Stormed at with shot and shell, Left of six hundred. VI. When can their glory fade? THE NEW TIMON We know him, out of Shakespeare's art, That, strongly loathing, greatly broke. So died the Old: here comes the New. I thought we knew him: What, it's you, Who killed the girls and thrilled the boys And shook a mane en papillotes. And once you tried the Muses too; You failed, sir: therefore now you turn, But men of long-enduring hopes, An Artist, Sir, should rest in Art, AND THE POETS.' With moral breadth of temperament. And what with spites and what with fears, You talk of tinsel! why, we see The old mark of rouge upon your cheeks. You prate of Nature! you are he That spilt his life about the cliques. A Timon you! Nay, nay, for shame : WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811, his father being in the civil service of the East India Company. At seven years of age he was sent to England, stopping on the way at St. Helena, where, as he says, he saw the "Corsican ogre," and on reaching London was placed at the Charterhouse school. He was afterwards sent to Cambridge, but did not graduate. Having inherited a fortune, he determined to devote himself to art, and pursued his studies abroad for some years: but at length, after meeting with pecuniary losses, he turned his attention to literature. It has been said (though the authority cannot be given here), that his first acquaintance with Dickens came from his making some drawings to illustrate a story written by the younger and more popular novelist. 1 See extract from Bulwer Lytton's New Timon. The first productions of our author were light sketches and tales, mostly under the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh; and it is a coincidence that Thackeray's nose was flattened in boyhood by a blow, as the great sculptor's was by the mallet of Torregiano, a brother workman. In this early period were published The Paris Sketch-Book, The Great Hoggarty Diamond, The Irish Sketch-Book, Jeames's Diary, The Yellowplush Papers, The Book of Snobs, From Cornhill to Cairo, and Mrs. Perkins's Ball. The reputation of Thackeray was of slow growth; none of his early works made much impression, until he became known through "Punch" as the author of the inimitable observations of Jeames. In all these comic sketches the artist was quite as conspicuous as the author. His first serial novel was Vanity Fair, a powerful but bitterly satirical work, and containing the germs of nearly all the ideas since elaborated in his other novels. This was followed at intervals by The History of Pendennis, The History of Henry Esmond, The Newcomes, The Virginians, and Lovel the Widower. He wrote and illustrated also a great number of Christmas stories, which are treasures of fun and of delicate sentiment. In this field he has neither equal nor second. Rebecca and Rowena, Dr. Birch and his Young Friends, The Rose and the Ring, and Our Street, are instances of the drollest conceits set off by the drollest pictures, without a touch of vulgarity, and written for the most part in a style so exquisite, that if Addison were proof-reader he would lay down his pencil in despair. Equally charming are his Lectures on the English Humorists, and on The Four Georges. These were delivered in this country as well as in England, and will never be forgotten by those who had the good fortune to hear them. Various opinions are held as to Thackeray's novels. It is true that his heroines seldom have intellect and heart together, and that we are invited rather too often to the discovery of mean motives, and of all sorts of skeletons in closets. But there are passages in all his works that could have been dictated only by a great and generous heart; the ideas of honor and manliness are never forgotten; and, while affecting to sneer at sentiment, he paints scenes which cannot be read without tears. It is difficult to compare him with his great rival, Dickens; most educated men will prefer the first as the more profound thinker, the more robust in character, and by far the more scholarly and more idiomatic writer in style. Thackeray was a man of powerful frame and commanding presence. His reserve was chilling at first, but when the ice was broken, the ease, liveliness, and kindliness of his manner were indescribable. He died in 1863. [From The History of Henry Esmond.] THE actors in the old tragedies, as we read, piped their iambics to a tune, speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts and a great head-dress. 'Twas thought the dignity of the Tragic Muse required these appurtenances, and that she was not to move except to a measure and cadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music and King Agamemnon perished in a dying fall (to use Mr. Dryden's words): the Chorus standing by in a set attitude, and rhythmically and decorously bewailing the fates of those great crowned persons. The Muse of History hath encumbered herself with ceremony as well as her Sister of the Theatre. She too wears the mask and the cothurnus, and speaks to measure. She too, in our age, busies herself with the affairs only of kings; waiting on them, obsequiously and stately, as if she were but a mistress of Court ceremonies, and had nothing to do with the registering of the |