rue?"

Minor, I say, because the artistic value would remain if the historical
were impaired. But I do not think it is. I shall bow to the authority of
persons better acquainted with the eighteenth century than I am: but if
some decades of familiarity with essayists and novelists and diarists and
letter-writers may give one a scanty _locus standi_, I shall certainly
give my testimony in favour of "Thackeray's Extract". The true essence of
the life that exhibits itself in fiction from _Pamela_ and _Joseph
Andrews_ down to _Pompey the Little_ and the _Spiritual Quixote_; in essay
from the _Tatler_ to the _Mirror_; in Lord Chesterfield and Lady Mary and
Horace Walpole; in Pope and Young and Green and Churchill and Cowper, in
Boswell and Wraxall, in Mrs. Delany and Madame d'Arblay, seems to me to
deserve warrant of excise and guarantee of analysis as it lies in these
four little flaskets.

And, as has been done before, let me finish with an almost silent
indication of the wonderful variety of this volume also. In one sense the
subject of its constituents is the same. Yet in another it is treated with
the widest and most infinite difference. Any one of the three treatments
would be a masterpiece of single achievement; while the first of the three
is, as it seems to me, _the_ masterpiece of its entire class.(5)

THE MS. OF "ESMOND"

The MS. is contained in two volumes and was presented to Trinity College,
Cambridge, by the author's daughter; it is now deposited in the College
Library. Sir Leslie Stephen, in writing to the Librarian about it on June
11, 1889, says:--

"There are three separate handwritings. Thackeray's own small upright
handwriting; that of his daughter, now Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, a rather
large round handwriting; and that of an amanuensis whose name I do not
know. The interest is mainly this, that it shows that Thackeray dictated a
considerable part of the book; and, as Mrs. Ritchie tells me, he dictated
it without having previously written anything. The copy was sent straight
to press as it stands, with, as you will see, remarkably little
alteration. As _Esmond_ is generally considered to be his most perfect
work in point of style, I think that this is a remarkable fact and adds
considerably to the interest of the MS."

The four facsimiles which follow, and which appear here by the very kind
permission of Lady Ritchie and of the authorities of the College, have
been slightly reduced to fit the pages.