the self-seeking, the false pretenses, flunkeyism,
and snobbery--the "mean admiration of mean things"--in the great world
of London society; his keen, unsparing vision detects the base alloy in
the purest natures. There are no "heroes" in his books, no perfect
characters. Even his good women, such as Helen and Laura Pendennis, are
capable of cruel injustice toward less fortunate sisters, like little
Fanny; and Amelia Sedley is led, by blind feminine instinct, to snub and
tyrannize over poor Dobbin. The shabby miseries of life, the numbing and
belittling influences of failure and poverty on the most generous
natures, are the tragic themes which Thackeray handles by preference. He
has been called a cynic, but the boyish playfulness of his humor and his
kindly spirit are incompatible with cynicism. Charlotte Bronte said that
Fielding was the vulture and Thackeray the eagle. The comparison would
have been truer if made between Swift and Thackeray. Swift was a cynic;
his pen was driven by hate, but Thackeray's by love, and it was not in
bitterness but in sadness that the latter laid bare the wickedness of
the world. He was himself a thorough man of the world, and he had that
dislike for a display of feeling which characterizes the modern
Englishman. But behind his satiric mask he concealed the manliest
tenderness, and a reverence for every thing in human nature that is good
and true. Thackeray's other great novels are _Pendennis_, 1849; _Henry
Esmond_, 1852, and _The Newcomes_, 1855--the last of which contains his
most lovable character, the pathetic and immortal figure of Colonel
Newcome, a creation worthy to stand, in its dignity and its sublime
weakness, by the side of Don Quixote. It was alleged against Thackeray
that he made all his good characters, like Major Dobbin and Amelia
Sedley and Colonel Newcome, intellectually feeble, and his brilliant
characters, like Becky Sharp and Lord Steyne and Blanche Amory, morally
bad. This is not entirely true, but the other complaint--that his women
are inferior to his men--is true in a general way. Somewhat inferior to
his other novels were _The Virginians_, 1858, and _The Adventures of
Philip_, 1862. All of these were stories of contemporary life, except
_Henry Esmond_ and its sequel, _The Virginians_, which, though not
precisely historical fictions, introduced historical figures, such as
Washington and the Earl of Peterborough. Their period of action was the
18th century, and the d