ke most sonneteers--a man of amiable
disposition, and to have an ear--as he certainly has a _memory_--for
poetry; and--if he had not been an old hand--we should not have presumed
to say that he is incapable of anything better than this tumid
commonplace. But, however that may be, we do earnestly exhort him to
abandon the self-deluding practice of being his own publisher. Whatever
may have been said in disparagement of the literary taste of the
booksellers, it will at least be admitted that their experience of
public opinion and a due attention to their own pecuniary interest,
enable them to operate as a salutary check upon the blind and
presumptive vanity of small authors. The necessity of obtaining the
_"imprimatur"_ of a publisher is a very wholesome restraint, from which
Mr. Moxon--unluckily for himself and for us--found himself relieved. If
he could have looked at his own work with the impartiality, and perhaps
the good taste, that he would have exercised on that of a stranger, _he_
would have saved himself a good deal of expense and vexation--and _we_
should have been spared the painful necessity of contrasting the
ambitious pretensions of his volume with its very moderate literary
merit.

ON "VANITY FAIR" AND "JANE EYRE"

[From _The Quarterly Review_, December, 1848]

1. _Vanity Fair; a Novel without a Hero._ By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE
THACKERAY. London, 1848.

2. _Jane Eyre; an Autobiography._ Edited by CURRER BELL. In 3 vols.
London. 1847.

A remarkable novel is a great event for English society. It is a kind of
common friend, about whom people can speak the truth without fear of
being compromised, and confess their emotions without being ashamed. We
are a particularly shy and reserved people, and set about nothing so
awkwardly as the simple art of getting really acquainted with each
other. We meet over and over again in what is conventionally called
"easy society," with the tacit understanding to go so far and no
farther; to be as polite as we ought to be, and as intellectual as we
can; but mutually and honourably to forbear lifting those veils which
each spreads over his inner sentiments and sympathies. For this purpose
a host of devices have been contrived by which all the forms of
friendship may be gone through, without committing ourselves to one
spark of the spirit. We fly with eagerness to some common ground in
which each can take the liveliest interest, without taking the slightest
in the world in