less amusing than the wonderful history of M. D'Artagnan and his gigantic comrades. Indeed, such books are instructive as well as amusing. We probably owe much of the spirit and vivacity of modern historians, and much of their consciousness that the persons whom they have to describe were real men and women, and not mere names in a book, to the vigour with which novelists, from Sir Walter Scott downwards, have preached the same doctrine. Fiction can hardly be employed more usefully than when it makes past times real to us, and enables us for a time to breathe the air of other ages and to hear the voices which once filled them with joy and sorrow, mirth and love.

The subjects of both Esmond and The Virginians are happily chosen. There was something specially congenial to the tone of Mr. Thackeray's mind in that of the eminent men of the early part of the eighteenth century. He entered with great ease into the feelings of such writers as Steele and Addison; and he took the trouble to make himself well acquainted with the wars of Queen Anne's time, and with part, at least, of the characters of her great captains and statesmen. His accounts of Marlborough and Webb are excellent, and the same may be said of the sketch of St. John. There is also more of a plot in Esmond than in his other works. The hero's wavering between the Protestants and Catholics, between King James II. and King George I., and his way of judging of everything, not upon principle, but almost exclusively on the ground of personal likings and dislikings, are very characteristic of the author.

Es

mond is intellectually very like Pendennis, though circumstances threw him into a wider sphere of usefulness, and amongst transactions of greater importance. The story itself is unpleasant. There is something almost shocking in the passion of Lady Castlewood for a lad who is in love with her daughter. There is a defect of the same kind in Pendennis. It is hardly likely that a woman would fall violently in love with a man with whom she had

been brought up as a sister. It is strange that a man so remarkable for the delicacy of his taste should have fallen twice into such a mistake.

The Virginians has most of the merits of Esmond, and especially the great cardinal merit of being about something important. Long after we have got tired of reading restatements of a man's peculiar views of life, we can still take great pleasure in looking at his pictures of the American War, the state of feeling in England respecting it, and all the old world stories about the half-forgotten great old houses-such as supplied Harry Warrington with aristocratic companions at the gaming-table, and fights fought long ago, like the unluckly expedition to Brittany, over which, a few years since, French patriotism waxed triumphant. It must, however, be confessed that the story drags towards the end of the book, and that there is a wofully long interval between the first appearance of the twin Virginians and their final exit. It is pleasant to think in how kindly a spirit and with what admirable intentions this book was written. Its author had the friendship of America very near his heart, and did his very best to promote goodwill between the two nations.

The defect of all Mr. Thackeray's later novels, all the good-humored ones, is the want of backbone in the male characters. Esmond and George Warrington (of The Virginians) have little more in them after all than Pendennis. Esmond, in particular, as he himself frequently observes, is a perfect fool about women. As soon as he cares about a woman he lets her do what she likes with him. It is to please a woman that he intends to be a clergyman, becomes a soldier, and commits high treason; and George Warrington has a similar weakness in a less degree. This is always admitted, by the parties concerned, to be a fault and a weakness; but it is easy to see that they and the author are barely sincere in blaming it. They seem to think it both an amiable and a venial weakness. In reality, a man thoroughly

given over to such a state of mind would be perfectly contemptible. There is something horrible in the levity of a person who will hold every scheme and object of life at a woman's disposition; and it is nothing less than a great crime to be willing to take the responsibility of contributing to civil war and revolution, for no other purpose than that of pleasing a woman who, after all, cared for nothing but the notoriety of the matter. It is, however, consolatory to find that even in novels women are represented as not liking this sort of admirer. Beatrix serves Esmond perfectly right in jilting him for ten years. If he was so weak as to submit to such treatment from her it was entirely his own fault. It is the unpleasant feature, or, at least, one unpleasant feature, in almost all Mr. Thackeray's writings, that he generally puts love in the light of an amiable weakness, which turns out happily, if at all, by chance rather than by design. It would be sad to be obliged to believe that one of the most important affairs in life is always, or, at least, generally, and in the natural course of things, managed in this blind way, at the bidding of a mere violent passion, springing up, one hardly knows how, and acting, when it has sprung up, with unaccountable and uncontrollable violence. This notion of the matter, however, is much like other parts of Mr. Thackeray's view of life. It is all impulse and passion, sometimes fervent, more often languid, but seldom guided by reflection.

