Concerning their work? No.
Concerning their genius? No. Concerning the debt owed to them by
mankind? Not a bit of it. Concerning their _lives_, ladies and
gentlemen; and whether their lives were pure and respectable and free
from scandal and such as men ought to have led whose works you would
like your sons and daughters to handle. Mr. Frank T. Marzials,
Thackeray's latest biographer, finds the matter of these Lectures
"excellent":--
"One feels in the reading that Thackeray is a peer among his
peers--a sort of elder brother,[A] kindly, appreciative and
tolerant--as he discourses of Addison, Steele, Swift, Pope,
Sterne, Fielding, Goldsmith. I know of no greater contrast in
criticism--a contrast, be it said, not to the advantage of the
French critic--than Thackeray's treatment of Pope and that of M.
Taine. What allowance the Englishman makes for the physical ills
that beset the 'gallant little cripple'; with what a gentle hand
he touches the painful places in that poor twisted body! M.
Taine, irritated apparently that Pope will not fit into his
conception of English literature, exhibits the same deformities
almost savagely."
I am sorry that I cannot read this kindliness, this appreciation, this
tolerance, into the Lectures--into those, for instance, of Sterne and
Fielding: that the simile of the "elder brother" carries different
suggestions for Mr.
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