peared in the National Standard, with a capital woodcut, representing the devil as sailing through the air, dragging after him the fat Sir Roger de Rollo by means of his tail, which is wound round Sir Roger's neck. The idea of this tale is characteristic. The venerable knight already in the other world, has made a foolish bet with the devil in. volving very seriously his future prospects there, which he can only win by persuading some of his relations on earth to say an Ave for him. He fails to obtain this slight boon from a kinsman successor for obvious reasons; and from a beloved niece, owing to a musical lover whose serenading quite puts a stop to her devotional exercises; and succeeds at last, only when, giving up all hope from compassion or generosity, he appeals by a pious fraud to the selfishness of a brother and a monk. The story ends with a very Thackerean touch: "The moral of this story will be given in several successive numbers;" the last three words are in the Sketch-Book changed into "the second edi tion." habit of taking certain periodicals unconsciously, as they take snuff. The National Standard, etc. etc., came into existence on the 5th January 1833, and ceased to be on the 1st February 1834. * His subsequent writings contain several allusions to this misadventure; from some of which we would infer that the break-down of the journal was attended with circumstances more unpleasant than mere literary failure. Mr. Adolphus Simcoe (Punch, vol. iii.), when in a bad way from a love of literature and drink, completed his ruin by purchasing and conducting for six months that celebrated miscellany called the Lady's Lute, after which time "its chords were rudely snapped asunder, and he who had swept them aside with such joy went forth a wretched and heart-broken man." And in Lovel the Widower, Mr. Batchelor narrates similar experiences "I daresay I gave myself airs as editor of that confounded Museum, and proposed to educate the public taste, to diffuse morality and sound literature throughout the nation, and to Perhaps best of all is a portrait of Louis pocket a liberal salary in return for my services. Philippe, presenting the Citizen King under I daresay I printed my own sonnets, my own the Robert Macaire aspect, the adoption and tragedy, my own verses (to a being who shall popularity of which Thackeray so carefully be nameless, but whose conduct has caused a explains and illustrates in his Essay on faithful heart to bleed not a little). I daresay "Caricatures and Lithography in Paris." I wrote satirical articles, in which I piqued myBelow the portrait are these lines, not them- self on the fineness of my wit and criticisms, got up for the nonce, out of encyclopædias and selves very remarkable, but in which, esbiographical dictionaries; so that I would be pecially in the allusion to Snobs by the des- actually astonished at my own knowledge. I tined enemy of the race, we catch glimpses daresay I made a gaby of myself to the world; of the future:pray, my good friend, hast thou never done likewise? If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man." "Like 'the king in the parlour' he's fumbling his money, Like the queen in the kitchen' his speech Except when he talks it, like Emperor Nap, mappe; But alas all his zeal for the multitude's It is a small folio, with six lithographs, slightly tinted, entitled Flore et Zephyr, Ballet Mythologique dédié à—par Théophile *The portrait of Mr. Adolphus, stretched out, "careless diffused,"-seedy, hungry, and diabolical, in his fashionable cheap hat, his dirty white duck trowsers strapped tightly down, as being the mode and possibly to conceal his bare legs; a half-smoked, probably unsmokeably bad cigar, in his hand, which is lying over the arm of a tavern bench, from whence The journal seems to have been an attempt to substitute vigorous and honest criticism of books and of art for the partiality and slipslop general then, and now not perhaps quite unknown. It failed, however, partly, it may be, from the inexperience of its managers, but doubtless still more from the want of the capital necessary to establish anything of the sort in the face of similar seen fellows, supping plenteously and with cheer, journals of old standing. People get into a is, for power and drawing, not unworthy of Hogarth. he is casting a greedy and ruffian eye upon some un Wagstaffe. Between "à" and " par on tiptoe, and wrapped up, but not too much the cover is the exquisite Flore herself, all for her facre. With his back to the comalone in some rosy and bedizened bower. fortable fire, and staring wickedly at her, is She has the old jaded smirk, and, with eye- the other lover, a big, burly, elderly man, brows up and eyelids dropt, she is looking probably well to do on the Bourse, and with down oppressed with modesty and glory. a wife and family at home in their beds. Her nose, which is long, and has a ripe droop, The last exhibits Les délassements de Zephyr. gives to the semicircular smirk of the large That hard working and homely personage mouth, down upon the centre of which it is resting his arm on the chimney-piece, comes in the funniest way, an indescribably taking a huge pinch of snuff from