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tains and brocade curtains, gilt cages with paroquets | having meant to represent him as a hero, but " only and love-birds, two squealing cockatoos, each outsquealing and out-chattering the other; a clock singing tunes on a console-table, and another booming the hours like Great Tom, on the mantel-piece-there was, in a word, everything that comfort could desire, and the most elegant taste devise. A London drawingroom, fitted up without regard to expense, is surely one of the noblest and most curious sights of the present day.-Pendennis, vol. i., pp. 371, 372.

On the whole it may be said that, while there are few things that Mr. Thackeray can do in the way of description which Mr. Dickens could not also do, there is a large region of objects and appearances familiar to the artistic activity of Mr. Dickens, where Mr. Thackeray would not find himself at home. And as Mr. Dickens' artistic range is thus wider than that of Mr. Thackeray, so also is his style of art the more elevated. Thackeray is essentially an artist of the real school; he belongs to what, in painting, would be called the school of low art. All that he portrays-scenes as well as characters-is within the limits, and rigidly true to the features, of real existence. In this lies his particular merit; and, like Wilkie, he would probably fail, if, hankering after a reputation in high art, he were to prove untrue to his special faculty as a delineator of actual life. Dickens, on the other hand, works more in the ideal. It is nonsense to say of his characters generally, intending the observation for praise, that they are lifelike. They are nothing of the kind. Not only are his serious or tragic creations-his Old Humphreys, his Maypole Hughs, his little Nells, &c.persons of romance; but even his comic or satiric portraitures do not come within the strict bounds of the real. There never was a real Mr. Pickwick, a real Sam Weller, a real Mrs. Nickleby, a real Quilp, a real Micawber, a real Uriah Heep, or a real Toots, in the same accurate sense that there has been or might be a real Major Pendennis, a real Captain Costigan, a real Becky, a real Sir Pitt Crawley, and a real Mr. Foker. Nature may, indeed, have furnished hints of Wellers and Pickwicks, may have scattered the germs or indications of such odd fishes abroad; and, having once added such characters to our gallery of fictitious portraits, we cannot move a step in actual life without stumbling upon individuals to whom they will apply most aptly as nicknames-good-humored, bald-headed old gentlemen, who remind us of Pickwick; careless, easy spendthrifts of the Micawber type; fawning rascals of the Heep species; or bashful young gentlemen like Toots. But, at most, those characters are real only thus far, that they are transcendental renderings of certain hints furnished by nature. Seizing the notion of some oddity as seen in the real world, Mr. Dickens has run away with it into a kind of outer or ideal region, there to play with it and work it out at leisure as extravagantly as he might choose, without the least impediment from any facts except those of his own story. One result of this method is, that his characters do not present the mixture of good and bad in the same proportions as we find in nature. Some of his characters are thoroughly and ideally perfect; others are thoroughly and ideally detestable; and even in those where he has intended a mingled impression, vice and virtue are blended in a purely ideal manner. It is different with Mr. Thackeray. The last words of his " Pendennis" are a petition for the charity of his readers in behalf of the principal personage of the story, on the ground that not

as a man and a brother," he has exposed his foibles
rather too freely. So, also, in almost all his other
characters his study seems to be to give the good
and the bad together, in very nearly the same pro-
portions that the cunning apothecary, Nature her-
self, uses. Now, while, according to Mr. Thack-
eray's style of art, this is perfectly proper, it does
not follow that Mr. Dickens' method is wrong.
The characters of Shakspeare are not, in any
common sense, life-like. They are not portraits
of existing men and women, though doubtless there
are splendid specimens even of this kind of art
among them; they are grand hyperbolic beings,
created by the breath of the poet himself out of
hints taken from all that is most sublime in nature;
they are humanity caught, as it were, and kept per-
manent in its highest and extremest mood, nay,
carried forth and compelled to think, speak, and act
in conditions superior to that mood. As in Greek
tragedy, the character that an artist of the higher
or poetical school is expected to bring before us, is
not, and never was meant to be, a puny
man and
brother," resembling ourselves in his virtues and
his foibles, but an ancestor and a demigod, large,
superb and unapproachable. Art is called Art,
says Goethe, precisely because it is not Nature;
and even such a department of art as the modern
novel is entitled to the benefit of this maxim.
While, therefore, in Mr. Thackeray's style of
delineation, the just ground of praise is, as he
claims it to be, the verisimilitude of the fictions, it
would be no fair ground of blame against Mr.
Dickens, in his style of delineation, to say that his
fictions are hyperbolic. A truer accusation against
him, in this respect, would be that, in the exercise
of the right of hyperbole, he does not always pre-
serve harmony; that, in his romantic creations, he
sometimes falls into the extravagant, and, in his
comic creations, sometimes into the grotesque.

