And the quality of mind which the first pages of "Tom Jones" reveal determines, not only the exact depth of the author's mind, but the mind of the English novel ever since. We are at once confronted by a good-natured shallow optimism which would convince us that, on the whole, everything is for the best, that if we are not rich it is probably our own fault, that we certainly will be rich some day if we are industrious. Meanwhile there is the prosperity of others to admire. This is Fielding's outlook, and immediately the worldly possessions of Mr. Allworth afford him the liveliest satisfaction. He admires the house and ground, thinking how much they cost, and the assumption that Mr. Allworth is the most virtuous of men, since he owns such a handsome property, is not far distant. Indeed, one of the charms of the book is the author's unbiassed faith in his own jovial materialism; his jovial optimism seems part of the big bounding style; it bounces along like a brig in a brisk breeze, and for a while, until the moral void of the narrative begins to be perceived, it is almost a physical pleasure to read. So free and so fluent is the narrative, that the reader may say, indeed he should say, that any pupil, whether of Tolstoi, Flaubert, or Balzac, may take a lesson from Fielding in taletelling. But having said so much, he should beware of saying more. Adventitiously he will be encouraged to praise, for he will certainly remember Thackeray's often quoted appreciation, "That since Fielding no one had painted the portrait of a man." Since he remembers it, I would have him consider this saying in relation to what he is reading. I would have him ask himself if he learns any more about Tom Jones from the text than that he was not wanting in physical courage, and that he liked wenches; and then, if the portrayal of these two qualities is sufficient to constitute a portrait of a man? If so, a man differs no wise from a bull-terrier. Man may be better, or he may be much worse; but he cannot be the same as a bullterrier, and for the not insufficient reason that he happens to be a man. However this may be contested, it does not seem to have struck Fielding when he created, or Thackeray when he criticised the creation, that to differentiate Tom Jones from the pure dog it was necessary to endow him with a conscience. For the purpose of this argument it is not necessary that we

should attach any further meaning to the word conscience than the complexity occasioned in the instincts by the intelligence. And as this complexity is man, it does not seem to be unduly exacting to ask that a portrait of a man should include a conscience, a morality or an immorality. As Fielding's portrait stands it signifies, not a man, but a bull-terrier masquerading in the guise of a man.

Of Squire Western it is not necessary to say much. The reader will easily perceive that the Squire represents no moral quality whatever; he merely likes hunting and drink, oaths are his habit of speech, and, like Gilray's caricatures, he admirably illustrates the life of the time. Sophia, the heroine, is a white sheet of paper bearing this inscription: A virtuous young lady, admirably brought up, and, therefore, innocent of passions, tastes, or prejudices. Lady Bellaston is the only well-known character in fiction about whom nothing is known. She is Lady Bellaston, and she took Tom Jones into the dining-room.

When man wandered the world a solitary animal, he composed sun and nature myths; as man acquired knowledge through reflection and observation of his own nature, he recomposed the already ancient myths, introducing into them a vague likeness of human passion; as man's knowledge of man grew still more precise, he wrote stories about men and womenmen and women who had done great deeds. So between the Greek and Elizabethan dramatists the difference is one of form: in intention Hamlet and Orestes are the same. But there is nothing in Fielding and Thackeray which recalls Shakepeare or Marlowe; the similarity, however, between Lear and the Père Goriot is proverbial. We cannot read Tourgueneff and not think of the perfect simplicities of antiquity, nor Tolstoi and not think of the splendid fecundity of Michael Angelo. If you would have an illustration from Ireland, I point to Goldsmith's Vicar, which is surely a part of the great tradition, at least nearer to it than anything in Dickens or Eliot. It was in the last two hundred years that the great change in Saxon literature came about, and the dates coincide with England's great commercial prosperity. Shall we then seek the reasons of the change in ease and comfort of

living, and in preoccupation of material advancement, or in the enormous increase in population? Shall we say that man cannot imagine heroic incarnations of the passions when he is always watching the habits of his next-door neighbours?

