[67} Thackeray's own explanation was more characteristic than
convincing. "Why did you"--said once to him impetuous Mrs. John Brown of
Edinburgh--"Why did you make Esmond marry that old woman?" "My dear
lady," he replied, "it was not I who married them. They married
themselves." (Dr. _John Brmon_, by the late John Taylor Brown, 1903,
pp. 96-7.)


Of the historical portraits in the book, the interest has, perhaps, at
this date, a little paled. Not that they are one whit less vigorously
alive than when the author first put them in motion; but they have
suffered from the very attention which _Esmond_ and _The Humourists_
have directed to the study of the originals. The picture of Marlborough
is still as effective as when it was first proclaimed to be good enough
for the brush of Saint-Simon. But Thackeray himself confessed to a
family prejudice against the hero of Blenheim, and later artists have
considerably readjusted the likeness. Nor in all probability would the
latest biographer of Bolingbroke endorse _that_ presentment. In the
purely literary figures, Thackeray naturally followed the _Lectures_,
and is consequently open to the same criticisms as have been offered on
those performances. The Swift of _The Humourists_, modelled on Macaulay,
was never accepted from the first; and it has not been accepted in the
novel, or by subsequent writers from Forster onwards.[68] Addison has
been less studied; and his likeness has consequently been less
questioned. Concerning Steele there has been rather more discussion.
That Thackeray's sketch is very vivid, very human, and in most
essentials, hard to disprove, must be granted. But it is obviously
conceived under the domination of the "poor Dick" of Addison, and dwells
far too persistently upon Steele's frailer and more fallible aspect. No