the box sentimental absurdity. Her thin, sinewy of a friend, with a refreshing expression of arms and large hands are crossed on her satisfaction, the only bit of nature as yet. breast, and her petticoat stands out like an A dear little innocent pot-boy, such as only inverted white tulip-of muslin out of Thackeray knew how to draw, is gazing and which come her professional legs, in the waiting upon the two, holding up a tray only position which human nature never from the nearest tavern, on which is a great puts its legs into; it is her special pose. Of pewter-pot of foaming porter for Zephyr, course, also, you are aware, by that smirk, and a rummer of steaming brandy and water that look of being looked at, that though for his friend, who has come in from the alone in maiden meditation in this her bower, cold air. These drawings are lithographed and sighing for her Zephyr, she is in front by Edward Morton, son of "Speed the of some thousand pairs of eyes, and under Plough," and are done with that delicate the fire of many double-barrelled lorgnettes, strength and truth for which this excellent of which she is the focus. but little known artist is always to be prais ed. In each corner is the monogram which appears so often afterwards with the M added, and is itself superseded by the well-known pair of spectacles. Thackeray must have been barely five-and-twenty when this was published by Mitchell in Bond Street. It can hardly be said to have sold. In the first plate, La Danse fait ses of frandes sur l'autel de l'harmonie, in the shapes of Flore and Zephyr coming trippingly to the footlights, and paying no manner of regard to the altar of harmony, represented by a fiddle with an old and dreary face, and a laurel wreath on its head, and very great regard to the unseen but perfectly understood "house." Next is Triste et abbattu, les séductions des Nymphes le (Zephyr) tentent en vain, Zephyr looking theat rically sad. Then Flore (with one lower extremity at more than a right angle to the other) déplore l'absence de Zephyr. The man in the orchestra endeavouring to combine business with pleasure, so as to play the flageolet and read his score, and at the same time miss nothing of the deploring, is intensely comic. Next Zephyr has his turn, and dans un pas seul exprime sa suprême désespoir-the extremity of despair being expressed by doubling one leg so as to touch the knee of the other, and then whirling round so as to suggest the regulator of a steam-engine run off. Next is the rapturous reconciliation, when the faithful creature bounds into his arms, and is held up to the house by the waist in the wonted fashion. Then there is La Retraite de Flore, where we find her with her mother and two admirers-Zephyr, of course, not one. This in Thackeray's strong unflinching line. One lover is a young dandy without forehead or chin, sitting idiotically astride his chair. To him the old lady, who has her slight rouge, too, and is in a homely shawl and muff, having walked, is making faded love. In the centre is the fair darling herself still on N-8 VOL. XL. Now it is worth noticing how in this, as always, he ridiculed the ugly and the absurd. in truth and pureness. There is, as we may well know, much that is wicked (though not so much as the judging community are apt to think) and miserable in such a life. There is much that a young man and an artist might have felt and drawn in depicting it, of which in after years he would be ashamed; but "Theophile Wagstaffe" has done nothing of this. The effect of looking over these juvenilia-these first shafts from that mighty bow, now, alas! unbent-is good, is moral; you are sorry for the hard-wrought slaves; perhaps a little contemptuous towards the idle people who go to see them; and you feel, moreover, that the Ballet, as thus done, is ugly as well as bad, is stupid as well as destructive of decency. His dream of editorship being ended, Mr. Thackeray thenceforward contented himself with the more lowly, but less responsible, position of a contributor, especially to Fraser's Magazine. The youth of Fraser was full of vigour and genius. We know no better reading than its early volumes, unsparing, indeed, but brilliant with scholarship and originality and fire. In these days, the staff of that periodical included such men as Maginn, "Barry Cornwall," Coleridge, Carlyle, Hogg, Galt, Theodore Hook, Delta, Gleig, "From the frequent perusal of older works of imagination I had learnt so to weave the incidents of my story as to interest the feelings of the reader in favour of virtue, and to increase his detestation of vice. I have been taught by Eugene Aram to mix vice and virtue up together in such an inextricable confusion as to render it impossible that any preference should be given to either, or that the one, indeed, should be at all distinguishable from the other. In taking my subject from that walk of life to motives conspired to fix my choice on the herowhich you had directed my attention, many Edward Irving, and, now foremost of them not more than twenty-one, Elisabeth Brownall, Thackeray. The first of the Yellowplush rigge: a tale, was narrated in the August Correspondence appeared in November 1837. and