66

But, while Mr. Dickens is both more extensive in the range, and more poetic in the style of his art than Mr. Thackeray, the latter is, perhaps, within his own range and in his own style, the more careful artist. His stroke is truer and surer, and his attention to finish greater. This may be, in part, owing to the fact that Mr. Thackeray can handle the pencil as well as the pen. Being the illustrator of his own works, and accustomed, therefore, to reduce his fancies to visible form and outline, he attains, in the result, greater clearness and precision, than one who works only in language, or who has to get his fancies made visible to himself by the pencil of another. Apart, however, from the real talent with which Mr. Thackeray illustrates his pages, it may be cited as a proof of the distinctness with which he conceives what he writes, that the names of his characters are almost always excellent. Mr. Dickens has always been thought particularly happy in this respect; we are not sure, however, that Mr. Thackeray does not sometimes surpass him. Dr. Slocum, Miss Mactoddy, the Scotch surgeon Glowry, Jeames the footman-these and such-like names, which Mr. Thackeray seems to throw off with such ease, that he lavishes them even on his incidental and minor characters-are, in themselves, positive bits of humor.

It is by the originality and interest of its characters that a novel is chiefly judged. And certainly it is a high privilege, that which the novelist possesses, of calling into existence new imaginary beings; of adding, as it were, to that population

we should hesitate, in the one case, between Mr. Peggoty and the child-wife, in the other, between Major Pendennis and George Warrington; but, in the end, allowing ourselves to be swayed by sentimental liking, we should probably decide for the child-wife and Warrington. The former is an exquisite and most touching conception, such as Mr. Dickens has hardly equalled before; the latter is a perfectly original addition to our gallery of fictitious portraits, and is especially interesting as being a nearer approach than Mr. Thackeray had before favored us with, to an exhibition of his serious beau idéal of a man. We are great admirers of the "stunning Warrington."

