with Don Quixote, Sir Roger de Coverley, Uncle
Toby, and Mr. Pickwick.'

Chesterton feels that Thackeray at times falls into the trick common to
many writers, that of repeating himself, a trick that is natural, as it
does seem in some ways that the human mind, like history, is apt to move
in circles. The reason was that in some way Thackeray became tired of
Barnes Newcome; the result was that from being a convincing villain he
develops into a stereotyped one, the type who fires pistols into the air
and is the squire's runaway son, so often found at the Lyceum.

If Thackeray 'sprawled' in the Newcomes he atones for this in 'Esmond,'
if any atonement is needed for sprawling, which is probably only that
Thackeray felt that there is nothing so elastic and sprawling as a human
person, whether he be a villain or the reverse.

For Chesterton, 'Esmond' is in the modern sense a work of art, which is
to say that it was a book that could be read anywhere. 'It had no word
that might not have been used at the court of Queen Anne.' It is a
highly romantic tale, but it is a sad story. It is a great Queen Anne
romance; but, 'there broods a peculiar conviction that Queen Anne is
dead.' The whole tale moves round a complicated situation in which a
young man loves a mother and her daughter, and finally marries the
mother. This work is, for Chesterton, Thackeray's 'most difficult task.'
It is difficult for the reason that the situation of the tale is placed
between possibilities of grace and possibilities even of indecency. It
is not hard to write a graceful tale, it is easy to write a loose
story; it is extremely difficult to write a story that may by a stroke
of the pen be either beautiful or merely sordid. But Thackeray
manipulates the keys of the tale so that 'it moves like music,' an
extremely apt metaphor, where harmonies can be made disharmonies by a
single note.

It is a strange fact that a sequel is seldom to be compared to its
forerunner: 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' is of a schoolboy who is an eternal
type; 'Tom Brown at Oxford' is a poor book that does not in the least
understand Oxford. The fact is, I think, that an author cannot be
inspired twice on the same subject--the gods give but sparingly, their
gifts do not fall as the rains.

The sequel to 'Esmond' that Thackeray wrote, 'The Virginians,' is an
'inadequate sequel,' which is not to say that it is a poor book, but
rather that it is an unnecessary one. Yet, as Chesterto