so well; but he
died suddenly two days before Christmas 1863, leaving it a mere
fragment. He had unsuccessfully attempted play writing in _The Wolves
and the Lamb_, an earlier and dramatic version of _Lovel the Widower_.
And during almost his whole literary career he had been a sparing but an
exquisite writer of a peculiar kind of verse, half serious half comic,
which is scarcely inferior in excellence to his best prose. "The Ballad
of Bouillabaisse" and "The Age of Wisdom," to take only two examples,
are unmatched in their presentation of pathos that always keeps clear of
the maudlin, and is wide-eyed if not dry-eyed in view of all sides of
life; while such things as "Lyra Hibernica" and "The Ballads of
Policeman X" have never been surpassed as verse examples of pure, broad,
roaring farce that still retains a certain reserve and well-bred
scholarship of tone.

But his verse, however charming and unique, could never have given him
the exalted and massive pedestal which his prose writings, and
especially his novels, provide. Even without the novels, as without the
verse, he would still occupy a high place among English writers for the
sake of his singular and delightful style, and for the attitude both to
life and to letters, corresponding with that style, which his essays and
miscellanies exhibit. This style is not by any means free from minor
blemishes, though it discarded many of these as time went on. But it has
an extraordinary vivacity; a manner entirely its own, which yet seldom
or never approaches mannerism; a quality of humour for which no word
would be so fit as the old-fashioned "archness," if that had not been so
hopelessly degraded before even the present century opened; at need, an
unsurpassed pathos which never by any chance or exception succumbs to
the demon of the gushing or maudlin; a flexibility and facility of
adaptation to almost all (not quite all) subjects which is hard to
parallel.

And this style reflects with more than common exactness, even in these
minor works, the attitude above spoken of, which is not less unique and
not less inestimable than the style itself. Towards some of the "great
subjects" Thackeray indeed adopts not quite a Shakespearian silence, but
a slightly uneasy respect. Never irreligious as he was, there was
something in him of his own beloved eighteenth century's dislike and
discomfort in face of religious dogma and religious enthusiasm; he had
no metaphysical head; his pol