Who can help loving Thackeray, wittiest, gentlest of men, in spite of
the faint suspicion of snobbishness that clings to him? There is
something pathetic in the good man's horror of this snobbishness, to
which he himself was a victim. May it not have been an affectation,
born unconsciously of self-consciousness? His heroes and heroines
must needs be all fine folk, fit company for lady and gentlemen
readers. To him the livery was too often the man. Under his stuffed
calves even Jeames de la Pluche himself stood upon the legs of a man,
but Thackeray could never see deeper than the silk stockings.
Thackeray lived and died in Clubland. One feels that the world was
bounded for him by Temple Bar on the east and Park Lane on the west;
but what there was good in Clubland he showed us, and for the sake of
the great gentlemen and sweet ladies that his kindly eyes found in
that narrow region, not too overpeopled with great gentlemen and
sweet women, let us honour him.

"Tom Jones," "Peregrine Pickle," and "Tristram Shandy" are books a
man is the better for reading, if he read them wisely. They teach
him that literature, to be a living force, must deal with all sides
of life, and that little help comes to us from that silly pretence of
ours that we are perfect in all things, leading perfect lives, that
only the villain of the story ever deviates from the path of
rectitude.

This is a point that needs to be considered by both the makers and
the buyers of stories. If literature is to be regarded solely as the
amusement of an idle hour, then the less relationship it has to life
the better. Looking into a truthful mirror of nature we are
compelled to think; and when thought comes in at the window self-
satisfaction goes out by the door. Should a novel or play call us to