Such are a few of the more obvious remarks which a review of the writings of this remarkable man suggests. Criticism, by its very nature, has much affinity with finding fault, and the merits of a popular novelist are generally so obvious and so fully recognised, that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon them. We should be sorry, however, to seem not to be alive to the merits, literary and personal, of so considerable a man, or even to be too keenly alive to his defects at a time when every one would wish to do to his memory that honour which it so well deserves. Mr. Thackeray's

VOL. LXIX. NO. CCCCXII.

place in the literary history of his country will no doubt be both high and permanent. In some of the gifts of a novelist he fully equals, and in some he exceeds, Fielding, though the foundation of his character was softer and less vivacious; but from Fielding's days to our own there has been no one at all like him in this country. One or two of his French contemporaries resemble him; and no doubt he learnt much from them, though some of their gifts he could not, and others he probably would not, acquire. He is not merely more decent than any distinguished French writer of our day-that is very much a matter of fashion; but he is absolutely free from that prurience which is the plague of French fiction, and which lurks in unsuspected shapes in the pages of several English writers of considerable reputation. There is not in all that he has written a single page open to objection on this score. Every novelist must, by the nature of the case, give to the relation between the sexes a larger place than it occupies in real life, and Mr. Thackeray, like others, is open to this criticism; but love in his writings is invariably what it ought to be a noble and gallant. feeling, even when it is blind and unreasonable. Such scenes as those which make the principal French novels of the day sealed books for modest women, are not only not to be found in Mr. Thackeray's writings, but would be so completely out. of place there, so alien to the spirit of the rest of the book, that they could hardly have been introduced even if the author had not been as high-minded as he was.

Of all French writers, the one who most resembles him is Charles de Bernard. Mr. Thackeray used to say himself that he had all his life been trying to do what De Bernard did, and had never succeeded. Like most honest self-criticisms this one was perfectly true. He was a better man than his model; he had more pathos, he drew purer and higher feelings, and an infinitely better state of things; but he never did succeed in attaining to that nervous vigour, that power of

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THE

all parties in all ages agreethat 'Posterity' will know the truth and do justice. Posterity, however, has a long minority; and no attempt having been made to define the age at which infallibility is attained, her decision must remain, we fear, for ever in suspense. If the word has any meaning, there must be some age or other to which we are ourselves 'Posterity.' Yet the times about which we agree best are still those about which we know or care least.

The reign of James I. is one about which Posterity has quarrelled less than about most, and the reason is that very little attention has been paid to it. Politically-lying as it does between the much-enduring loyalty of the Elizabethan days and the first motions of the great Rebellion-it cannot but be important and instructive. Yet its political history has hardly been explored. Instead of tracing the progress of the great controversy between the Crown and the Commons-the attempts at reconciliation and the causes of failure-Posterity has fixed its attention upon a few tragical or scandalous accidents, casual and exceptional, which interrupted the real business of the time without properly belonging to it; and has taken as its favourite authorities a few nameless chroniclers of scandal and gossip, without character or position; almost to the exclusion of all serious study of the real records of the reign-such as the journals of Parliament, the speeches and despatches of statesmen, and the private correspondence of well-known and well-reputed gentlemen, taking an interest in public matters, and reporting to each other the news of the day when as yet there were no newspapers to collect and circulate it-which are still extant in great abundance.

