The Early Writings of W. M. Thackeray. By Charles Plumptre
Johnson. (Elliot Stock.)—Mr. Johnson has sought out with much diligence for writings of Thackeray's early days that are unknown, Or commonly unknown to all but a few readers. Some discoveries he seems to have made, not perhaps of much literary value, but still interesting. One sometimes doubts whether the world gains much by this digging up of curiosities which their creators pre- ferred to keep in their buried state ; but it is the inevitable penalty of greatness. Nothing in the volume is better than the burlesque of " Timbuctoo," which is not unlike the lines with which Mr. W. G. Ward proclaimed his antipathy to compulsory verse-writing :—
" There stalks the tiger,—there the lion roars,
Who sometimes eats the luckless blackamoors ; All that he leaves of them the monster throws To jackals, vultures, dogs, cats, kites, and crows ;
His hunger thus the forest monarch gluts,
And then lies down 'neath trees called cocoa-nuts."
More directly travestying the usual prize-poem style are the lines :—
"I see her tribes the hill of glory mount,
And sell their sugars on their own account ; While round her throne the prostrate nations come, Sue for her rice and barter for her rum."
The volume is illustrated with some engravings of Thackeray at various periods of his life, and with some sketches from his own pencil.
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