of character, the essays contain appreciative
literary criticism. The essence of the humor in these
eighteenth-century writers is distilled in its purest, most delicate
flavor, by this nineteenth-century member of their brotherhood.

_The Four Georges_ deals with England's crowned heads in a satiric
vein, which caused much comment among Thackeray's contemporaries. The
satire is, however, mild and subdued, never venomous. For example, he
says in the essay on George III.:--

"King George's household was a model of an English gentleman's
household. It was early; it was kindly; it was charitable; it was
frugal; it was orderly; it must have been stupid to a degree which I
shudder now to contemplate. No wonder all the princes ran away from
the lap of that dreary domestic virtue. It always rose, rode, dined,
at stated intervals. Day after day was the same. At the same hour at
night the King kissed his daughters' jolly cheeks; the Princesses
kissed their mother's hand; and Madame Thielke brought the royal
nightcap."

General Characteristics.--Dickens and Thackeray have left graphic
pictures of a large portion of contemporary London life. Dickens
presents interesting pictures of the vagabonds, the outcasts, and the
merchants, and Thackeray portrays the suave, polite leisure class and
its dependents.

Thackeray is an uncompromising realist and a satirist. He insisted
upon picturing life as he believed that it existed in London society;
and, to his satiric eye, that life was composed chiefly of the small
vanities, the little passions, and the petty quarrels of commonplace
people, whose main objects were money and title. He could conceive
noble men and women, as is proved by Esmond, Lady Castlewood, and
Colonel Newcome; but such characters are as rare in Thackeray as he
believed they were in real life. The following passage upon mankind's
fickleness is a good specimen of his satiric vein in dealing with
human weakness:--

"There are no better satires than letters. Take a bundle of your
dear friend's letters of ten years back--your dear friend whom you
hate now. Look at a pile of your sister's! How you clung to each
other until you quarreled about the twenty-pound legacy!... Vows,
love promises, confidence, gratitude,--how queerly they read after a
while!...The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that faded
utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank, so
that you mi