met by chance in the world,
at the chance sound of a voice. Such are human fortunes, and human
sorrows; not the worst, not the greatest, for these old loves do not
die--they live in exile, and are the better parts of our souls. Not the
greatest, nor the worst of sorrows, for shame is worse, and hopeless
hunger, and a life all of barren toil without distractions, without joy,
must be far worse. But of those myriad tragedies of the life of the
poor, Thackeray does not write. How far he was aware of them, how deeply
he felt them, we are not informed. His highest tragedy is that of the
hunger of the heart; his most noble prose sounds in that meeting of Harry
Esmond with Lady Castlewood, in the immortal speech which has the burden,
"bringing your sheaves with you!" All that scene appears to me no less
unique, no less unsurpassable, no less perfect, than the "Ode to the
Nightingale" of Keats, or the _Lycidas_ of Milton. It were superfluous
to linger over the humour of Thackeray. Only Shakespeare and Dickens
have graced the language with so many happy memories of queer, pleasant
people, with so many quaint phrases, each of which has a kind of
freemasonry, and when uttered, or recalled, makes all friends of
Thackeray into family friends of each other. The sayings of Mr. Harry
Foker, of Captain Costigan, of Gumbo, are all like old dear family
phrases, they live imperishable and always new, like the words of Sir
John, the fat knight, or of Sancho Panza, or of Dick Swiveller, or that
other Sancho, Sam Weller. They have that Shakespearian gift of being
ever appropriate, and undyingly fresh.

These are among the graces of Thackeray, these and that inimitable style,
which always tempts and always baffles the admiring and despairing
copyist. Where did he find the trick of it, of the words which are
invariably the best words, and invariably fall exactly in the best
places? "The best words in the best places," is part of Coleridge's
definition of poetry; it is also the essence of Thackeray's prose. In
these Letters to Mrs. Brookfield the style is precisely the style of the
novels and essays. The style, with Thackeray, was the man. He could not
write otherwise. But probably, to the last, this perfection was not
mechanical, was not attained without labour and care. In Dr. John
Brown's works, in his essay on Thackeray, there is an example of a proof-
sheet on which the master has made corrections, and those corrections
bri