imes force his readers to doubt his
meaning, even after prolonged study. It has ever been so with _Hamlet_.
My readers will not, I think, be so crossgrained with me as to suppose
that I am putting Thackeray as a master of style above Shakespeare. I am
only endeavouring to explain by reference to the great master the
condition of literary production which he attained. Whatever Thackeray
says, the reader cannot fail to understand; and whatever Thackeray
attempts to communicate, he succeeds in conveying.

That he is grammatical I must leave to my readers' judgment, with a
simple assertion in his favour. There are some who say that grammar,--by
which I mean accuracy of composition, in accordance with certain
acknowledged rules,--is only a means to an end; and that, if a writer
can absolutely achieve the end by some other mode of his own, he need
not regard the prescribed means. If a man can so write as to be easily
understood, and to convey lucidly that which he has to convey without
accuracy of grammar, why should he subject himself to unnecessary
trammels? Why not make a path for himself, if the path so made will
certainly lead him whither he wishes to go? The answer is, that no other
path will lead others whither he wishes to carry them but that which is
common to him and to those others. It is necessary that there should be
a ground equally familiar to the writer and to his readers. If there be
no such common ground, they will certainly not come into full accord.
There have been recusants who, by a certain acuteness of their own, have
partly done so,--wilful recusants; but they have been recusants, not to
the extent of discarding grammar,--which no writer could do and not be
altogether in the dark,--but so far as to have created for themselves a
phraseology which has been picturesque by reason of its illicit
vagaries; as a woman will sometimes please ill-instructed eyes and ears
by little departures from feminine propriety. They have probably
laboured in their vocation as sedulously as though they had striven to
be correct, and have achieved at the best but a short-lived
success;--as is the case also with the unconventional female. The charm
of the disorderly soon loses itself in the ugliness of disorder. And
there are others rebellious from grammar, who are, however, hardly to be
called rebels, because the laws which they break have never been
altogether known to them. Among those very dear to me in English
literature,