in remembering France, and the thought of Desseins' hostelry evokes a sympathetic memory not only of his own youth, but of Sterne, Brummel, and other birds. of passage, who in days of yore sojourned at Calais. The Roundabout Papers, in brief, show the best side of Thackeray, and suggest, that though Thackeray could not refrain from essay-writing even in his novels, how brilliant an essayist was lost in the author of Vanity Fair.

Edward FitzGerald noted as a characteristic of these last papers a quick sensitiveness to adverse criticism -a nervous resentment against the misunderstanding of foolish persons. It is not only that Thackeray administers—in an essay On Screens in Dining-Rooms -a well-deserved castigation to Edmund Yates, whom he invites to "put up your note-book; walk out of the hall; and leave gentlemen alone who would be private, and wish you no harm"; he displays an inclination to take offence, which was alien to his nature. This FitzGerald attributed to ill-health; and it is true that his friends had observed a recurring fatigue. Yet again and again he rallied, and for a while anxiety was dispelled. The respite was not for long; his work was done; towards the end of the year 1863 he was gravely ill; and on the morning of Christmas Eve he died without pain or warning. Of death he had no fear: in Mrs Ritchie's words, "he was not sorry to go." He had faced the end before with an easy mind and a confident trust. "Those we love can Q

but walk down to the pier with us"—he had written some years before to Mrs Proctor-" the voyage we must make alone. Except for the young or very happy, I cannot say I'm sorry for any one who dies." Not only did he look upon death with composure; he could contemplate with satisfaction twenty years of unremitting toil, and reflect that he had built his own monument. Death, then, had less regret for its victim than for his friends. He was mourned by thousands, who knew him only by his works, as well as by those whom intimacy permitted to understand their loss. FitzGerald (the oldest, most faithful of his friends, yet one of how many!) sat moping about him in his "suburb grange," and reading his books, and thinking he would "hear his step up the stairs to this Lodging as in old Charlotte Street thirty years ago." without doubt or question we may echo FitzGerald's informal epitaph: "a great Figure has sunk under Earth."

And

243

CHAPTER IX.

THE WRITER AND THE MAN.1

His

THACKERAY Possessed in a greater measure than any other English writer the style coulant, which Baudelaire ascribed in dispraise to George Sand. His words flow like snow-water upon the mountain-side. He could no more restrain the current of his prose than a gentle slope could turn a rivulet back upon its course. sentences dash one over the other in an often aimless succession, as though impelled by a force independent of their author. The style, as employed by Thackeray, has its obvious qualities and defects. It is so easy that it may be followed by the idlest reader, who willingly applies to literature the test of conversation. The thread of argument or of character is so loosely held that it need not elude a half-awakened attention.

1 In this last chapter I propose to regather the threads, to resume as briefly as may be the traits, which mark Thackeray off from his fellows both as a writer and as a man. Much has been said in the preceding chapters on those subjects, and I may perhaps be forgiven if, for the sake of completeness, I am now and again guilty of repetition.

On the other hand, the style must needs be at times inaccurate and undistinguished. The solecisms of which he is guilty, and they are not few, may readily be forgiven. It is more difficult to pardon the frequent lack of distinction, especially as in Esmond Thackeray proved that he could write, if he would, with perfect artistry. But the method of his more familiar books seems the result less of artifice than

of temperament. He seldom gives you the impression that he has studied to produce a certain effect. An effect is there, of course, facile and various, but beyond his management. He is so little conscious of his craft that he rarely arrives at the right phrase, thus presenting an obvious contrast to Disraeli, who, often careless in composition, yet sowed his pages with pearls of speech which time cannot dim. But how little do we take away from the most of Thackeray beyond a general impression of gentlemanly ease!

From this it follows that he possessed no economy of speech. He never used one word, if a page and a half could adequately express the meaning; and at all save his high moments you miss a controlling hand, a settled purpose. Nor is this remarkable, when you recall the shifts and starts in which he did his work. He was of those who write better anywhere than in their own house. He would carry his unfinished manuscript to Greenwich with him, and write a chapter after dinner, or he would go off to Paris, and compose as he went. "I should never be at home," he told

Elwin, "if I could help it. . . . I write less at home than anywhere. I did not write ten pages of The Newcomes in that house at Brompton.

This

-meaning a hotel "is the best place to work in." While Thackeray left the words to look after themselves, he confesses himself the humble slave of his own characters. "Once created," said he, "they lead me, and I follow where they direct." He devised his actors as by instinct, and without realising the full meaning of the drama in which they played their part. "I have no idea where it all comes from," he told Elwin. "I have never seen the people I describe, nor heard the conversations I put down. I am often astonished myself to read it when I have got it on paper." It is not strange, therefore, that he regarded the personages in his own dramas as quite outside himself. "I have been surprised," says he, "at

It

the observations made by some of my characters. seems as if an occult power was moving the pen." And it was precisely this externality which linked Thackeray and his characters in the bonds of acquaintance. Had they been the deliberate and conscious creations of his brain, they would have been at once more and less familiar to him. He would have remembered precisely where the strings lay which pulled the figures; but he could not have said, "I know the people utterly-I know the sound of their voices." He would not have seen Philip Firmin in a chance visitor; he would not have recognised the drunken swagger