it; hope it is so. By the way what sort of a fellow
is Pigeon? Had I been in London--I only came up yesterday--I should
have looked into the match before it took place. Lotty could expect
no less of me. What kind of an animal is this Pigeon?'

"'Kind of an animal, sir?' stammered Pigeon. 'Why, sir, he----'

"'Ha! that will do,' said the abrupt Tomata, 'as you're his friend
I'll not press you on that point. Poor Lotty--sacrificed I see!'"

After more amusing dialogue he throws his card on the table and says he
shall call, adding,

"'If Pigeon makes my Lotty a good husband, I'll take him by the
hand; if, however, I find him no gentleman--find that he shall use
the girl of my heart with harshness, or even with the least
unkindness--'

"'Well, sir!'--Pigeon thrusting his hands into his pockets
swaggered to Tomata--'what will you do then, sir?'

"'Then, sir. I shall again think the happiness of the lady placed
in my hands and thrash him--thrash him severely.'"

CHAPTER XVII.

Thackeray--His Acerbity--The Baronet--The Parson--Medical
Ladies--Glorvina--"A Serious Paradise."

Thackeray resembled Lamb in the all-pervading character of his humour.
He adorned with it almost everything he touched, but did not enter into
it heart and soul, like a man of really joyous mirth-loving disposition.
His pages teem with sly hits and insinuations, but he never developes a
comic scene, and we can scarcely find a single really laughable episode
in the whole course of his works. So little did he grasp or finish such
pictures that we rarely select a passage from Thackeray for recitation.
He thought more of plot and stratagem than of humour, and used the
latter, not for its own sake, but mostly to give brilliance to his
narrative, to make his figures prominent, and his remarks salient. He
thus silvers unpalatable truths, and although he disowns being a
moralist, we generally see some substratum of earnestness peeping
through the eddies of his fancy. With him, humour is subservient. And
he speaks from his inner self, when he exclaims, "Oh, brother wearers of
motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and
tumbling, and the jingling of the cap and bells."

We may say that much of Thackeray's humour is more inclined to produce a
grin than a smile--merely to cause a grimace, owing to the bitterness
from which it springs. It must be remembered