September numbers of Fraser. This The world should be grateful to Mr. John tale is dedicated to the author of Eugene Henry Skelton, who in that year wrote a Aram, and the author describes himself as a book called My Book, or the Anatomy of young man who has for a length of time apConduct, for to him is owing the existence plied himself to literature, but entirely failed of Mr. Charles Yellowplush as a critic, and in deriving any emoluments from his exeras a narrator of "fashnable fax and polite tions. Depressed by failure he sends for anny goats." Mr. Yellowplush, on reading the popular novel of Eugene Aram to gain Mr. Skelton's book, saw at once that only a instruction therefrom. He soon discovers gentleman of his distinguished profession his mistake:could competently criticise the same; and this was soon succeeded by the wider conviction that the great subject of fashionable life should not be left to any 66 common writin' creatures," but that an authentic picture thereof must be supplied by "ONE OF US.' In the words of a note to the first paper, with the initials O. Y., but which it is easy to recognise as the work of Mr. Charles himself without the plush:-"He who looketh from a tower sees more of the battle than the knights and captains engaged in it; and, in like manner, he who stands be-ine of the ensuing tale; she is a classic personhind a fashionable table knows more of society than the guests who sit at the board. It is from this source that our great novelwriters have drawn their experience, retailing the truths which they learned. It is not impossible that Mr. Yellowplush may continue his communications, when we shall be able to present the reader with the only authentic picture of fashionable life which has been given to the world in our time." The idea was not carried out very fully. The only pictures sketched by Mr. Yellow plush were the farce of "Miss Shum's Husband," and the terrible tragedy of "Deuceace," neither of them exactly "pictures of fashionable life." We rather fancy that, in the story of Mr. Deuceace, Mr. Yellowplush was carried away from his original plan, a return to which he found impossible after that wonderful medley of rascality, grim humour, and unrelieved bedevilry of all kinds. But in 1838 he reverted to his original critical tendencies, and demolished all that The Quarterly had left of a book which made some noise in its day, called A Diary Illustrative of the Times of George the Fourth; and wrote from his pantry one of the "Epistles to the Literati," expressing. his views of Sir Edward Lytton's Sea Captain, than which we know of no more good-natured, trenchant, and conclusive piece of criticism. All the Yellowplush papers except the first are re-published in the Miscellanies. In 1839, appeared the story of Catherine, by Ikey Solomon. This story is little known, and it throws us back upon one still less known. In 1832, when Mr. Thackeray was age, her name has been already linked to immortal verse' by the muse of Canning. Besides, it is extraordinary that, as you had commenced a tragedy under the title of Eugene Aram, I had already sketched a burletta with the title of Elisabeth Brownrigge. I had, indeed, in my dramatic piece, been guilty of an egregious and unpardonable error: I had attempted to excite the sympathies of the audience in favour of the murdered apprentices, but your novel has disabused me of so vulgar a prejudice, and, in my present version of her case, all the interest of the reader and all the pathetic powers of the author will be engaged on the side of the murderess." According to this conception the tale proceeds, with incidents and even names taken directly from the Newgate Calendar, but rivalling Eugene Aram itself in magnificence of diction, absurdity of sentiment, and pomp of Greek quotation. The trial scene and speech for the defence are especially well hit off. If Elisabeth Brownrigge was written by Thackeray, and the internal evidence seems to us strong, the following is surpris ing criticism from a youth of twenty-onethe very Byron and Bulwer age :— "I am inclined to regard you (the author of Eugene Aram) as an original discoverer in the world of literary enterprise, and to reverence you as the father of a new lusus natura school.' There is no other title by which your manner could be so aptly designated. I am told, for instance, that in a former work, having to paint the class of country curates, among whom, peran adulterer, you described him as belonging to haps, such a criminal is not met with once in a hundred years; while, on the contrary, being in search of a tender-hearted, generous, senti- | create interest by making their rascals perform mental, high-minded hero of romance, you virtuous actions. Against these popular plans turned to the pages of the Newgate Calendar, we here solemnly appeal. We say, let your and looked for him in the list of men who have rogues in novels act like rogues, and your honcut throats for money, among whom a person est men like honest men; don't let us have any in possession of such qualities could never have juggling and thimblerigging with virtue and been met with at all. Wanting a shrewd, self- vice, so that, at the end of three