a
satirist in the broad sense, devoting himself to revealing
society to itself and for its instruction. It is easy to use
negations: to say he did not know nor sympathize with the middle
class nor the lower and outcast classes as did Dickens; that his
interest was in peccadilloes and sins, not in courageous
virtues: and that he judged the world from a club window. But
this gets us nowhere and is aside from the critic's chief
business: which is that of an appreciative explanation of his
abiding power and charm. This has now been essayed. Thackeray
was too great as man and artist not to know that it was his
function to present life in such wise that while a pleasure of
recognition should follow the delineation, another and higher
pleasure should also result: the surprising pleasure of beauty.
"Fiction," he declared, "has no business to exist, unless it be
more beautiful than reality," And again: "The first quality of
an artist is to have a large heart." With which revelatory
utterances may be placed part of the noble sentence closing "The
Book of Snobs": "If fun is good, truth is better still, and love
best of all." To read him with open mind is to feel assured that
his works, taken in their entirety, reflect these humane
sentiments. It is a pity, therefore, for any reader of the best
fiction, through intense appreciation of Dickens or for any
other reason, to cut himself off from such an enlightening
student of humanity and master of imaginative literature.

CHAPTER X

GEORGE ELIOT

George Eliot began fiction a decade later than Thackeray, but
seems more than a decade nearer to us. With her the full pulse
of modern realism is felt a-throbbing. There is no more of the
ye's and thous with which, when he would make an exordium,
Thackeray addressed the world--a fashion long since laid aside.
Eliot drew much nearer to the truth, the quiet, homely verity of
her scenes is a closer approximation to life, realizes life more
vitally than the most veracious page of "Vanity Fair." Not that
the great woman novelist made the mistake of a slavish imitation
of the actual: that capital, lively scene in the early part of
"The Mill on the Floss," where Mrs. Tulliver's connections make
known to us their delightsome personalities, is not a mere
transcript from life; and all the better for that. Nevertheless,
the critic can easily discover a difference between Thackeray
and Eliot in this regard, and the ten years between them