hero, the writer had voluntarily added that of a lack of consecutiveness and completeness. It was probably begun by the author not only without a hero, but without a plot. We doubt whether any of his novels. were written on a plan. Some of them evidently turned under his pen into something quite different from what he had originally intended. His mode of narrative consists in a series of pictures, after the manner of Hogarth, but their popularity sufficiently attested their accuracy. There is no one character in "Vanity Fair" which can be deemed perfectly satisfactory-not that the public always cares for that, preferring sometimes the most thorough-paced villainy (viewing authorship as a question of art) to the most superlative virtue. Becky Sharp, the unprincipled governess, has been as unduly detested as Amelia Sedley has been too lavishly praised. There is nothing in the earlier chapters to prove that Becky Sharp was naturally and entirely unprincipled and unscrupulous, and it was evidently the intention of the author to show that society might justly assume a great portion of the responsibility for the after-development of those qualities. With certain ground to work upon, and given conditions as adjuncts, the influence of society on natures like Becky Sharp's would be to encrust them with selfishness, and superinduce complete hypocrisy. If heroine there be in the novel it is this clever adventuress, and except on some half-dozen occasions it is scarcely possible to avoid a pity approaching to contempt for the character of Amelia Sedley, who is intended to personify the good element an author generally casts about to discover in concocting a story. Captain Dobbin is overdrawn, and one is well-nigh tempted to wish that he had a little less virtue and a little more selfishness. While we love him, he has a tendency to make us angry. The most masterly touches in the volume are those in which the portraits of the Marquis of Steyne and of Sir Pitt Crawley are sketched. The aristocracy furnish the villains and the most contemptible specimens of the race, while the excellent persons come from the rank of the middle class and the poortheir namby-pambyism, however, now and then reducing their claims to our regard. The author speaks for the most part in his own person, and herein lies one of the principal reasons for the success of the book. We feel the satirist at our elbow; he is not enveloped in thick folds in the distance; as we read his trenchant observations and withering sarcasms we can almost see the glances of scorn or of pity which he would assume when engaged in his task. Well might the world exclaim that this was no novice who thus wrote of its meannesses and its glory, its virtues and its vices. This novel lifted him at once, and justly, into the position of one of the ablest writers of subjective fiction. It is especially remarkable, in connnection with " Vanity Fair," to note the extremely little conversational matter in a tale of this great length; another proof that the strength of the author lay not in the conventional groove of the novelist, but in those other powers of Thackeray-rare observation, an acute penetration of motives, an abhorrence of sham or pretence, and an entirely new and genuine humor. In "Pendennis," the next great work by Thackeray, there is not only some approach to a consecutive plot, but we are inclined to think finer drawing of individual character than in its predecessor. There is not so much brilliancy of writing, but there is a considerable advance in the art of the novelist. With all the graphic touches which took form in the features of Becky Sharp, Amelia Sedley, and Captain Dobbin, there is nothing in the earlier work to compare with the portraits of George Warrington, Helen Pendennis, and Laura. The hero Arthur is one who succumbs to the ordinary temptations of life, and has very little attaching to him of that romance in which a hero is generally expected to be enshrined. Because it was so natural, the book was not regarded at first as very successful; nothing could be truer to the original than the manner in which Arthur Pendennis is sketched, and his love passages with Miss Fotheringay, the actress, are naïvely related; but it was of course impossible to become inspired with the same feelings towards him as were excited by the chivalric heroes of Scott. A man who resorts in the morning to a bottle of soda water to correct the exuberant spirits of the night before, is not calculated to awaken much personal adoration. He is too fallible, and the novel-reading com munity demands sinless heroes and heroines ere it consents to raise them to the lofty pedestal accorded to its greatest favorites. There is no exaggeration in a single portrait to be found in "Pendennis;" all are true are true to the minutest detail, and the author has simply acted as the photographer to his clients; he "nothing extenuates, or sets down aught in malice." The early follies of Pendennis, and his university career-which was chiefly noticeable for splendid suppers and dealings with money-lenders at a hundred per cent.