with "Marry
come up," or to finish them with "Quotha," are but poor attempts. But
even they have had their effect. Scott did the best he could with his
Coeur de Lion. When we look to it we find that it was but little;
though in his hands it passed for much. "By my troth," said the knight,
"thou hast sung well and heartily, and in high praise of thine order."
We doubt whether he achieved any similarity to the language of the time;
but still, even in the little which he attempted there was something of
the picturesque. But how much more would be done if in very truth the
whole language of a story could be thrown with correctness into the form
of expression used at the time depicted?

It was this that Thackeray tried in his _Esmond_, and he has done it
almost without a flaw. The time in question is near enough to us, and
the literature sufficiently familiar to enable us to judge. Whether folk
swore by their troth in the days of king Richard I. we do not know, but
when we read Swift's letters, and Addison's papers, or Defoe's novels we
do catch the veritable sounds of Queen Anne's age, and can say for
ourselves whether Thackeray has caught them correctly or not. No reader
can doubt that he has done so. Nor is the reader ever struck with the
affectation of an assumed dialect. The words come as though they had
been written naturally,--though not natural to the middle of the
nineteenth century. It was a tour de force; and successful as such a
tour de force so seldom is. But though Thackeray was successful in
adopting the tone he wished to assume, he never quite succeeded, as far
as my ear can judge, in altogether dropping it again.

And yet it has to be remembered that though _Esmond_ deals with the
times of Queen Anne, and "copies the language" of the time, as Thackeray
himself says in the dedication, the story is not supposed to have been
written till the reign of George II. Esmond in his narrative speaks of
Fielding and Hogarth, who did their best work under George II. The idea
is that Henry Esmond, the hero, went out to Virginia after the events
told, and there wrote the memoir in the form of an autobiography. The
estate of Castlewood in Virginia had been given to the Esmond family by
Charles II., and this Esmond, our hero, finding that expatriation would
best suit both his domestic happiness and his political
difficulties,--as the reader of the book will understand might be the
case,--settles himself in the colony, and t