his own dragging. But the chase is a deal more exciting than
most men would lead, were there real live game to capture.

If pushed, I might suggest several points in this man's make-up where God
could have bettered His work. But accepting Thackeray as we find him, we
see a singer whose cage Fate had overhung with black until he had caught
the tune. The "Ballad of Boullabaisse" shows a tender side of his spirit
that he often sought to conceal. His heart vibrated to all finer thrills
of mercy; and his love for all created things was so delicately strung
that he would, in childish shame, sometimes issue a growl to drown its
rising, tearful tones.

In the character of Becky Sharp, he has marshaled some of his own weak
points and then lashed them with scorn. He looked into the mirror and
seeing a potential snob he straightway inveighed against snobbery. The
punishment does not always fit the crime--it is excess. But I still
contest that where his ridicule is most severe, it is Thackeray's own
back that is bared to the knout.

The primal recipe for roguery in art is, "Know Thyself." When a writer
portrays a villain and does it well--make no mistake, he poses for the
character himself. Said gentle Ralph Waldo Emerson, "I have capacity in
me for every crime."

The man of imagination knows those mystic spores of possibility that lie
dormant, and like the magicians of the East who grow mango-trees in an
hour, he develops the "inward potential" at will. The mere artisan in
letters goes forth and finds a villain and then describes him, but the
artist knows a better way: "I am that man."

One of the very sweetest, gentlest characters in literature is Colonel
Newcome. The stepfather of Thackeray, Major Carmichael Smyth, was made to
stand for the portrait of the lovable Colonel; and when that all-round
athlete, F. Hopkinson Smith, gave us that other lovable old Colonel he
paid high tribute to "The Newcomes."

Thackeray was a poet, and as such was often caught in the toils of
doubt--the crux of the inquiring spirit. He aspired for better things,
and at times his imperfections stood out before him in monstrous shape,
and he sought to hiss them down.

In the heart of the artist-poet there is an Inmost Self that sits over
against the acting, breathing man and passes judgment on his every deed.
To satisfy the world is little; to please the populace is naught; fame is
vapor; gold is dross; and every love that has not the sanction of