lief. Can you remember any
moment in Vanity Fair when you beheld Becky as again and again you
behold Beatrix, catching the very slant of the light on her face?
Becky never suddenly flowered out against her background in that way;
some want of solidity and of objectivity there still is in Becky, and
there must be, because she is regarded from anywhere, from nowhere,
from somewhere in the surrounding void. Thackeray's language about her
does not carry the same weight as Esmond's about Beatrix, because
nobody knows where Thackeray is, or what his relation may be to Becky.

This, then, is the readiest means of dramatically heightening a
reported impression, this device of telling the story in the first
person, in the person of somebody in the book; and large in our
fiction the first person accordingly bulks. The characterized "I" is
substituted for the loose and general "I" of the author; the loss of
freedom is more than repaid by the more salient effect of the picture.
Precision, individuality is given to it by this pair of eyes, known
and named, through which the reader sees it; instead of drifting in
space above the spectacle he keeps his allotted station and
contemplates a delimited field of vision. There is much benefit in the
sense that the picture has now a definite edge; its value is brought
out to the best advantage when its bounding line is thus emphasized.
Moreover, it is not only the field of vision that is determined by the
use of the first person, it is also the quality of the tone. When we
are shown what Esmond sees, and nothing else, there is first of all
the comfortable assurance of the point of view, and then there is the
personal colour which he throws over his account, so that it gains
another kind of distinction. It does not matter that Esmond's tone in
his story is remarkably like Thackeray's in the stories that _he_
tells; in Esmond's case the tone has a meaning in the story, is part
of it, whereas in the other case it is related only to Thackeray, and
Thackeray is in the void. When Esmond ruminates and reflects, his
manner is the expression of a human being there present, to whom it
can be referred; when Thackeray does the same, there is no such
compactness, and the manner trails away where we cannot follow it.
Dramatically it seems clear that the method of Esmond has the
advantage over the method of Vanity Fair.

Here are sound reasons, so far as they go, for the use of the first
person in the dis