-are described with no sparing pen. The case is typical of thousands now, and is no credit to the youth of the universities. "Only wild oats," the apologists for undergraduate extravagance reminds us; but there is no natural necessity that this particular university crop should be sown; many men, worthy men too, are compelled to go through life without the satisfaction of having ruined their friends by their follies. The result overtook Pendennis which righteously succeeds, we suppose, to dissipation and neglect of study. When the degree examinations came, "many of his own set who had not half his brains, but a little regularity and constancy of occupation, took high place in the honors or passed with decent credit. And where in the list was Pen, the superb, Pen the wit and dandy, Pen the poet and orator! Ah, where was Pen, the widow's darling and sole pride? Let us hide our heads and shut up the page. The lists came out; and a dreadful rumor rushed through the university that Pendennis of Boniface was plucked." Yet though he fled from the university, the widow went on loving him still, just the same, and little Laura hugged to her heart with a secret passion the image of the young scapegrace. So inexplicable. and so devoted is the character of woman! The little orphan paid the debts of the dashing, clever hero. More sketches of society with its hollowness and pretence follow this revelation, and then we find Arthur in the modern Babylon, soon to become the friend of George Warrington, who was destined to be his guide, philosopher, and friend. The brains of our hero now became of service, and in dwelling or his intellectual labor Thackeray details the secret history of a literary hack, together with the story of the establishment of a on newspaper for "the gentlemen of England," the prospectus of which was written by Captain Shandon in Fleet Prison, Brilliant indeed were the intellectual Bohemians who wrote for that witty and critical journal. There are no more interesting or amusing sketches in the whole of the author's novels than those relating to this paper, and the intimate knowledge displayed in the details of the schemes of rival printers and publishers was a part of the author's own dearly bought experience. Arthur is strangely consoled in his endeavors to live by the aid of literature by his uncle, Major Pendennis, who assures him that " poetry and genius, and that sort of thing, were devilishly disreputable" in his time. But success waits on him, and he I can afford to smile at the eccentric officer. Were it not for the closing pages of "Pendennis" we could almost feel angry with Thackeray for challenging our interest in Arthur. But the lesson he had to teach compensates for all disappointments. No stones are to be unnecessarily thrown at the erring, and the shadows in Pendennis's life are to teach others how to avoid similar errors. The unworthy often run away with the honors. The history of Pendennis closes with fruition for the hero, while the nobler character, George Warrington, suffers disappointment. But then the novelist justly observes: "If the best men do not draw the great prizes in life, we know that it has been so ordained by the Ordainer of the lottery; we own, and see daily, how the false and worthless live and prosper, while the good are called away, and the dear and young perish untimely. We perceive in every man's life maimed happiness, the frequent falling, the bootless endeavor, the struggle of right and wrong, in which the strong often succumb and the swift fail; we see flowers of good blooming in foul places, as in the most lofty and splendid fortunes, flaws of vice and meanness, and stains of evil, and, knowing how mean the best of us is, let us give a hand of charity to Arthur Pendennis, with all his faults and shortcomings, who does not claim to be a hero, but only a man and a brother." Passing by temporarily the lectures on the humorists in order to preserve the chain of novels unbroken, we come to a work which is perhaps the most satisfac tory of all Thackeray's writings, regarding them purely in the light of literary art. There are few productions in the world of fiction which exhibit the finish of "Esmond," for the author has not only drawn his characters with unusual skill, but delighted the reader with repeated bursts of natural, unaffected eloquence, in language sedulously borrowed from the age of Steele and Addison. As regards style, indeed, "Esmond" is an incredible tour-deforce, and is by far the most original of all his books. For the first time the author transplants us to that age which afterwards became of such absorbing interest to him that he could not tear himself away from it; so imbued was he altogether with the literature of the time of Queen Anne and George I, that at last he seemed to live in it. At his death he had another work in contemplation whose period was fixed in the eighteenth century. It is easy even to the uninitiated