volumes, the ish, worldly, calculating valet, you describe bewildered reader shall not know which is him as an old soldier, though he bears not a which; don't let us find ourselves kindling at single trait of the character which might have the generous qualities of thieves and sympabeen moulded by a long course of military ser- thizing with the rascalities of noble hearts. For vice, but, on the contrary, is marked by all the our own part we know what the public likes, distinguishing features of a bankrupt attorney, and have chosen rogues for our characters, and or a lame duck from the Stock Exchange. Hav- have taken a story frem the Newgate Calendar, ing to paint a cat, you endow her with the idio- which we hope to follow out to edification. syncracies of a dog." Among the rogues at least, we will have nothing that shall be mistaken for virtue. And if the British public (after calling for three or four editions) shall give up, not only our rascals, but the rascals of all other authors,—we shall be content. We shall apply to Government for a pension, and think that our duty is done." At the end the author intimates that he is ready to treat with any liberal publisher for a series of works in the same style, to be called Tales of the Old Bailey, or Romances of Tyburn Tree. The proposed series is represented only by Catherine, a longer and more elaborate effort in the same direction. It is the narrative of the misdeeds of Mrs. Again, further on in the same story : "The public will hear of nothing but rogues; Catherine Hayes, an allusion to whose and the only way in which poor authors, who criminality in after days brought down upon themselves, is to paint such thieves as they are; must live, can act honestly by the public and the author of Pendennis an amusing out- not dandy, poetical, rose-water thieves, but real pouring of fury from Irish patriotism, for- downright scoundrels, leading scoundrelly lives, getting in its excitement that the name was drunken, profligate, dissolute, low, as scounborne by a heroine of the Newgate Calendar drels will be. They don't quote Plato, like as well as by the accomplished singer whom Eugene Aram, or live like gentlemen, and sing we all regret. The purpose of Catherine is the pleasantest ballads in the world, like jolly the same as that of Elisabeth Brownrigge—like that precious canting Maltravers, whom we Dick Turpin, or prate eternally about rò κahov, to explode the lusus naturæ school; but the all of us have read about and pitied; or die plan adopted is slightly different. Things whitewashed saints, like poor Biss Dadsy in had got worse than they were in 1832. The Oliver Twist. No, my dear madam, you and public had called for coarse stimulants and your daughters have no right to admire and had got them. Jack Sheppard had been ac-sympathize with any such persons, fictitious or quiring great popularity in Bentley's Miscellany; and the true feeling and pathos of many parts of Oliver Twist had been marred by the unnatural sentimentalism of Nancy. Mr. Ikey Solomon objected utterly to these monstrosities of literature, and thought the only cure was a touch of realism; an attempt to represent blackguards in some measure as they actually are:- real: you ought to be made cordially to detest, scorn, loathe, abhor, and abominate all people whose works we have above alluded to, have no of this kidney. Men of genius, like those business to make these characters interesting or agreeable, to be feeding your, morbid fancies, or indulging their own with such monstrous food. For our parts, young ladies, we beg you to bottle up your tears, and not waste a single drop of them on any one of the heroes or heroines in this history; they are all rascals every soul of them, and behave as sich.' Keep your sympathy for those who deserve it; don't carry it, for preference, to the Old Bailey, and grow maudlin over the compa ny assembled there." "In this," he says, we have consulted nature and history rather than the prevailing taste and the general manner of authors. The amusing novel of Ernest Maltravers, for instance, opens with a seduction; but then it is performed by people of the strictest virtue on both sides; and there is so much religion and philosophy Neither of these tales, though it is very in the heart of the seducer, so much tender in-curious to look back at them now, can be nocence in the soul of the seduced, that-bless considered quite successful. And the reathe little dears!