incorrectness and artlessness. But they have in them the soul of a
great caricaturist. They have the Hogarthian touch of a great comic
artist.

One is tempted to enlarge at length on the merits of Thackeray's style,
because it is in his mastery over all the resources of the English
language that he surpasses contemporary prose writers. And it is a
mastery which is equally shown in every form of composition. There is
a famous bit of Byron's about Sheridan to the effect that he had
written the best comedy, made the finest speech, and invented the
drollest farce in the English language. And it is hardly extravagant
to say of Thackeray that, of all the Englishmen of this century, he has
written the best comedy of manners, the best extravaganza, the best
burlesque, the best parody, and the best comic song. And to this some
of his admirers would add--the best lectures, and the best critical
essays. It is of course true that he has never reached or attempted to
reach the gorgeous rhapsodies of De Quincey or the dithyrambic melodies
of Ruskin. But these heaven-born Pegasi cannot be harnessed to the
working vehicles of our streets. The marvel of Thackeray's command
over language is this--that it is unfailing in prose or in verse, in
pathos or in terror, in tragedy or in burlesque, in narrative, in
repartee, or in drollery: and that it never waxes or flags in force and
precision throughout twenty-six full volumes.

Of Thackeray's style--a style that has every quality in perfection:
simplicity, clearness, ease, force, elasticity, and grace--it is
difficult to speak but in terms of unstinted admiration. When we deal
with the substance and effective value of his great books we see that,
although Thackeray holds his own with the best writers of this century,
he cannot be said to hold the same manifest crown of supremacy. One of