n
heroic.'

No very deep philosophy in this, we might say, for surely historians
up to Esmond's day had not all been pompous and servile, while
something like dignity is desirable. But here we have Thackeray
speaking through Esmond his own thoughts about history, and
proclaiming the rise of naturalism against the romantic high-heeled
school. And in a much later chapter, where Esmond visits Addison, we
have the true realistic method of Tolstoi and other quite modern
novelists, as compared with the old classic style of describing war.
Addison has been writing a poem on the Blenheim campaign:

'"I admire your art," says Esmond to Addison; "the murder of the
campaign is done to military music, like a battle at the opera, and
the virgins shriek in harmony, as our victorious grenadiers march
into their villages. Do you know what a scene it was? what a
triumph you are celebrating, what scenes of shame and horror were
enacted, over which the commander's genius presided as calm as
though he didn't belong to our sphere? You talk of 'the listening
soldier fixed in sorrow,' the 'leader's grief swayed by generous
pity'; to my belief the leader cared no more for bleating flocks
than he did for infants' cries, and many of our ruffians butchered
one or the other with equal alacrity. You hew out of your polished
verses a stately image of smiling victory; I tell you 'tis an
uncouth, distorted, savage idol, hideous, bloody, and barbarous.
The rites performed before it are shocking to think of. You great
poets should show it as it is, ugly and horrible, not beautiful and
serene."'

When Colonel Esmond has to describe the battles in which he himself
took part, he avoids, as might be supposed, the high romantic style.
But he does not, therefore, fall on the other side, into the mire of
the writers who at the present day conscientiously give us the horrors
of the hospital and all the brutalities of war, which Esmond knows,
but does not choose to set down in his memoir. In his account of the
Blenheim victory there is a skilful touch of the professional soldier,
who records briefly the position of the armies and the tactical
movements; and it lights up with suppressed enthusiasm when he records
the intrepidity of the English regiments in that fierce and famous
struggle. We read of Major-General Wilkes,

'on foot, at the head of the attacking column, m