's nature was soft and
kindly,--gentle almost to a fault,--has been shown elsewhere. But they
who have called him a cynic have spoken of him merely as a writer,--and
as writer he has certainly taken upon himself the special task of
barking at the vices and follies of the world around him. Any satirist
might in the same way be called a cynic in so far as his satire goes.
Swift was a cynic certainly. Pope was cynical when he was a satirist.
Juvenal was all cynical, because he was all satirist. If that be what is
meant, Thackeray was certainly a cynic. But that is not all that the
word implies. It intends to go back beyond the work of the man, and to
describe his heart. It says of any satirist so described that he has
given himself up to satire, not because things have been evil, but
because he himself has been evil. Hamlet is a satirist, whereas
Thersites is a cynic. If Thackeray be judged after this fashion, the
word is as inappropriate to the writer as to the man.

But it has to be confessed that Thackeray did allow his intellect to be
too thoroughly saturated with the aspect of the ill side of things. We
can trace the operation of his mind from his earliest days, when he
commenced his parodies at school; when he brought out _The Snob_ at
Cambridge, when he sent _Yellowplush_ out upon the world as a satirist
on the doings of gentlemen generally; when he wrote his _Catherine_, to
show the vileness of the taste for what he would have called Newgate
literature; and _The Hoggarty Diamond_, to attack bubble companies; and
_Barry Lyndon_, to expose the pride which a rascal may take in his
rascality. Becky Sharp, Major Pendennis, Beatrix, both as a young and
as an old woman, were written with the same purpose. There is a touch of
satire in every drawing that he made. A jeer is needed for something
that is ridiculous, scorn has to be thrown on something that is vile.
The same feeling is to be found in every line of every ballad.

VANITAS VANITATUM.

Methinks the text is never stale,
And life is every day renewing
Fresh comments on the old old tale,
Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin.

Hark to the preacher, preaching still!
He lifts his voice and cries his sermon,
Here at St. Peter's of Cornhill,
As yonder on the Mount of Hermon--

For you and me to heart to take
(O dear beloved brother readers),
To-day,--as when the good king spake
Beneath the sol