of aërial men and women, the offspring of past genius, which hovers over the heads of the actual population of the world. Into this respectable company of invisibles, the eldest and most august members of which are the Achilleses, the Theseuses, the Helens, and the Edipuses of ancient mythus; the middle-aged and now most influential members of which are the Hamlets, the Falstaffs, the Panurges, the Fausts, and the Manfreds of later European invention; and the youngest and least serious members of which (the Scotch element here predominating) are the Meg Merrilises, the Nicol Jarvies, the Cuddie Headriggs, and the Sandy Mackayes of the modern tale-writers-two flights of new creatures take wing from the volumes But, after all, it is by the moral spirit and sentibefore us. In a Pantheon already so multitudinous, ment of a work of fiction, by that unity of view the new comers run no small risk of being soon lost and aim which pervades it, and which is the result in the throng; for a while, however, they will be of all the author's natural convictions and endowremembered at our firesides, and invoked as minis- ments, all his experience of life, and all his intellecters of harmless enjoyment. First, with the gentle tual conclusions on questions great and little--it is and dreamy David Copperfield at its head, comes a by this that the worth of a work of fiction, and its train of figures such as Dickens loves to draw-title to an honorable place in literature, ought Steerforth, the handsome, the brave, the selfish, ultimately to be tried. Even the consideration of whose awful end is told with such tragic terror; artistic merit will be found ultimately to be inMr. Peggoty the elder, who appears in the begin- volved in this. The characters and scenes of a ning of the story only as a hearty Yarmouth novelist, and the mode in which he evolves his plot fisherman, but becomes absolutely heroic ere the from the commencement to the catastrophe, are but close; the three other Peggotys, honest inarticulate the special means by which, in his particular craft, Ham, poor lost little Em ly, and Peggoty of the it is allowed him to explain his beliefs and philosobuttons; the affectionate broken-spirited Mrs. Cop-phy. Whether he does so consciously or unconperfield, with her tormentors, the Murdstones; the sciously, whether he boasts of his philosophic active aunt, Betsy Trotwood, with her ward, Mr. purpose, or scouts the idea of having such a purDick; the inimitable Micawber family; the good, pose, it is all the same. It remains for us, thereabsurd Traddles; the dying child-wife Dora, and fore to go somewhat deeper than we have hitherto her successor Agnes; Rosa Dartle, the fierce, the done, in our discrimination of the spirit of Thackfiendish, with the scar on her lip; the "willin'' eray's, as compared with the spirit of Dickens' Barkis, the "lone lorn" Mrs. Gummidge, the writings. Here also "Pendennis" and " Copper"'umble" Heep, the "respectable" Littimer, and field" shall form the chief ground of our remarks. very many more. Surrounding the vain and clever Into this important question, as between the two Mr. Arthur Pendennis, on the other hand, comes a novelists, the public has already preceded us. Go group quite different, and quite Thackeristic-the into any circle where literary talk is common, or fine, firm, worldly old Major; the pious, fond Mrs. take up any popular critical periodical, and the Pendennis, and the high-spirited Laura; the Foth-same invariable dictum will meet you that Dickeringay, stupid, yet a glorious actress; her father, ens is the more genial, cheerful, kindly, and sentithe maudlin, tipsy reprobate, Captain Costigan; mental, and Thackeray the more harsh, acrid, the Clavering family, with that repetition of Becky, pungent, and satirical writer. This is said everythe syren Blanche Amory; the all-accomplished where. Sometimes the criticism even takes the Chevalier Strong; Monsieur Mirobolant, the French form of partisanship. We have known amiable cook; Pen's friend and Mentor, the manly, rough, persons, and especially ladies, express, with many cynical George Warrington, who was found "drink-admissions of Thackeray's talent, a positive dislike ing beer like a coal-heaver, and yet you could see to him as a writer-grounding this dislike on his he was a gentleman;" shrewd, likeable, little Harry Foker, poor, lonely Bows, the musician; Captain Shandy, the reckless, dissolute man of genius, with his literary attendants, the Finucanes, the Doolans, the Bludyers, and the rest; Bungay, the publisher, and Mrs. Bungay; Morgan, the major's man; Fanny Bolton and Mr. Huxter; Madame Fribsby, the milliner, and minor characters innumerable. A glance even at these mere lists of dramatis persona, will, we think, verify our preceding remarks, and recognize Mr. Dickens as being decidedly the more poetical and ideal, and Mr. Thackeray as being decidedly the more worldlike and real in the style and tendency of his conceptions. For our own part, liking both styles well, we would point out as our favorite characters in the one group, Steerforth, the elder Mr. Peggoty, Mr. Micawber, and the child-wife Dora; and as our favorites in the other, the Major, Captain All this, which was, of course, well known to Costigan, Blanche Amory, and George Warring Mr. Thackeray himself long ago-as witness his Were we required to say which single char-" Kickleburys on the Rhine," where Miss Kickleacter is, to our taste, artistically the best in each, bury calls Mr. Titmarsh a naughty man and

ton.

evident tendency to fasten on the weaknesses and meannesses, rather than on the stronger and nobler traits, of human nature; his delight, for example, in making his readers conceive a rouged old duchess without her wig and false teeth, an elderly Adonis without his padding and stays, or a romantic young lady eating voraciously in her own room. In print, also, we have seen Mr. Thackeray taken to task for his exclusive preaching of the maxim "Humbug everywhere," and his perpetual exhibition of the skeleton that is in every house. On the other hand, there are persons, and ladies too among them, who take Thackeray's part, and prefer his unsparing sarcasm, bracing sense, and keen wit, to what they are pleased to call the sentimentalism of his rival. From what we have observed, however, we should think that Mr. Thackeray's partisans are the fewer in number.

