senate and Salon alike; when the language of the hustings and the lampoons of the tavern were as highly flavored as the ale which accompanied them; when no one thought of referring to the serious tactics of party warfare merely as "playing the game."

Let me note, in passing, how keenly Dr. Creighton, the late Bishop of London, used to resent the use of this last phrase when applied to the real businesses of life, and especially to politics; for, although he admitted that in England adherence to the "rules of the game" was of the essence of our island character, and so gave the words a certain symbolic value when applied elsewhere, yet he shuddered at the possible growth of a triviality of thought which, confusing the greater with the lesser issues of life, might endeavor to attach to all the graver adventures of national existence the importance, not so much of the rules, as of the spirit of a "game."

It seems to me that this attitude of outward carelessness for party ties and formalities is disappearing surely, if not swiftly, as must be the case when men are no longer occupied in debating the details of minor measures, but are engaged in mortal combat for first principles, dear to one side or the other. We have seen something of this change in our social life of the past year or two: we have heard of interrupted friendships, and of society ostracism; and I think that the bitterness of certain contests during the recent elections goes to prove that the electorate is once more ready to fight out its differences according to the sterner canons of the camp, rather than by the amateur regulations of the football field.

But I admit that we have not yet gone so far in this direction that our party fights are already shorn of their gaiety (although our wall posters dur

ing the elections of December last were deplorably free from humor), or that our rival demonstrations have become tame and colorless affairs. No; so long as canvassing is permitted to continue, and "the voice" is still audible at our meetings, so long we may be certain of pleasant oases in the droughty wilderness of an election campaign.

Being myself one of those who cannot count effective canvassing among his natural gifts, this duty is one that seldom falls upon my shoulders; but I envy the good canvasser his or her experiences, which seem only to increase in variety and entertainment as the contest proceeds. It is due to such invaluable supporters that their labors should not go altogether unrecognized, nor the lighter incidents of their unobtrusive vocation pass completely out of sight; wherefore I would respectfully suggest to the literary editors of those weighty tomes known as Election Handbooks or Hints to Canvassers, that they should include in their forthcoming volumes a chapter dealing with the quaint experiences which have befallen their myrmidons in previous campaigns; such an addition would add not only to the sale of their literature, but also to the information of us all. Who, for instance, among the Unionist party is not relieved to know that one of the towns comprised in the Ayr Burghs is irreclaimably Tory? This delectable spot appears to be as conservative in its Toryism as the rest of Scotland seems conservative in its Radicalism. This fact is stated on the authority of an experienced Liberal canvasser, who toiled for days at the dreary work of conversion in the aforesaid town, but without result. He will, I trust, allow me to reproduce this disappointing dialogue:

Canvasser.-Surely you will give us your vote this time, sir? (he said to a

poor man standing at the corner of the street).

Voter.-Na, na; I'm voting Tory, as my faither and grandfaither did before

me.

Canvasser.-But surely you don't want your food taxed, and six hundred peers to dictate to forty millions of people? &c.

Voter.-I dinna ken and I dinna care about thon; my faither and my grandfaither were Tories and I'm a Tory, too.

Canvasser.-Well, I must say that is a most unintelligent answer. If your father and grandfather had been thieves, what would you have been? Voter (pensively).—If my faither had been a thief and my grandfaither had been a thief? (brightening) likely I'd have been a Liberal!

This ancestor-worship flourishes nowhere more than in North Britain, as the following story, which was going the round of the Edinburgh clubs, clearly proves. A certain school inspector noticed that in one class-room a good many of the children were wearing party colors, and he thought he would question them on the point. "Why are you a Liberal?" said he to one boy. "Because my faither is a Liberal," came the prompt reply. "And why are you a Tory?" to another. "My mither sweeps out the Conservative Club," was the answer unabashed.

The use of colors to express a political faith is very confusing; I know of several streets in England which divide constituencies where on one side of the street blue stands for Tory as, on the other side, it implies a Liberal. In these districts the resident does not use the word "color" to denote creed, for fear of misapprehension; a new comer, however, may do so at his own risk, like Mr. X., who was sent to canvass one of those boundary lines. rang the door-bell of a small house, and was answered by a diminutive child, who said that her father was out. "And what 'color' is your father, my dear?"

He