-their very peccadilloes make son of this is not hard to find. It was imone interested in them; and their naughtiness becomes quite sacred, so deliciously is it de scribed. Now, if we are to be interested by ras⚫cally actions, let us have them with plain faces, and let them be performed, not by virtuous philosophers, but by rascals. Another clever class of novelists adopt the contrary system, and possible that they could be attractive as stories; while, on the other hand, the humour was not broad enough to command attention for itself. They were neither sufficiently interesting, nor sufficiently amusing. They are caricatures without the element of caricature. In Elisabeth, we have little but things of the best writers, it suffers greatly the story of a crime committed by a crimi- by separation from the context, the force of nal actuated by motives and overflowing the contrast being almost entirely lost :with sentiments of the Eugene Aram type. Catherine is more ambitious. In it an at- her husband. There is, be sure, a strong mag"Mrs. Hayes sat up in the bed sternly regarding tempt is made to construct a story-to de-netic influence in wakeful eyes so examining a lineate character. The rival loves of Mr. sleeping person; do not you, as a boy, rememBullock and Mr. Hayes, and the adventures ber waking of bright summer mornings and of the latter on his marriage-day, show, to finding your mother looking over you? had not some extent, the future novelist; while in the the gaze of her tender eyes stolen into your pictures of the manners of the times, slight senses long before you woke, and cast over your though they are, in the characters of Corpo- slumbering spirit a sweet spell of peace, and ral Brock and Cornet Galgenstein, and M. love, and fresh-springing joy ?" l'Abbé O'Flaherty, we can trace, or at least In 1840, the Shabby Genteel Story apwe now fancy we can trace-the author of peared in Fraser, which broke off sorrowBarry Lyndon and Henry Esmond. Cath- fully enough, as we are told," at a sad period erine herself, in her gradual progress from of the writer's own life," to be afterwards the village jilt to a murderess, is the most taken up in The Adventures of Philip. striking thing in the story, and is a sketch The story is not a pleasant one, nor can we of remarkable power. But nothing could read it without pain, although we know that make a story interesting which consists of the after fortunes of the Little Sister are not little more than the seduction of a girl, the altogether unhappy. But it shows clear inintrigues of a mistress, the discontent of a dications of growing power and range; wife growing into hatred and ending in mur- Brandon, Tufthunt, the Gann family, and der. At the close, indeed, the writer resorts Lord Cinqbars, can fairly claim the dignity to the true way of making such a jeu d'es- of ancestors. The Great Hoggarty Diamond prit attractive-burlesque. He concludes, came in 1841. This tale was always, we though too late altogether to save the piece, are informed in the preface to a separate in a blaze of theatrical blue-fire; and it was edition in 1849, a great favourite with the this idea of burlesque or extravagant carica- author-a judgment, however, in which at ture which led to the perfected successes of first he stood almost alone. It was refused George de Barnwell and Codlingsby. In a by one magazine before it found a place in literary point of view, it is well worth while | Fraser; and when it did appear it was little to go back upon those early efforts; and we esteemed, or, indeed, noticed in any way. have dwelt upon them the more willingly that The late Mr. John Sterling took a different their purpose and the literary doctrine they view, and wrote Mr. Thackeray a letter contend for would be well remembered at which "at that time gave me great comfort this very time. We have given up writing and pleasure." Few will now venture to about discovered criminals only to write express doubts of Mr. Sterling's discernment. more about criminals not yet found out; But in reality we suspect that this story is the lusus naturæ school has given place to not very popular. It is said to want humour the sensational; the literature of the New and power; but, on the other hand, in its gate Calendar has been supplanted by the beauty of pathos and tenderness of feeling, literature of the detective officer-a style quite indescribable, it reaches a higher point rather the worse and decidedly the more of art than any of the minor tales; and stupid of the two. The re-publication of these qualities have gained for it admirers Catherine might be a useful, and would be very enthusiastic if not numerous. Fraser a not unpleasing specific in the present dis- for June of the same year has a most eneased state of literary taste. We have said joyable paper called "Memorials of Gorthat the hand of the master is traceable in mandizing," in which occurs the well-known the characters of this tale. We have also a adaptation of the "Persicos Odi"-" Dear good example of what was always a marked peculiarity, both in his narrative writings, and in his representations of composite natures, what some one has called his "sudden pathos," an effect of natural and unexpected contrast always deeply poetical in feeling, such as the love of Barry Lyndon for his son, the association of a murderess eyeing her victim, with images of beauty and happiness and peace. We quote the passage, although, as is always the case with the best Lucy, you know what my wish is;" a paper better than anything in the "Original," better because simpler than Hayward's Art of Dining, and which should certainly be restored to a dinner-eating world. To say nothing of its quiet humour and comical earnestness, it has a real practical value. It would be invaluable to all the hungry. Britons in Paris who lower our national character, and, what is a far greater calamity, demoralize even French cooks, by their |