to discover that Thackeray wrote his history of Esmond, a colonel in the service of her Majesty Queen Anne, thoroughly con amore. He revelled in his theme and in the associations it brought with it. Genial, witty Dick Steele and Mr. Joseph Addison are introduced to us, and we see them, along with Esmond, drinking the Burgundy, which, says Addison, " my Lord Halifax sent me." We are carried through portions of Marlborough's campaigns, and the spirit blazes with enthusiasm at the pluck which wrought such valiant deeds, and brought undying honor on the British arms. The avarice and ambition of the brilliant Churchill are forgotten as the plans of his consummate genius are unravelled. Esmond's career with General Webb is traced with intense interest, and the scenes become as real to us as they undoubtedly seemed to the author. The plot of the book is not of the happiest description, the machinations of the Jacobites being interwoven largely with the thread of the narrative. The hero loves in the outset Beatrix Esmond, daughter of a viscount, and the devotion he exhibits to the idol of his heart and his imagination is something extraordinary even in comparison with the loves of other heroes. Beatrix, however, was unworthy of it; homage she would receive, true passion she seemed incapable of returning. Self-willed to a degree, the noble nature of such a man as Esmond was as a sealed book to her. His gravest feelings she treated with levity, and at length her conduct with the Pretender broke the spell, and threw down from its lofty pedestal, once and forever, the idol he had set up. Like the marble, it was beautiful to the eye; like the marble it was cold and insensible to the touch: Finally Esmond contracts a union with Beatrix's mother, Lady Castlewood, still handsome and comparatively young, and who had always cherished the memory of Esmond as one whom she dearly loved in his youth. Her affection for him had never waned. The volume closes with their settlement on the banks of the Potomac, in a calm and serene happiness. The autobiographer, in describing their Virginian estate and transatlantic life, says: "Our diamonds are turned into ploughs and axes for our plantations, and into negroes, the happiest and merriest, I think, in all this country; and the only jewel by which my wife sets any store, and from which she hath never parted, is that gold button she took from my arm on the day when she visited me in prison, and which she wore ever after, as she told me, on the tenderest heart in the world." In reading "Esmond," so cleverly is the story told, and with such ease and truthfulness, that the reader does not stay to note what a difficult task the novelist has set himself in venturing to deal with a plot more than commonly unattractive. Thackeray, however, is nowhere the slave of a plot; and in sometimes deliberately fighting against conventional construction and probability, he has proved by his success in enlisting interest and sympathy that he wielded the pen of a master. The world can forgive its hero for not doing what ninety-nine heroes in a hundred perform, when his history is related with the fidelity and ability which distinguish "Esmond." There are more characters carefully and vividly drawn in this book than are to be found in the entire novels of many popular writers; and that pungency of Thackeray's pen which cuts through individualities as sharply and clearly as the diamond cuts through the glass, is here in full operation. It was as superior to its predecessor as the latter was to almost all the novels of the time. In regard to historical portraiture it has never been excelled; to read it once is to be struck with its eloquence and power; to read it a second time is to be impressed with its fidelity and photographic accuracy. (To be continued.) TONSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. It is the second week of September, the year 1666. At his shop-door in Holborn, beneath the timehonored emblem of his profession, the parti-colored pole, stands Mr. Jacob Tonson, barber-surgeon. He looks earnestly and sorrowfully at the dense canopy of smoke that hangs over the east. The fire that had destroyed more than half of London is still smouldering. Fragments of burning paper still fall upon the causeway, as the remains of the books that were stowed in St. Faith's, under Paul's, are stirred by the wind. Mr. Tonson is troubled. He has friends amongst the booksellers in the ruined city; and occasional customers, who have come thence to be trimmed, with beards of a se'nnight's growth, tell him that these traders are most of them undone. A month has passed since the fire broke out. The wealthy are finding house-room in Westminster and Southwark, and in streets of the city which the flames have not reached. The poor are still, many of them, abiding in huts and tents in Moorfields and St. George's Fields, and on the hills leading to Highgate. Some of the great thoroughfares may now be traversed. Mr. Tonson will venture forth to see the condition