that it was his own favourite among his works. But Thackeray did not
succeed in expressing the whole of himself in the romantic vein; perhaps
because he did not cultivate it from the start like Scott and Dumas. He
was able to put more of himself into _Vanity Fair_. To think of
Thackeray is to think first of _Vanity Fair_. From the unerring--because
instinctive--judgment of the world this book received recognition as his
masterpiece.

Du Maurier had not so much of the genuine _flair_ for the eighteenth
century as Thackeray. At heart he was much more in sympathy with the
pre-Raphaelites and the love of early romance, whatever his pretence to
the contrary in his satire, _A Legend of Camelot_. But there was no
illustrator of his time with a greater gift for the romantic novel of
any period; and inevitably, he became, in due course, the illustrator of
_Esmond_.

It is impossible to return to the past except by the path of poetry. It
was possible to du Maurier in his illustrations to _Esmond_, because he
was a poet. He used the effect of fading light in the sky seen through
old leaded windows, and all the resources of poetic effect with a poet's
and not an actor-manager's inspiration, wrapping the tale in the glamour
in which Thackeray conceived it.

In 1865 du Maurier contributed a full page illustration and two
vignettes to Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_, published in parts by Cassell.
Other signed illustrations are by G.H. Thomas, John Gilbert, J.D.
Watson, A.B. Houghton, W. Small, A. Parquier, R. Barnes, M.E. Edwards,
and T. Morten. No book can be imagined which would afford the essential
nature of his art less opportunity of showing itself than this one. He
was no good at horrors, though his resourcefulness in the manifestation