In March, 1860, Mr. Gardiner announced in a communication to Notes and Queries, the discovery of a very important addition to these records-a collection of notes taken by some member of the House of Commons, who sat through both the sessions of 1610; when (as our readers may or may not remember) the chief subject of discussion was Salisbury's scheme of the 'Great Contract; of the breaking off of which (as they may or may not be aware) no particulars had been previously known. The manuscript (discovered by him in a volume of which neither the description in the catalogue nor the title on the back gave any hint of its character) he has since edited for the Camden Society; and now follows it up with a full and substantial history of the first fourteen years of James's reign, the value of which will be recognized at a glance by every one who has had occasion to examine any portion of that period for himself, and which all students who have to Ideal with it in future will find it convenient to possess and keep within reach.

Not that we are prepared to recommend all Mr. Gardiner's conclusions as satisfactory. There are some from which we dissent, and many in which he appears to us to rest with more confidence than our knowledge of the conditions of the case can possibly justify. Though remarkably fair, candid, and dispassionate-admirably diligent in seeking and scrupulous in reporting evidence, and anxious to do full justice to all parties-he appears to have attached himself, as it were, to one; which may be generally described as the 'opposition' for the time being; and though always willing to believe that the others meant well and acted to the best of their judgment according to their

light, he rarely feels any difficulty in supposing that the wisest of them were blind to what was passing before their eyes, and that the path which was not taken would certainly have led to all it promised.

For our own part, we find it difficult to believe that the probable results of different courses of political action which were so dark to the men who had to deal with them can be so clear to us. We may know what they came to by the road they followed; whither they would have been carried by the other, we can never know. The plan of the battle which was fought ended, we know, in disaster; the plan which was overruled might have ended in victory, but it might also have ended in a worse disaster. This habit, nevertheless, of choosing one man or one party as guide, and seeing everything from their point of view, is hardly avoidable in a historian; for without following the lead of somebody, it would be impossible to find any way through the darkness. Nor is it without its advantages; for though it is true that the views of any party, not in power, may always be made to seem plausible, by assuming that if their advice had been followed whatever failed would have succeeded, and whatever succeeded would have succeeded better, it is also true that even the least intelligent view of the affairs of a past age taken by any decent man who lived and worked in it will be liker to the life than the best we can form for ourselves, sitting as we do at such a distance, ignorant of all that the actors knew-difficulties, apprehensions, expectations, and contingent possibilities-and knowing what they did not know-the actual event. And therefore the art of choosing the best guide and interpreter from among the contemporary witnesses is perhaps the most valuable art which a historian of times past can possess.

Whether Mr. Gardiner has always chosen the best may admit of question. But he has at least chosen men of name, character, and ability; and if it were only for the quantity of rubbish and filth to which he has

refused admittance, his work would be of great value. But he has not been content with ejecting the evidence of disreputable witnesses. He has taken pains to verify statements which have acquired authority by repetition from pen to pen; tracing them to their sources, or testing them by comparison with authentic evidence still accessible; and has thus corrected many material errors which pass current on the credit of well-reputed writers, who have merely adopted and transmitted them without suspicion or inquiry. His own authorities he contents himself (as he warns us in the preface) with merely indicating; experience having taught him,' he says -and it is a thing of which both readers and writers need to be reminded that no quotations are sufficient to save an honest inquirer from the trouble of looking into the original documents;' and that 'the question of the truth and falsehood of any statement often depends quite as much upon the silence of one witness as upon the assertion of another.' But though his authorities are only indicated, and until we have leisure to examine them we must take his word that they will be found to bear his statements out, they are always indicated fairly. An abominable practice has been introduced of late into historical literature, and countenanced, we regret to say, by some eminent writers, of giving at the end of each chapter or section a list of all the authorities that have been used in the course of it; without any attempt to specify which authority is vouched for which statement, or to distinguish those statements which are supported by some one or other in the list from those which rest on no authority at all; a practice which makes the detection of unauthorized assertions a very laborious undertaking, and serves no better purpose in effect than that of informing the reader that such documents exist; that the writer knows of them, and has, perhaps, seen them; and that if any of the assertions in that section need justification and can be justified, the justification will be found somewhere