of his Company's Hall. With his second son, Jacob, holding his hand, he makes his way to Monkwell Street. Barber-Surgeon's Hall has sustained some injury; but the theatre, built by Inigo Jones, which is the pride of the Company, has not been damaged. He shows his son Holbein's great picture of the Company receiving their charter from Henry VIII., and expatiates upon the honor of belonging to such a profession. Young Jacob does not seem much impressed by the parental enthusiasm. The blood-letting and tooth-drawing are not more attractive to him than the shaving, which latter operation his father deputes to his apprentices. They make their way through narrow lanes across Aldersgate Street, and so int> Little Britain. Mr. Tonson enters a large book-shop, and salutes the bookseller with great respect. By common repute, Mr. Scot is the largest librarian in Europe. Young Jacob listens attentively to all that passes. His father brings out William Loudon's "Catalogue of the most vendible books in England," and inquires for "The Anatomical Exercises of Dr. W. Harvey, Physician to the King's most Excellent Majesty, concerning the Motion of the Heart and Blood." Mr. Scot is somewhat at leisure, and says that he has heard more disputes about Dr. Harvey's opinions of the circulation of the blood, than upon any subject not theological. Mr. Tonson buys for his son, who has a taste for verse, a little volume of "Mr. Milton's Poems, with a Mask before the Earl of Bridgwater." Mr. Scot informs him that Mr. Milton, who had gone to Buckinghamshire upon the breaking out of the plague, has returned to his house in Bunhill Fields, and, as he hears, is engaged upon an heroic poem. The sum which Mr. Tonson has to pay for the two books rather exceeds his expectation; but Mr. Scot gives it not only as his own opinion, but that of a very shrewd customer of his, Mr. Pepys, that, in consequence of so many books being burned, there will be a great want of books. Mr. Scct is firmly impressed with the truth of an old adage, that what is one man's loss is another man's gain, and has no scruple about raising the prices of his large stock. "A good time is coming, sir, for printers and booksellers," says Mr. Scot. "Ah, Jacob!" exclaims Mr. Tonson, "if I hadn't a noble profession for you to follow, I should like to see you a bookseller." Two years have elapsed. The good chirurgeon has fallen sick; and not even his conversion to Dr. Harvey's opinions "concerning the motion of the heart and blood can save him. Young Jacob has employed most of his holiday hours in reading plays and poems, and he had a decided aversion to the business carried on "under the pole." His father had left his brother Richard, himself, and his three sisters, one hundred pounds each, to be paid them upon their coming of age. The two brothers resolved for printing and bookselling. Jacob was apprenticed, on the 5th of June, 1670, to Thomas Bassett, bookseller; he was then of the age of fourteen. We scarcely need trace the shadow of the boy growing up into a young man, and lea.ning, what a practical experience only can give, to form a due estimate of the trade value of books, and the commercial reputation of authors. After seven years he was admitted to his freedom in the Stationers' Company, and immediately afterward commenced business with his capital of a hundred pounds. The elder brother had embarked in the same calling a year before. Thus, at the beginning of 1678, he entered "the realms of print "-a region not then divided into so many provinces as now. Under "The Judge's Head," which he set up as his sign in Chancery Lane, close to the corner of Fleet street, he might have an open window, and exhibit, upon a capacious board, old law-books and new plays, equally vendible in that vicinity of the inns of court. But he had a higher ambition than to be a mere vender of books. He would purchase and print original writings, and he would aim at securing "the most eminent hands." He published before 1679 some of the plays of Otway and Tate. But he aimed at more illustrious game. We see him as he sits in his back shop, pondering over such reputations. Mr. Otway's "Friendship in Fashion" is somewhat too gross, and his "Caius Marius" has been stolen, in great part, from Shakspeare. As for Mr. Tate, he may be fit to mangle "King Lear," but he has no genius. Could he get hold of Mr. Dryden! He, indeed, were worth having. Mr. Herringman has been Mr. Dryden's publisher, but the young aspirant hears of some dis agreement. He will step over to the great writer's house, near St. Bride's Church, and make a bidding for his next play. "Troilus and Cressida; or, Truth found too late," was published by Tonson and Swalle, in 1679. The venture of twenty pounds for the copy is held to have been too large for our Jacob to have encountered singly. Let us endeavor to realize the shadow of the figure and deportment of the young bookseller. He is in his twenty-third year, short and stout. Twenty years later, Pope calls him "little Jacob." It was not