sentences:

positively wicked in his satire, and poor Captain cushioned, for example, on the crimson lining of a Hicks expresses his uneasy sense that the same casket; but it may be as legitimate for another Mr. T. is going to cawickachaw him-has recently artist to display the pearl (display it still artisbeen brought before his notice in a somewhat rous-tically, remember) in its real and native bed-the ing manner. On the publication of the "Kickle- hollow of the opened oyster. As pearls neither burys," there appeared, as every one knows, a grow in crimson caskets, nor get thither by their short review of it in the Times newspaper, in which own exertions, and are yet justly admired when the reviewer, to use the homely phrase employed found there, so it is no valid objection to Mr. in speaking of the matter by one of Mr. Titmarsh's Dickens' writings, in his style of art, that they repfriends, "walked into" the little book and its resent men and women ideally, and as they never author. Here are one or two of the reviewer's existed, or have existed only by flashes and at moments; but, on the other hand, what we require To those who love to hug themselves in a sense of of a writer like Mr. Thackeray is, that, whether in superiority by admeasurement with the most worth- delineating the bad or the good, he shall not exceed less of their species, in their most worthless aspects, he has done so. Abundant as are the rogues, fools, the proportions of the real. Nor do we think that the Kickleburys on the Rhine will afford an agreeable treat, especially as the purveyor of the feast offers his and bores in Mr. Thackeray's fictions, we believe own moments of human weakness as a modest entrée he has kept very nearly the numerical ratio that in this banquet of erring mortality. To our own, Nature herself observes in her supply of such perhaps unphilosophical, taste the aspirations towards individuals; and he imitates Nature, too, in marksentimental perfection of another popular author are ing even his black characters with occasional veins infinitely preferable to these sardonic divings after of white. But he does not paint only rogues, fools, the pearl of truth, whose lustre is eclipsed in the and bores; he paints, also, (though even here he display of the diseased oyster. * *Mr. Thackeray's will give the foibles,) good and amiable characters. pencil is more congenial than his pen. He cannot True, as is frequently said, his amiable characters draw his men and women with their skins off, and, are often sadly silly, and not half so interesting as therefore, the effigies of his characters are pleasanter his bad ones-his Becky, for example, being a to contemplate than the flayed anatomies of the letter-much more attractive person than his Amelia, and

press.

his Blanche Amory carrying off the palm of interest With what merciless wit Mr. Thackeray replied both from Mrs. Pendennis and Laura. Even here, to the attack in the Times, and with what ridicule however, we fear he is not quite unnatural. And he contrived to cover its anonymous author, every- then his Warrington is really a noble fellow! In body knows who is in the habit of keeping up with short, Mr. Thackeray is an excellent artist in his the history of our current literature. Still, we own style; and we should greatly fear that, if he must say that Mr. Thackeray, in his reply, left the were to be foolish enough to change that style, out main charge untouched.. Referring with much of respect to any momentary expression of critical humor and effect to the heavy language of the fore-opinion, and to attempt the finer and dreamier imaggoing sentences, he did not discuss their meaning. He had, probably, good grounds for this. It is not on every trivial occasion that a man is bound to argue on so deep a question as the tendency and structure of his own genius; and in this particular case the matter was made more delicate by the comparison which the reviewer had contrived to involve between Mr. Thackeray and Mr. Dickens: Yet, Mr. Thackeray may depend upon it, this is the kernel of the whole dispute between him and the public. As on many other occasions, the Times has only said tonitruously and from a mountain top what everybody has been saying low down at any rate. Having no reasons to restrain us from saying what we think on the matter, we will express our-way, a writer like Thackeray may do good in selves freely.

inings in which Dickens excels, the result would be as when Wilkie did affect, or as if Hogarth had affected, high ideal art. And why should he do so? There may be one spirit, one general aim towards the increase of good in the world, and yet many instrumentalities, many modes of working. Religion itself, in prescribing the process of moral education, recognizes two methods-that of hanging forth before men fine and noble ideals, which they may contemplate with an enthusiastic melancholy in their private solitude; and that of punishing them sharply, and inflicting on them instant and public shame, for their actual vices. And so, while a writer like Dickens may do good in one

another. Ask the waiters at the London clubs, if Mr. Thackeray's exposition of human nature as manifested in these institutions has not been of some service to them. Probably the reason why many readers do not like Mr. Thackeray's writings is, that they find them too personal in their allusions. So much the better. There are many corners of society, "frae Maidenkirk to John o' Groat's," as well as further south, into which we should like to introduce a wholesome terror of Michael Angelo Titmarsh.

