Indeed, we find these qualities, as a rule, in the
biographies of the great sympathetic poets and men of genius of the
pen--I do not say in the lives of rebels of genius, "meteoric poets"
like Byron. The same basis, the same foundations of rectitude, of
honour, of goodness, of melancholy, and of mirth, underlie the art
of Moliere, of Scott, of Fielding, and as his correspondence shows,
of Thackeray.
It seems probable that a complete biography of Thackeray will never
be written. It was his wish to live in his works alone: that wish
his descendants respect; and we must probably regard the Letters to
Mr. and Mrs. Brookfield as the last private and authentic record of
the man which will be given, at least to this generation. In these
Letters all sympathetic readers will find the man they have long
known from his writings--the man with a heart so tender that the
world often drove him back into a bitterness of opposition, into an
assumed hardness and defensive cynicism. There are readers so
unluckily constituted that they can see nothing in Thackeray but
this bitterness, this cruel sense of meanness and power of analysing
shabby emotions, sneaking vanities, contemptible ambitions. All of
us must often feel with regret that he allowed himself to be made
too unhappy by the spectacle of failings so common in the world he
knew best, that he dwelt on them too long and lashed them too
complacently.
Pages:
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131