ART. II.-THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.

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The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century. series of Lectures, &c., &c. By W. M. Thackeray. London. Smith, Elder & Co. 1853.

To be introduced to the English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century by Mr. Thackeray, is to be made free of a goodly company by the merits of the friend under whose shadow we enter it. Thus Horace was made known to Mæcenas and the Augustan wits by Virgil and Varius ; and thus the portly presence of Dr. Johnson inducted the awestruck Boswell into "The Club." Could that Club once more assemble as when the clumsy Doctor compounded its punch-could that elder fraternity again meet on Pope's lawn at Twickenham, or round Bolingbroke's hospitable table--we doubt not that either would admit the author of "Vanity Fair" to the full privileges of brotherhood; a sly and sarcastic naturalness would betray the presence of a fresh hand in Martinus Scriblerus: and Bozzy might record with scornful astonishment, that the new member seemed to attach himself not so much to his Doctor, as to him of the immortal plum-coloured vestment. It is something to enter into familiar converse with such men, and in company with such a guide; and when he goes the round and shows us Swift and Addison and Goldsmith, each as they lived; and estimates them and their works with such brief and epigrammatic justice, and yet in so hearty a spirit of appreciation, we forget to criticise the words and thoughts of so pleasant a companion.

For the critic's office-as it is commonly understoodthe perusal of Mr. Thackeray's book leaves us but little disposed. We have already indicated the point of view from which we are inclined to regard it. The great Humourist of the nineteenth, proposes to give us his estimate of his predecessors of the eighteenth century. He does so through the medium of an exquisitely natural and lucid

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style. Every word he utters comes from a kind heart; and is an index of that true taste which can everywhere find food for admiration. He is a cunning artist in words: his outlines are distinct: his colouring vivid: and the great names on his title-page correspond to living figures in his book. Some of us perhaps knew the great, savage, loving Dean of St. Patrick: the gentlemanly Congreve : lazy, good-tempered, many-friended Gay that easy, epicurean Prior: the honest, jolly Hogarth, before they were brought face to face with us here: had read their books and pictures: detached and laid up in memory the autobiographical fragments from their correspondence: traced their characters in their portraits;-for those who have not done this, or having done it, fail of imagination to compound their store of materials into a living figure, Mr. Thackeray provides portraitures of these men, and others as great, within brief limits indeed. The canvas is small; but compression is the essence of a great painter's art; and in the painting of words, an epithet is often more descriptive than a dissertation. And if we cannot always agree with Mr. Thackeray; if his portraits do not always correspond, line for line, with those which already exist in our imaginations-we are far less disposed to note deficiency and suggest amendment, than to accept the picture for the artist's sake. When Vandyke transfers to canvas a Wentworth; or Titian some historic Venetian Doge, there is a rare value in the portrait apart from the fact of personal resemblance.

The only instance in which we feel at all tempted to assume the critic's attitude is before the full-length sketch of Steele. The relations between him and our essayist have something in them anomalous and incomprehensible. Had Steele but just run his goodnatured prodigal's career; and Mr. Thackeray-standing by his fresh grave-been anxious to make the best of a friend's reputation, and extenuate his faults with the ever-prompt excuses of personal affection, it would all be easy to understand. The errors of "poor Dick Steele," his prodigality, his carelessness, his drunkenness, are exactly such as friends, now-adays, are always ready to balance with the assertion, "He was so good a fellow; he had so kind a heart;" and a cheerful disposition, and an inconsiderate generosity,

have often been made to atone for the habitual violation of the gravest obligations of life. But for all this a personal intimacy with the prodigal is necessary; perhaps some slight consciousness of participation in the prodigality; and the excuses we have mentioned are seldom urged in favour of recklessness a hundred years old. But Mr. Thackeray seems to have studied Steele's writings, until he loved him like a friend of yesterday; and then set himself to whitewash his memory. The attempt is not made in hints and implications; while Pope and Addison are each described in half a lecture, Steele enjoys with Swift the dignity of engrossing a whole one. His faults are told us plainly enough: how the idle Oxonian was transformed into the dragoon of the Duke of Ormond's troop; and then getting a troop of his own, wrote the Christian Hero, and illustrated his piety, by works of debt and drunkenness, and worse: how he was knighted and made Gazetteer and Commissioner of Stamps; edited newspapers and wrote plays, now witty and now dull, now successful and now justly damned: how he loved and reverenced and ill-treated his wives: how he vibrated between splendour and the spunging-house: now rolling in his chariotnow having bailiffs in livery on the footboard; and died at last in Wales, poor, friendless, and forgotten. And then comes the moral.