In the first place, then, the question as between "the aspirations after sentimental perfection" of Mr. Dickens, and the "sardonic divings" of Mr. Thackeray, connects itself with what we have been saying as to the styles of the two authors. "Aspiration after sentimental perfection," in other words, the habit of representing objects in an ideal light, is a necessary ingredient in that poetic or romantic style of art which Mr. Dickens practises; and "sardonic diving," as the reviewer expresses it, is quite as necessary an ingredient in Mr. Thackeray's constitution as an artist of the real school. You may prefer the style of Reynolds to the style of Hogarth, if you like, and, if this is all that the reviewer meant, his taste was not necessarily unphilosophical; but you have no right, while admitting both styles of art, to insist that there shall be but one method. It may be proper enough for one artist to exhibit "the pearl of truth" in Kindliness is the first principle of Mr. Dickens' quite ideal circumstances and conditions-pure-philosophy, the sum and substance of his moral

But whence arises this difference between the two writers? Why is Mr. Dickens, on the whole, genial, kindly, and romantic, and Mr. Thackeray, on the whole, caustic, shrewd, and satirical in his fictions? Clearly, the difference must arise from some radical difference in their ways of looking at the world, and in their conclusions as to the business and destinies of men in it.

system. He does not, of course, exclude such | closely resembling that which pervades the ethical things as pain and indignation from his catalogue part of Unitarianism, the essence of which is, that of legitimate existences; indeed, as we have seen, it places a facile disposition at the centre of the few writers are capable of more honest bursts of universe. Now, without here offering any specuindignation against what is glaringly wrong; still, lative or spiritual discussion, which might be in what may be called his speculative ethics, kind- deemed inappropriate, we may venture to say, that liness has the foremost place. His purely doctrinal any man or artist who shall enter upon his sphere protests in favor of this virtue, would, if collected, of activity, without in some way or other realizing fill a little volume. His Christmas books have and holding fast those truths which Puritanism sets been, one and all, fine fantastic sermons on this such store by, and which it has embodied, accordtext; and, in his larger works, passages abound ing to its own grand phraseology, in the words sin, enforcing it. Not being able to lay our hands at wrath, and justice, must necessarily take but half this moment on any passage of this kind in " Cop- the facts of the world along with him, and go perfield," short, and at the same time characteristic, through his task too lightly and nimbly. To exwe avail ourselves of the following from "Barnaby press our meaning in one word, such a man will Rudge." miss out that great and noble element in all that is human-the element of difficulty. And though Mr. Dickens' happy poetic genius suggests to him much that his main ethical doctrine, if it were practically supreme in his mind, would certainly leave out, yet we think we can trace in the peculiar character of his romantic and most merry phantasies something of the want of this element.

Mr. Dickens' Apology for Mirth.—It is some thing even to look upon enjoyment, so that it be free and wild, and in the face of nature, though it is but the enjoyment of an idiot. It is something to know that Heaven has left the capacity of gladness in such a creature's breast; it is something to be assured, that however lightly men may crush that faculty in their fellows, the Great Creator of mankind imparts it Mr. Thackeray being, as we have already hinted, even to his despised and slighted work. Who would less dogmatic in his habits of writing than Mr. not rather see a poor idiot happy in the sunlight, than Dickens, less given to state and argue maxims in a a wise man pining in a darkened jail? Ye men of propositional form, it is not so easy to obtain pasgloom and austerity, who paint the face of Infinite sages from his writings explaining his general Benevolence with an eternal frown, read in the ever-views in the first person. On the whole, however, lasting book, wide open to your view, the lesson it judging from little indications, from the general would teach. Its pictures are not in black and tone of his writings, and from literary analogy, we sombre hues, but bright and glowing tints; its music, should say that he differs from Mr. Dickens in this, save when ye drown it, is not in sighs and groans, but that, instead of clinging to any positive doctrine, songs and cheerful sounds. Listen to the million from the neighborhood of which he might survey voices in the summer air, and find one dismal as your own. Remember, if ye can, the sense of hope and nature and life, he holds his mind in a general state pleasure which every glad return of day awakens in of negation and scepticism. There is in " Pendenthe breast of all your kind, who have not changed their nis" a very interesting chapter, entitled "The Way nature; and learn some wisdom even from the wit- of The World," written after that severe illness less, when their hearts are lifted up, they know not which interrupted the author in the progress of why, by all the mirth and happiness it brings. his work, and threatened to do more, and in which Mr. Thackeray falls into a more serious strain than usual. A long, and almost religious, dialogue takes place between Pen, then in a low moral state, and professing himself a sceptic and pococurante, and his elder friend, Warrington, who retorts his arguments, denounces his conclusions, and tries to rekindle in him faith and enthusiasm. logue is thus wound up :—

