ast times and personages
acts as a powerful stimulant to the national mind, by exciting a
keener interest in the nation's story and a clearer appreciation of
its reality. Chateaubriand has affirmed that Walter Scott's romances
produced a revolution in the art of writing histories, that no greater
master of the art of historical divination has ever lived, and that
his profound insight into the mediaeval world, its names, the true
relation between different classes, its political and social aspects,
originated a new and brilliant historical method which superseded the
dim and limited views of scholarly erudition. For Thackeray we make no
such extensive or extravagant claims; but it may be said that the
dramatic conception of history in his novels and lectures was of
great service to his readers and hearers by the vivid impressions
which they conveyed of the life, character, and feelings of their
forefathers, of their failings, virtues, and memorable achievements.
Some material objections may be taken to the system of teaching by
graphic pictures in Thackeray, as in Carlyle's _French Revolution_,
and in both cases the philosophy leaves much to be desired, for the
writer's own idiosyncrasy colours all his work. Yet when we remember
how few are the readers to whom the accurate Dryasdust, with his
careful research and well attested facts, brings any lasting
enlightenment, we may well believe that very many owe their distinct
ideas of the state of England and its people during the last century
to Thackeray's genius for carefully studied autobiographical fiction.

To the four historical novels mentioned above let us add three novels
of nineteenth-century manners--_Vanity Fair_, _Pendennis_, _The
Newcomes_--and we have seven books (one incomplete) upon which
Thackeray's name and fame survive, and will be handed down to
posterity. The list is by no means long if it be compared with the
outturn of Scott and Bulwer-Lytton, or of his foremost contemporary
Dickens; and Stevenson, who resembles him in the subdued realistic
style of narrating a perilous fight or adventure, has left us a larger
bequest. But they are amply sufficient to build up for him a lasting
monument in English literature; and their very paucity may serve as a
warning against the prevailing sin of copious and indiscriminate
productiveness, by which so many second-rate novelists of the present
day exhaust their powers and drown a respectable reputation in a flood
of