"Dick set about almost all the undertakings of his life with inadequate means; and, as he took and furnished a house with the most generous intentions towards his friends-the most tender gallantry towards his wife, and with this only drawback, that he had not wherewithal to pay the rent when quarter-day came-so, in his life, he proposed to himself the most magnificent schemes of virtue, forbearance, public and private good, and the advancement of his own and the national religion; but when he had to pay for these articles so difficult to purchase, and so costly to maintain-poor Dick's money was not forthcoming; and when Virtue called with her little bill, Dick made a shuffling excuse that he could not see her that morning, having a headache from being tipsy over-night; or, when stern Duty rapped at the door with his account, Dick was absent and not ready to pay.

"He was shirking at the tavern, or had some particular business (of somebody's else) at the ordinary; or he was in hiding, or worse than in hiding, at the lock-up house!

"What a situation for a man! for a philanthropist for a

lover of right and truth-for a magnificent designer and schemer! Not to dare to look in the face the religion which he adored, and which he had offended-to have to shirk down back lanes and alleys, so as to avoid the friend whom he loved and who had trusted him to have the house which he had intended for his wife, whom he loved passionately, and for her ladyship's company, which he wished to entertain splendidly, in the possession of a bailiff's man, with a crowd of little creditors,-grocers, butchers, and small-coal men, lingering round the doors with their bills, and jeering at him.

"Alas! for poor Dick Steele! for nobody else, of course. There is no man or woman in our time who makes fine projects and gives them up from idleness or want of means. When duty calls upon us, we, no doubt, are always at home and ready to pay that grim tax-gatherer. When we are stricken with remorse, and promise reform, we keep our promise, and are never angry, or idle, or extravagant any more. There are no chambers in our hearts, destined for family friends and affections, and now occupied by some Sin's emissary and bailiff in possession. There are no little sins, shabby peccadilloes, importunate remembrances, or disappointed holders of our promises to reform, hovering at our steps, or knocking at our door! Of course not. We are living in the nineteenth century, and poor Dick Steele stumbled and got up again, and got into jail and out again, and sinned and repented, and loved and suffered, and lived and died scores of years ago.

"Peace be with him! Let us think gently of one who was so gentle; let us speak kindly of one whose own breast exuberated with human kindness."

It is every word of it true; mutatis mutandis, Steele's case might easily be paralleled now; a kind heart and a Christian spirit are apparent in our author's summing up; and yet we are disposed to dispute the justice of the moral principle involved. To a living sinner it may be impossible to be too tender; but surely to bespeak indulgence for the delinquencies of Sir Richard Steele, who died in 1729, on the ground that none of us are perfect; to intimate, or insinuate, that those delinquencies did not make the man less worthy of being loved, is a licence of practice which must ultimately lead to the obliteration of all moral distinctions whatever. If we take it upon ourselves to judge at all, let us do it honestly and openly. Social right and wrong; the difference between the vulgar mercantile integrity which pays its debts, and the gentlemanly carelessness which contracts them without the means of

payment, are more important things than the memory of poor Dick Steele. Nor does that memory gain anything from such advocacy. Mr. Thackeray is at least fair in the production of his evidence; before he can excuse his hero's faults he must tell us what they are; and if he omits to characterize them as they deserve, he offers us the opportunity of doing so for ourselves. And it is a question whether the prominent position here given to Steele has not done more to lower him in the sober moral judgment of Mr. Thackeray's readers, than to raise him in their affections.

We will forego the temptation of adding brilliancy to our pages, by any lengthened extracts from lectures which the majority of our readers have already heard from the lips of their author, and the rest will probably read in their natural connexion. But there is a general purpose observable throughout the whole book, to which we propose briefly to advert. In a short epilogue appended to the last lecture, Mr. Thackeray enunciates, as the moral of the course, certain opinions as to the economic and social position of the author; similar to those which brought so much literary obloquy on "Pendennis." We will first let him speak for himself; and then take the opportunity of amplifying his arguments, and adding others which have brought us substantially to the same conclusion.

Long before I had ever hoped for such an audience, or dreamed of the possibility of the good fortune which has brought me so many, many friends, I was at issue with some of my literary friends upon a point, which they held from tradition, I think, rather than from experience that our profession was neglected in this country; and that men of letters were ill-received, and held in slight esteem. It would hardly be grateful of me now to alter my old opinion, that we do meet with goodwill and kindness-with generous helping hands in the time of our necessity-with cordial and affectionate recognition. What claim had any one of these, of whom I have been speaking, but genius? What return of gratitude, fame, affection, did it not bring to all! What punishment befell those who were unfortunate among them, but that which follows reckless habits and careless lives? For these faults a wit must suffer like the dullest prodigal that ever ran in debt. He must pay the tailor, if he wears the coat; his children must go in rags, if he spends his money at the tavern; he can't come