We read of violent ends in the newspapers, so we do not doubt that the passions are the same now as ever they were; but from much proximity it happens that we cannot believe that Mrs. So-and-so, who lives over the way, is capable of jumping into the Thames for love of Lord So-and-so, whose brougham we observe daily before her door. But, however we may doubt the strength of Mrs. So-and-so's love-passion, we cannot ignore the brougham, nor do the exigencies of our social life permit us to be silent regarding the various stories, in which dinners at the Savoy, boxes at the opera, and presents of jewellery play a prominent part. Then, for one who can describe a love-passion pursuing its course to the edge of life and over it, a thousand can narrate the externals of Mrs. Soand-so's life; and for one reader who can understand the former literature, a million will devour the latter. In this flagrant materialism an important step was taken when the novelist decided to be silent regarding the exact relations of Lord So-and-so and Mrs. So-and-so, while reproducing every incriminating fact. The advantages of the new method are obvious. The writer sets all his readers wondering what the truth is, thereby gaining the attractiveness of the law court, and the shallow reader is tricked into belief in the writer's refinement. "He has never said anything coarse; we can take her guilty or innocent, as we please. He knows that we are competent judges on such matters, and could safely leave the case of Becky Sharp in our hands." Such is the judgment of the common mind. The more subtle mind will ask, why was the incident selected (the famous scene in which Rawdon Crawley knocks down Lord Steyne), if the exact relations between Lord Steyne and Becky Sharp are not to be set before the reader? Such an incident should be the concrete expression of a moral crisis. in the lives of three people. If she is not guilty, the scene is not a symbol but a mere gesticulation; if she is guilty, Thackeray, by not declaring the fact, shuts himself out from all

contemplation of the woman's inner self. She becomes a mere exteriority, and the incident itself as unimportant as any other item of social news. If ever there was any doubt as to Thackeray's race, his treatment of this scene would set it at rest. Yet another point which criticism has overlooked is that Thackeray is as reticent regarding Becky's temperament as he is about her conduct. He does not even tell us if she was a sensual woman, an extraordinary omission; for surely in depicting an adventuress it was imperative to be explicit on that point. Shakespeare thought so. He has indicated the voluptuous temperament of his Egyptian Queen, and how it reveals Antony to us. Think of Balzac's Madame Marneff, or Flaubert's Madame Bovary, of Tourgueneff's Irene. Or if the reader will have practical experience, La Pompadour's confidences to Madame du Hausset. But I will not stop to argue that a cold woman cannot be an adventuress. However that may be, it is certain that Thackeray is silent where the whole literary tradition declares he should have been explicit.

Was he silent on the temperament of his principal character because he wished to soothe the prejudices of his generation? It seems to me that the entire structure of his novel depended on his keeping silence on this one point. If she was a cold woman, Lord Steyne need not have been her lover, then the episode would have assumed a foolish and futile air, unless, indeed, a volume was written to explain it; if she was a passionate woman, Lord Steyne certainly was her lover, in that case, too, a volume would have to be written explaining her feeling for her husband before and after, her feeling for Lord Steyne, and a multitude of other things-in a word, Thackeray would have found himself in the midst of primary emotions. Not having the strength to cope with them, he exercised his very great tact, and cheated the reader by some frivolous remarks to the effect that, if he looks beneath the waves and discovers the monsters that lurk there, he does so on his own responsibility; the author will vouch that he has allowed no trace of their tails or fins to appear above the surface.

Becky Sharp is a wonderful portrait of the externals of a woman's life, but has Thackeray endowed her with any

morality? In other words, do we know more of her than we do of a woman with whom we have been on visiting terms for many years, and with whose visible fortune we are perfectly acquainted? I think not, for such limitations were deliberately planned by Thackeray. He had decided that he would paint the visible world as it appears to us, and he never allowed himself to be tempted beyond the limits of this design, and, judged by his intention, his success is complete. If little else, Thackeray was, at least, an admirable artist. The characters in "Vanity Fair" are known to us as the friends we meet in clubs and drawing-rooms. They are drawn in firm clear outline; their habits, manners, and habitual gestures have been well observed and understood, and the result is a set of cartoon portraits marvellously well executed; so well that as long as we are with them we can find no fault; it is not until we leave them that we become conscious that we only know them as we know our acquaintances, that we cannot think them or dream them; they pass and repass; but we learn no more about them; from the point of view of a human menagerie, we can find no fault in "Vanity Fair." We would ask if it is any more?

Thackeray's practice of staying the progress of his narrative so that he may comment on his characters and matters concerning them has often been questioned. It would have been to more purpose if, instead of questioning a method which has served the art of Shakespeare and Balzac, criticism had applied itself to the task of explaining what quality of mind Thackeray exhibits in these digressions.

Surely there are two Thackerays: the designer of the four families, the Osbornes, the Sedleys, the Rawdon Crawleys, and the Pitt Crawleys-it would be rash to say that "Vanity Fair" was not the most originally and grandly designed of all novels, and that its spacious corridors are not decorated with the most magnificent set of outline portraits in the worldand the amiable author of many little reproofs to young ladies who want to be married. In all novels, except "Tom Jones" and "Vanity Fair," the designer of character and the commentator stand on the same intellectual plane. In "Tom

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