The comic muse assumes a
tragic, or at least a very sombre, dress. We have a portraiture of Queen
Anne in her last days, and a sad picture of him who, to the Protestant
succession, was the pretender, and to the hopeful Jacobites, James III.
The character of Marlborough is given with but little of what was really
meritorious in that great captain.
His novel of _Pendennis_ gave him, after the manner of Bulwer's _Caxton_,
an editor in _Arthur Pendennis_, who presents us _The Newcomes, Memoirs of
a Most Respectable Family_, which he published in a serial form,
completing it in 1855.
THE NEWCOMES.--In that work we have the richest culture, the finest
satire, and the rarest social philosophy. The character--the hero by
pre-eminence--is Colonel Newcome, a nobleman of nature's creation,
generous, simple, a yearningly affectionate father, a friend to all the
poor and afflicted, one of the best men ever delineated by a novelist; few
hearts are so hard as not to be touched by the story of his death in his
final retirement at the Charter House.
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