George The First
George The Second
George The Third
George The Fourth
Footnotes

INTRODUCTION.

[Illustration]

Thackeray In His Study At Onslow Square. From a painting by E. M. Ward

We know exceedingly little of the genesis and progress of _Esmond_. "It
did not seem to be a part of our lives as _Pendennis_ was," says Lady
Ritchie, though she wrote part of it to dictation. She "only heard
_Esmond_ spoken of very rarely". Perhaps its state was not the less
gracious. The Milton girls found _Paradise Lost_ a very considerable part
of their lives--and were not the happier.

But its parallels are respectable. The greatest things have a way of
coming "all so still" into the world. We wrangle--that is, those of us who
are not content simply not to know--about the composition of Homer, the
purpose of the _Divina Commedia_, the probable plan of the _Canterbury
Tales_, the _Ur-Hamlet_. Nobody put preliminary advertisements in the
papers, you see, about these things: there was a discreditable neglect of
the first requirements of the public. So it is with _Esmond_. There is, I
thought, a reference to it in the Brookfield letters; but in several
searches I cannot find it. To his mother he speaks of the book as "grand
and melancholy", and to Lady Stanley as of "cut-throat melancholy". It is
said to have been sold for a thousand pounds--the same sum that Master
Shallow lent Falstaff on probably inferior security. Those who knew
thought well of it--which is not wholly surprising.

It is still, perhaps, in possession of a success rather of esteem than of
affection. A company of young men and maidens to whom it was not long ago
submitted pronounced it (with one or two exceptions) inferior as a work of
humour. The hitting of little Harry in the eye with a potato was, they
admitted, humorous, but hardly anything else. As representing another
generation and another point of view, the faithful Dr. John Brown did not
wholly like it--Esmond's marriage with Rachel, after his love for Beatrix,
being apparently "the fly in the ointment" to him. Even the author could
only plead "there's a deal of pains in it that goes for nothing", as he
says in one of his rare published references to the subject: but he was
wrong. Undoubtedly the mere taking of pains will not do; but that is when
they are taken in not the right manner, by not the right person, on not
the right subjec