The dia

This doctrine, we repeat, is diffused through all Mr. Dickens' writings, and is affirmed again and again in express and very eloquent passages. Now, certainly, there is a fine and lovable spirit in the doctrine; and a man may be borne up by it in his airy imaginings, as Mr. Dickens is, (we might add the name of Mr. Leigh Hunt,) so cheerily and beautifully, that it were a barbarity to demur to it at the moment without serious provocation. Who Pen and Warrington philosophizing.-We are can fail to see that only a benevolent heart, over- not pledging ourselves for the correctness of his flowing with faith in this doctrine, could have (Pen's) opinions, which readers will please to conwritten the "Christmas Chimes," or conceived sider are delivered dramatically, the writer being no those exquisite reminiscences of childhood which uttered by any other character of the story. Our more answerable for them, than for the sentiments delight us in the early pages of " Copperfield?" endeavor is merely to follow out in its progress the But when Mr. Dickens becomes aggressive in be- development of the mind of a worldly and selfish, but half of his doctrine, as he does in the foregoing, not ungenerous or unkind, or truth-avoiding man. and in fifty other passages; when, as Mr. Cobden And it will be seen that the lamentable stage to which is pugnacious for peace, and as some men are said his logic has at present brought him, is one of general to be bigots for toleration, so Mr. Dickens is harsh scepticism, and sneering acquiescence in the world as in behalf of kindliness-then a word of remonstrance it is; or, if you like so to call it, a belief, qualified The tastes and habits seems really necessary. Is the foregoing doctrine, with scorn, in all things extant. then, so axiomatic and absolute that no one may, of such a man prevent him from being a boisterous without moral ugliness of soul, impugn or limit it? demagogue, and his love of truth and dislike of cant For our part, we do not think so. We know men, keep him from advancing crude propositions, such as and very noble men, too, who would not rather see many loud reformers are constantly ready with, much more from uttering downright falsehoods, in arguing a poor idiot happy in the sunlight than a wise man pining in a darkened jail; we know men, and very or starve rather than use. questions or abusing opponents, which he would die It was not in our friend's cheerful men, too, who do not find the pictures of nature to be able to utter certain lies; nor was he the book of nature to be all in bright and glowing strong enough to protest against others, except with tints, nor the sounds of nature to be all pleasant a polite sneer; his maxim being, that he owed obedisongs. In short, in his antipathy to Puritanism, ence to all acts of Parliament, as long as they were Mr. Dickens seems to have adopted a principle not repealed.

a man?

argument. Accordingly, it seems to us, that in this antinomy between Pen and Warrington, we may, without any injustice, discern the main features of the author's own philosophy of life. In other words, it seems to us that there are many parts of Mr. Thackeray's writings in which the spirit of the Pendennis theory may be assumed to predominate; but that, ever and anon, traces of the Warrington spirit are also to be found in them.

And to what does this easy and sceptical life lead | medium of Warrington. When, however, a writer Friend Arthur was a Sadducee, and the is at the pains to represent dramatically both the Baptist might be in the wilderness, shouting to the pro and the con of any question, we may be pretty poor, who were listening with all their might and sure that he has distributed nearly the entire bulk faith to the preacher's awful accents and denuncia-of his own sentiments on it between the two speaktions of wrath or woe or salvation; and our friend, ers to whom he assigns the task of conducting the the Sadducee, would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his terrace, and muse over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek song-book, babbling of honey and Hybla, and nymphs and fountains, and love. To what, we say, does this scepticism lead? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness and selfishness, so to speak-the more shameful because it is so good-humored and conscienceless and serene. Conscience! What is conscience? Why accept remorse? What is public or private faith? Mythuses alike enveloped in enormous tradition. If, seeing and acknowledging the lies of the world, Arthur, as see them you can, with only too fatal a clearness, you submit to them without any protest further than a laugh; if, plunged yourself in easy sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world to pass groaning by you unmoved; if the fight for the truth is taking place, and all men of honor are on the ground, armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on your balcony and smoke your pipe, out of the noise and the danger-you had better have died, or never have been at all, than such a sensual coward.

