Blanche is fair. Outside the old
yellow covers of "Pendennis," you see the blonde mermaid, "amusing, and
clever, and depraved," dragging the lover to the sea, and the nut-brown
maid holding him back. Angelina, of the "Rose and the Ring," is the
Becky of childhood; she is fair, and the good Rosalba is _brune_. In
writing "Pendennis" he had a singular experience. He looked over his own
"back numbers," and found "a passage which I had utterly forgotten as if
I had never read or written it." In Lockhart's "Life of Scott," James
Ballantyne says that "when the 'Bride of Lammermoor' was first put into
his hands in a complete shape, he did not recollect one single incident,
character, or conversation it contained." That is to say, he remembered
nothing of his own invention, though his memory of the traditional parts
was as clear as ever. Ballantyne remarks, "The history of the human mind
contains nothing more wonderful." The experience of Thackeray is a
parallel to that of Scott. "Pendennis," it must be noted, was
interrupted by a severe illness, and "The Bride of Lammermoor" was
dictated by Sir Walter when in great physical pain. On one occasion
Thackeray "lit upon a very stupid part of 'Pendennis,' I am sorry to say;
and yet how well written it is! What a shame the author don't write a
complete good story! Will he die before doing so? or come back from
America and do it?"

Did he ever write "a complete, good story"? Did any one ever do such a
thing as write a three-volume, novel, or a novel of equal length, which
was "a complete, good story"? Probably not; or if any mortal ever
succeeded in the task, it was the great Alexander Dumas. "The Three
Musketeers," I take leave to think, and "Twenty Years After," are
complete good stories, good from beginning to end, stories from beginning
to end without a break, without needless episode. Perhaps one may say as
much for "Old Mortality," and for "Quentin Durward." But Scott and Dumas
were born story-tellers; narrative was the essence of their genius at its
best; the current of romance rolls fleetly on, bearing with it persons
and events, mirroring scenes, but never ceasing to be the main thing--the
central interest. Perhaps narrative like this is the chief success of
the novelist. He is triumphant when he carries us on, as Wolf, the
famous critic, was carried on by the tide of the Iliad, "in that pure and
rapid current of action." Nobody would claim this especial me