SOME ASPECTS OF THACKERAY.
Some Aspects of Thackeray, By Lewis Melville. (Stephen Swift and Co. 12s. (icl. not.)—Mr. Lewis Melville has already helped us to appreciate Thackerrby, and we are very glad to have another volume from his pen. Everything in it is worth read- ing, but we would especially mention some of the chapters. " Thackeray's Ballads" is one of them. It is not a patriotic
prepossession that makes us claim for English literature a high distinction in humorous verse. No country can compete, though America may do so one day. And Thackeray has a high rank in the company of poets. Here is an ingenious bit of rhyming, and written by a boy still at school :— " In the romantic little town of Highbury My father kept a circulating library ; He followed in his youth that man immortal who
Conquered the French on the plains of Waterloo." And on occasion he could write serious verse. We wonder, indeed, that we do not more often see some of this in anthologies. There is that charming little poem, of which the first stanza is—
"It was but a moment she sat in this place She'd a scarf on her neck and a smile on her face ; A smile on her face and a rose in her hair As she sat there and bloomed in my cane-bottomed chair."
"Thaokeray as artist," too, is very good. We doubt whether there has over been a better illustrator in the exact sense of that word. Of course his drawings are not always and everywhere according to rule. But when it is objected that he was no artist, we can only answer with Mr. Melville : "If this is not art, why, then, the boundaries of art should at once be enlarged." This chapter is excellently illustrated with specimens which will be new to many readers. Much curious information is collected in " Thackeray's Originals." It is amusing to read that when a lady objected that Sir Pitt Crawley must be overdrawn—ouch coarseness could not be found in hie rank of life—Thackeray replied, "That character is almost the only exact portrait in the book." Lord Steyne is identified with the second, rather than the third, Marquis of Hertford; Wenham was J. W. Croker ; but we are told that Thaokeray repented of the caricature, for such it was. Colonel Nowcomo was a certain Captain Light or "Cold" at the Charter- house. At least he sat for his portrait, so to speak, but the man himself was a creation, This is an excellent book.
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