is not in all _Vanity Fair_ a single dull page that we skip, not a bit
of padding, no rigmarole of explanation whilst the action stands still.
Of what other fiction can this be said? Richardson and even Fielding
have their _longueurs_. Miss Austen is too prone to linger over the
tea-table beyond all human patience. And even Scott's descriptions of
his loved hills grow sometimes unreadable, especially when they are
told in a flaccid and slovenly style. But _Vanity Fair_ is kept up
with inexhaustible life and invention, with a style which, for purity
and polish, was beyond the reach of Fielding, Richardson, or Scott.

_Esmond_ was composed with even greater care than _Vanity Fair_, and in
the matter of style is usually taken to be Thackeray's greatest
masterpiece. Its language is a miracle of art. But it is avowedly a
_tour de force_--an effort to reproduce an entire book in the form and
speech of a century and a half preceding. As a _tour de force_ it is
wonderful; but in so long a book the effort becomes at last too
visible, and undoubtedly it somewhat cramps the freedom of the author's
genius. Thackeray was not a born historical romancist, as were Scott
and Dumas; nor was he a born historian at all. And when he undertook
to produce an elaborate romance in the form and with the colouring of a
past age, like George Eliot, he becomes rather too learned, too
conscientious, too rigidly full of his authorities; and if as an
historian he enters into rivalry with Macaulay, he somewhat loses his
cunning as a novelist. Thackeray's force lay in the comedy of manners.
In the comedy of manners we have nothing but _Tom Jones_ to compare
with _Vanity Fair_. And though Thackeray is not equal to the "prose
Homer of human nature," he wrote an English even finer and more racy.

In _Esmond_ we are constantly pausing to admire the wonderful ingenuity
and exquisite grace of the style, studying the language quite apart