till after his death that he became immortalized in the "Dunciad" as "left-legg'd Jacob." In one previous edition, Lintot," with steps unequal;" in another, with "legs expanded" "" seemed to emulate great Jacob's pace." The "two left legs," as well as "leering looks," "bull face," and "Judas-colored hair," are attributed to Dryden in a satirical description of "Bibliopolo," a fragment of which is inserted in a virulent Tory poem, published at the time when Tonson was secretary of the Kit-Cat Club, composed of the Whigs most distinguished as statesmen and writers. In a dialogue between Tonson and Congreve, published in 1714, in a small volume of poems by Rowe, there is a pleasant description of Tonson before he had grand associates. "While, in your early days of reputation, After this, the eulogy of John Dunton is somewhat fiat: "He was bookseller to the famous Dryden, and is himself a very good judge of persons and authors; and, as there is nobody more competently qualified to give their opinion upon another, so there is none who does it with a more severe exactness, or with less partiality; for, to do Mr. Tonson justice, he speaks his mind upon all occasions, and will flatter nobody." The young bookseller is gradually attaining a position. In 1681 there was an indefatigable collector of the fugitive poetry, especially political, which formed the chief staple of many booksellers' shops, and the most vendible commodity of noisy hawkers. Mr. Narcissus Luttrell recorded-according to his custom of marking on each sheet and half-sheet of the "Sibylline Leaves" the day he acquired it-that on the 17th of November he received a copy of the first part of "Absalom and Achitophel ""from his friend Jacob Tonson." Dryden and his publisher appear to be on a very friendly footing in 1684. He sends the poet a present of two melons; and the poet, in his letter of thanks, advises him to reprint "Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse," and to print a thousand copies. Dryden was now at work upon the "Miscellany Poems;" that collection which is sometimes called "Tonson's" and sometimes "Dryden's." According to the fashion of title-pages at that time, it was to be written "by the most eminent hands." The poet writes, "since we are to have nothing but new, I am resolved we will have nothing but good, whomever we disoblige." The first volume was published in 1684; a second volume appeared in 1685. Malone says, "This was the first collection of that kind which had appeared for many years in England." The third "Miscellany" was published in 1693. Tonson has now become a sharp tradesman. A letter from him to Dryden exhibits him haggling about the number of lines he ought to receive of the translation of parts of Ovid. He had only 1,446 for fifty guineas, whereas he expected 1,518 lines for forty guineas. He is, nevertheless, humbly submissive. "I own, if you don't think fit to add something more, I must submit; 'tis wholly at your choice." Still, holding to his maxim to have a pennyworth for his penny, he adds, "You were pleased to use me much kindlier in Juvenal, which is not reckoned so easy to translate as Ovid." Although the bookseller seems mercenary enough to justify Malone's remark that "by him who is to live by the sale of books, a book is considered merely as an article of trade," Dryden soon after writes to Tonson, "I am much ashamed of myself that I am so much behind-hand with you in kindness. Above all things, I am sensible of your good nature in bearing me company to this place" (somewhere in Northamptonshire.) Dryden could now ill afford to be curtailed in the bookseller's payment for his verses. The Revolution had deprived him of his office of poet-laureate; but he might do better than writing " Miscellany Poems" at the rate of ninepence a line. He will publish a specimen of his translation of Virgil in the "Miscellany," but he will produce the complete work by subscription. Tonson shall be his agent for printing the volumes, with engravings. The plan succeeds, There are large-paper copies for the rich and great; there are small-paper copies for a second class of subscribers. Be ready with the price of paper and of the books," writes Dryden. They were to meet at a tavern. "No matter for any dinner; for that is a charge to you, and I care not for it. Mr. Congreve may be with us, as a common friend." Few were the literary bargains that were settled without a dinner. Fewer, indeed, were the coffee-house meetings between author and bookseller that were not accompanied with that solace which was called "a whet." Their business is completed. Mr. Dryden goes again into the country for his poetical labors and his fishing. Mr. Tonson is "My good friend;" and " I assure you 1 lay up your last kindness to me in my heart." But a terrible subject of dispute is coming up which much perplexes the bookseller. In October, 1695, the poet writes, I expect fifty pounds in good silver not such as I had formerly. I am not obliged to take gold, neither will I; nor stay for |