itic says, 'the sunstroke.' Chesterton admits
that at times Thackeray carried this tendency to an excess; also
Thackeray wanted to show that the oldest thing in the world was its
youth. Thus in writing of a fashionable drawing-room in Mayfair, if he
referred to some classic, it was to 'remind people how many _debutantes_
had come out since the age of Horace.' It was quite a different thing
to the pompous bishop quoting Greek at the squire's house to show that
his doctor's degree, though an honorary one, had some classical learning
behind it, or the small boy translating Horace to avoid the headmaster's
cane. In the case of the bishop and the schoolboy, the use of the
classics is, on the one hand, pomposity; on the other, discretion. In
the case of Thackeray it was a reverence for the past, that it was a
very large part of the present.

There are, then, roughly three main characteristics of Thackeray: his
irrelevancy, his rambling style, and his frequent reference to the past.
All these, Chesterton makes it clear, are matters in which the strength
of Thackeray lies. Not that they are free always from exaggerations.
Sometimes Thackeray became lost in his irrelevancy, sometimes he became
almost unintelligible in his rambling style, now and then his use of
ancient quotation became irritating. 'Above all things, Thackeray was
receptive. The world imposed on Thackeray, and Dickens imposed on the
world.' But it could not be put more truly than that Thackeray
represents, in that gigantic parody called genius, the spirit of the
Englishman in repose. 'This spirit is the idle embodiment of all of us;
by his weakness we shall fail, and by his enormous sanities we shall
endure.' This is the crux of the matter which Chesterton brings out,
that the weaknesses of Thackeray are his strength. He loved liberty, not
because it meant restraint from law, but because he 'was a novelist'; he
was open to all the influences round him, not because he had no
standpoint, but because he could see merit in selection; he had an open
mind, but knew when to shut it.

* * * * *

The passages selected from the various works have been chosen with care.
It was evidently by no means an easy task. The passage chosen to show
Colonel Newcome in the 'Cave of Harmony' gives in one poignant incident
his character; the selection from 'Pendennis' does much the same. In the
passage from 'Esmond' the story of the duel is a fine