h an eye that took in unconsciously every detail of face, costume
or scene and reproduced it with perfect accuracy. The reader of his
novels is entertained by a series of pen pictures of men and women and
scenes in high life and life below stairs that are photographic in
their clearness and fidelity. Dickens always failed when he came to
depict British aristocratic life; but Thackeray moved in drawing-rooms
and brilliant assemblages with the ease of a man familiar from youth
with good society, and hence free from all embarrassment, even in the
presence of royalty.

Thackeray's early works are written in the same perfect, easy,
colloquial style, rich in natural literary allusions and frequently
rhythmic with poetic feeling, which marked his latest novel. He also
had perfect command of slang and the cockney dialect of the Londoner.
No greater master of dialogue or narrative ever wrote than he who
pictured the gradual degradation of Becky Sharp or the many
self-sacrifices of Henry Esmond for the woman that he loved.

Howells and other critics have censured Thackeray severely because of
his tendency to preach, and also because he regarded his characters as
puppets and himself as the showman who brought out their
peculiarities. There is some ground for this criticism, if one regards
the art of the novelist as centered wholly in realism; but such a hard
and fast rule would condemn all old English novelists from Richardson
to Thackeray.

It ought not to disturb any reader that Defoe turns aside and gives
reflections on the acts of his characters, for these remarks are the
fruit of his own knowledge of the world. In the same way Thackeray
keeps up a running comment on his men and women, and these bits of
philosophy make his novels a storehouse of apothegms, which may be
read again and again with great profit and pleasure. The modern novel,
with its comparative lack of thought and feeling, its insistence
upon the absolute effacement of the author, is seldom worth reading a
second time. Not so with Thackeray. Every reading reveals new beauties
of thought or style. An entire book has been made up of brief extracts
from Thackeray's novels, and it is an ideal little volume for a pocket
companion on walks, as Thackeray fits into any mood and always gives
one material for thought.

[Illustration: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY A CARICATURE DRAWN BY
HIMSELF]

Of all Thackeray's novels _Vanity Fair_ is the best known and most
po