Pen, in the passage before us, appears as a pococurante and a sceptic. Still honest and kindly, and above any positive meanness, he has sunk, for the time, into a general lowness of the spiritual faculty, the visible form of which is "sneering acquiescence with the world as it is," or rather" a belief, qualified with scorn, in all things extant." But precisely here lies the point. To a man in this state of mind, all the things that do exist are not extant, As his eye sweeps through the universe, it resis by an internal necessity only on the meaner, minuter, and more terrestrial phenomena, which strike by their intense nearness; while the facts of the higher physics fade away into an invisibility, which, like that of the stars by day, passes for non-existence. Beings like Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, may, as the poet sublimely teaches, sing of God's mightier works-of the sun hymning in chorus with his kindred stars, of the fair earth wheeling on her axis, of the storms that rage between land and sea.

"The truth, friend!" Arthur said, imperturbably; "where is the truth? Show it me. That is the question between us. I see it on both sides. I I see it on the conservative side of the house, and amongst the radicals, and even on the ministerial benches. I see it in this man, who worships by act of Parliament, and is rewarded with a silk apron and five thousand a year; in that man, who, driven fatally by the remorseless logic of his creed, gives up everything, They may speak of these things, for these things are friends, fame, dearest ties, closest vanities, the respect of an army of churchmen, the recognized position of a extant to their vision. But let Mephistopheles leader, and passes over, truth-impelled, to the enemy, enter, and how the note is changed! He cannot in whose ranks he will serve henceforth as a nameless talk fine; he cannot gabble of suns and worlds, and private soldier. * Yes, I am a Sadducee, and all that sort of thing! What he sees and can report take things as I find them, and the world, and the upon, is a far more matter-of-fact concern-how acts of Parliament of the world, as they are; and, as men are daily growing more foolish and miserable; I intend to take a wife, if I find one, not to be madly how the little god of earth is still as odd in his ways in love, and prostrate at her feet, like a fool, not to as ever, and is continually getting into some new worship her as an angel, or to expect to find her as such, but to be good-natured to her, and courteous, profundity and more principle, is the spirit of Pen. mess or other! Precisely such, though with less expecting good-nature and pleasant society from her He is, like Mephistopheles, a pococurante. The in turn. And so, George, if ever you hear of my higher things of the world not being extant for him marrying, depend on it, it won't be a romantic attach-he qualifies his belief in all he does see with a ment on my side; and if you hear of any good place under government, I have no particular scruples, that sneer. Suppose, now, this spirit transferred into I know of, which would prevent me from accepting literature; how will it show itself there? In a

your offer."

* *

"O Pen, you scoundrel! I know what you mean," here Warrington broke out. "This is the meaning of your scepticism, of your quietism, of your atheism, my poor fellow. You're going to sell yourself, and Heaven help you! You are going to make a bargain which will degrade you, and make you miserable for life, and there's no use talking of it. If you are once bent on it, the devil won't prevent you."-Pendennis, vol. ii., pp. 236-238.

After Mr. Thackeray's protest that he is not to be held responsible for Pen's opinions, as delivered in the foregoing extract, and in the dialogue which precedes it, we may not, of course, seek his philosophy in these opinions alone. Indeed, we are too thankful to Mr. Thackeray for having had the boldness to introduce so serious a passage at all into a work of popular fiction, to wish to take any unfair advantage of it. But, it will be observed, Mr. Thackeray does not only report Pen's opinions, he also comments on these opinions very gravely in his own name, and he combats them through the

general tone of scoffing; in a disbelief in enthusiasm, or any species of mental exaltation; in a tendency to avoid in one's self, and to turn into ridicule in others, all words or phrases that recognize the diviner truths of existence or the higher developments of mind; in a fondness for scandal and vile social investigations, and in a distaste for the magnificent and the beautiful. What, for example, is Mephistopheles' speech in the presence of the angels, but another version of that of which our modern literature is full-a perpetual tirade against such entities and expressions as (to enumerate a few in different departments) spiritual-mindedness, fervid affection, a Christian life, the transcendental metaphysics, noble aspiration, high art? It would be unjust to say that, even in the least earnest portion of Mr. Thackeray's writings, he exhibits the spirit of scorn to anything like this extent. An admirer of Tennyson-the poet who, most of all men living, represents and would woo back among us, the rare, the religious, and the exquisite-could hardly do this. Still, Mr. Thackeray is not al

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