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's nature was soft and kindly,--gentle almost to a fault,--has been shown elsewhere. But they who have called him a cynic have spoken of him merely as a writer,--and as writer he has certainly taken upon himself the special task of barking at the vices and follies of the world around him. Any satirist might in the same way be called a cynic in so far as his satire goes. Swift was a cynic certainly. Pope was cynical when he was a satirist. Juvenal was all cynical, because he was all satirist. If that be what is meant, Thackeray was certainly a cynic. But that is not all that the word implies. It intends to go back beyond the work of the man, and to describe his heart. It says of any satirist so described that he has given himself up to satire, not because things have been evil, but because he himself has been evil. Hamlet is a satirist, whereas Thersites is a cynic. If Thackeray be judged after this fashion, the word is as inappropriate to the writer as to the man. But it has to be confessed that Thackeray did allow his intellect to be too thoroughly saturated with the aspect of the ill side of things. We can trace the operation of his mind from his earliest days, when he commenced his parodies at school; when he brought out _The Snob_ at Cambridge, when he sent _Yellowplush_ out upon the world as a satirist on the doings of gentlemen generally; when he wrote his _Catherine_, to show the vileness of the taste for what he would have called Newgate literature; and _The Hoggarty Diamond_, to attack bubble companies; and _Barry Lyndon_, to expose the pride which a rascal may take in his rascality. Becky Sharp, Major Pendennis, Beatrix, both as a young and as an old woman, were written with the same purpose. There is a touch of satire in every drawing that he made. A jeer is needed for something that is ridiculous, scorn has to be thrown on something that is vile. The same feeling is to be found in every line of every ballad. VANITAS VANITATUM. Methinks the text is never stale, And life is every day renewing Fresh comments on the old old tale, Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin. Hark to the preacher, preaching still! He lifts his voice and cries his sermon, Here at St. Peter's of Cornhill, As yonder on the Mount of Hermon-- For you and me to heart to take (O dear beloved brother readers), To-day,--as when the good king spake Beneath the sol
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