cter sketches, which all belong to the
author's first and most Hogarthian manner, do not range below the
legitimate boundaries of literature as a fine art, and whether they do
not much rather harm than heighten his permanent reputation when they
are placed on a line with his masterpieces by formal reproduction. It
is impossible to take much interest in personages with an unbroken
record of profligacy and baseness; and we are reminded of the
Aristotelian maxim that pure wickedness is no subject for dramatic
treatment.

Yet we are aware that it may be practically impossible to publish
incomplete editions of a very popular writer; and in the extravagances
of his youth one may discern the promise of much higher things. Very
rapidly, in fact, in the work which comes next, Thackeray rises at
once to a far superior level of artistic performance. We are not
indisposed to endorse the opinion, pronounced more than once by good
judges, that the high-water mark of his peculiar genius was touched by
_Barry Lyndon_, which first exhibits the rare and distinctive
qualities that were completely developed in his later and larger
novels. It may be affirmed, as a general rule, that most of our
eminent writers of fiction have leapt, as Scott did, into the arena
with some work of first-class merit, which has immediately caught
public attention and established their position in literature. Their
fugitive pieces, their crudities and imperfect essays, have been
either judiciously suppressed or consigned to oblivion. They have
followed, one may say, the goodly custom prescribed by the governor
of the Cana marriage feast; they put forth in the beginning their good
wine, and they fall back upon inferior brands only when the public,
having well drunk of the potent vintage, will swallow anything from a
favourite author. We may regret that Thackeray's start as a man of
letters should have furnished an exception to this salutary rule; and
in surveying, after the lapse of many years, his collected works, we
are disposed to observe that no first-class writer has suffered more
from the enduring popularity which has encouraged the republication of
everything that is his, from the finished _chefs-d'oeuvres_ down to
the ephemeral and unripe products of an exuberant youth. He would have
given the world a notable confirmation of the rule that a great author
usually leads off on a high note, if he had opened his munificent
literary entertainment with _Barry L