Eliot," and her overshadowing genius, have associated his name with hers in a way that perhaps puts him at some disadvantage.

Matthew Arnold (1822-88) was a noted writer of our own times. He was the son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, head master of Rugby, and after going through that school and. Balliol College, Oxford, he was elected a fellow of Oriel, and later was for ten years professor of poetry at Oxford. His poetical works came first (as is so often the case with men who write both poetry and prose) and we may cite "Tristram and Yseult" as the best known of his poems. In prose he published many books; chiefly lectures on certain scholarly subjects, collected into book form after use in his course of college- instruction. At about fifty, however, he subjected himself to much criticism through a new departure in religious writing in an essay called "Literature and Dogma;" which subjected theology to criticism from a new point of view. He traveled in America (quite late in life) and lectured; attacking, among other things, the system of governing by popular majorities. His last three books are all on American subjects.

Henry Thomas Buckle (1822-62) is one of the very few writers who have earned an enduring place in history by the production of only a single book. He was a delicate youth and got his education by his own efforts. He came into a large fortune when only eighteen years old, and at once devoted himself to literary pursuits; getting together one of the finest libraries in the world. At the age of thirty-five he published the first volume of his "History of Civilization in England" and after a few years his second; the two being only the beginning of a work which death cut short before any more was done. The book, so far as finished, is really an essay on history in its reference to civilization, rather than a statement of the steps by which Englishmen became civilized. Therefore it is not possible to say that the narrative

comes down to such or such a date.

There is no sequence

of dates; it merely goes a certain way toward exhausting the subject, and stops short of doing so.

The untimely death of this admirable and praiseworthy writer occurred at Damascus, where he chanced to be, having journeyed so far in search of health.

CHAPTER LIV.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVELISTS.

THACKERAY. DICKENS.

N the brilliant Victorian period of English litera

ture the names of Dickens and Thackeray are

closely and constantly connected. In the earliest of their novels appear the very last of the wearers of hair-powder and small-clothes, and they were both still writing when the war of the American Rebellion was fought. Thus their scenes embrace the emergence from the old and slow things to the new and rapid; from stage - coaches and wooden sailing - vessels to steamboats, railways, telegraphs and ironclads, not to speak of friction matches, penny-postage and postage-stamps, gas-lights, power printing-presses, and a thousand things more or less connected with life and literature.

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63) was born in Calcutta, and was the son of an officer in the East India Civil Service. His father dying, his mother married Major Smyth, and during Thackeray's childhood the family moved to England. He was sent to the Charter-House School, afteward made famous in "The Newcomes" as "Gray Friars." Of his recollections about this a schoolfellow remarks:

His change of retrospective feeling wàs very characteristic. In his earlier days he always spoke of the Charter House as Slaughter House and Smithfield. As he became famous and prosperous his memory softened, and Slaughter House was changed into Gray Friars, where Colonel Newcome ended his life.

The unlucky breaking of his nose, which spoiled his good looks and marked him for life, occurred in one of the school-fights which were in those days (perhaps are still) a recognized part of a boy's experience at great English schools. At seventeen he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, but stayed there less than two years. During this time he wrote for a Cambridge periodical called “The Snob," thus early turning his attention to a subject pursued afterward in his "Book of Snobs."

After leaving college, while his mother and step-father were living in Devonshire, he went to Weimar and Paris; his aim being to make himself an artist. He achieved no success except in caricaturing; and even this he did not do well enough to rely on it for a living. In looking over the sketches with which he illustrated his earlier works, one wonders whether it was that his mental picture was not clear, or that his hand did not answer to his imagination. It was probably the former, as all his figures have the same faults; and none of them look exactly like human beings; yet after all, they do give the feeling of the text, and at any rate, so associated are they with his beloved personality that one prizes them as they are and would not exchange them for the best work of the art illustrative.

When he succeeded to his fortune about £500 a year -he very promptly lost it, interest and principal. Perhaps this was really a blessing in disguise, for the rule seems almost invariable that the highest literary achievement must spring from the stony ground of necessity. At about this time, Dickens, already on the high wave of success (he being then twenty-three and Thackeray twenty-four), received a call from the would-be artist, who brought a portfolio of his sketches and vainly sought the privilege of illustrating Dickens's next publication.

Thackeray's literary life began in London, at same time when Dickens refused his drawings.

about the

He wrote

short stories for various periodicals-among them “The Great Hoggarty Diamond," and "The History of Samuel Titmarsh”—and (as he told long afterward) met with so little appreciation that the editor warned him that the latter story was running too long; it must be shortened!

He married at twenty-six, showing by this assumption of new responsibilities, a certain degree of confidence in the future. It certainly added to his chance of success by giving a spur to counteract his lifelong tendency to indolence and procrastination.

"Punch" was Thackeray's main source of income for the ten years following 1843; and though his work on it was necessarily anonymous, his name gradually became identified with the "Thackeray" style of humor, which embodied fun and philosophy, satire and sense. During this period appeared "Vanity Fair, a Novel without a Hero," published in twenty-four weekly numbers. The first publishers to whom it was offered declined it; Bradbury & Evans (the owners of "Punch") took it up, and it made fortune for them and fame for him.

The serial method of publication, necessitating as it does sharp and continuous attention to the interest of articles each coming to the test of public approval at the end of the week which gave it birth, was doubtless of immense worth to Thackeray, and helped to give the uniformity of value to "Vanity Fair," "Pendennis," and the "Newcomes." In such work there could be no more of the old prosaic methods; though they did very well in the early days of fiction when a dull and spiritless chapter could be atoned for by its fresh and vigorous successor. The "Punch" articles, the Snob papers and ballads, furnished also excellent material for later publication in book form, when the greater books had given their author a name under which any word was sure of an audience.

"Vanity Fair" (though not a caricature) is essentially a