and meanness.  The Book of Snobs and the Hoggarty Diamond were each a kind of prelude to Vanity Fair, and both contain some of its essential marks of pathos and of power.  It is indeed strange to us now to remember that both of these books, written with such finished mastery of hand and full of such passages of wit and insight, could have been published for years before the world had recognised that it had a new and consummate writer before it.  The Book of Snobs indeed may truly be said to have seriously improved the public opinion of the age, and to have given a death-blow to many odious forms of sycophancy and affectation which passed unrebuked in England fifty years ago.  And the Burlesque Romances and the English Humourists have certainly assisted in forming the public taste and in promoting a sound criticism of our standard fiction.

Charlotte Bronte dedicated her Jane Eyre, in 1847, to William Makepeace Thackeray, as “the first social regenerator of the day.”  Such language, though interesting as coming from a girl of singular genius and sincerity, however ignorant of real life, was excessive.  But we may truly assert that he has enriched our literature with some classical masterpieces in the comedy of contemporary manners.

VI

CHARLES DICKENS

It is a fearsome thing to venture to say anything now about Charles Dickens, whom we have all loved, enjoyed, and laughed over:  whose tales are household words in every home where the English tongue is heard, whose characters are our own school-friends, the sentiment of our youthful memories, our boon-companions and our early attachments.  To view him in any critical light is a task as risky as it would be to discuss the permanent value of some fashionable amusement, a favourite actor, a popular beverage, or a famous horse.  Millions and millions of old and young love Charles Dickens, know his personages by heart, play at games with his incidents and names, and from the bottom of their souls believe that there never was such fun, and that there never will be conceived again such inimitable beings, as they find in his ever-fresh and ever-varied pages.  This is by itself a very high title to honour:  perhaps it is the chief jewel in the crown that rests on the head of Charles Dickens.  I am myself one of these devotees, of these lovers, of these slaves of his:  or at least I can remember that I have been.  To have stirred this pure and natural humanity, this force of sympathy, in such countless millions is a great triumph.  Men and women to-day do not want any criticism of Charles Dickens, any talk about him at all.  They enjoy him as he is:  they examine one another in his books:  they gossip on by the hour about his innumerable characters, his never-to-be-forgotten waggeries and fancies.