is apt to wear the forms of his wit to tatters. Jeames, with his peculiar dialect, in the Yellowplush Papers and elsewhere, was entertaining and instructive, but has been allowed to grow wearisome. Orthographical absurdity is an exhaustible subject of merriment, and Mr. Thackeray's wit is somewhat too much dependent on his nice appreciation of distinctions of pronunciation, and the slavish subserviency he compels from the art of spelling. He can mimic in print as well or better than Dickens. His sense of humour differs from that of the latter, however, in being almost exclusively called forth by the peculiarities of persons themselves, or personal relations. He very rarely is struck with the ludicrous in things alone, as Dickens often is; his description of Costigan's hairbrush, as "a wonderful and ancient piece," stands almost by itself; he rarely even makes fun out of a man's personal appearance, except so far as his dress or air indicate some mental trait or characteristic. The mode of his caricaturing, too, is quite different. Dickens collects all the absurdities and laughter-moving elements in a thing, and heaps them together in a new image of his own. Thackeray pictures the thing as it is, only bringing out its ludicrous or contemptible features into sharp relief.

His genius does not lead him to the poetic form; he has just that command of verse which one would expect from a man of his great ability; he can make an able use of it, and his power of language gives him great command of rhyme and sufficient facility. His verses are generally reproductions; free renderings from another language with new point and application, parodies or humorous narratives of actual incident. Among these the "Chronicle of the Drum" is the best. It is thoroughly French, dramatic, and spirit-stirring. "Jacob Homnium's Hoss" far surpasses all his other humorous efforts in verse. It will bear recalling; and we will quote it as a specimen at once of his rhyming powers, his dexterously ridiculous orthography, and his wit, for it is not easy to give a prose extract to exemplify the character of the latter. He is too good an artist to let it stand in lumps,-he uses it as the gilding of his whole narrative.

JACOB HOMNIUM'S HOSS.

A NEW PALLICE-COURT CHAUNT.

One sees in Viteall Yard,

Vere pleacemen do resort,

A wenerable hinstitute,

'Tis call'd the Pallis Court:

A gent as got his i on it;

I think 'twill make some sport.

The natur of this Court
My hindignation riles :
A few fat legal spiders

Here sit & spin their viles;
To rob the town theyr privlege is,
In a hayrea of twelve miles.

The Judge of this year Court
Is a mellitary beak,
He knows no more of Lor

Than praps he does of Greek,
And prowides hisself a deputy
Because he cannot speak.

Four counsel in this Court-
Misnamed of Justice-sits;
These lawyers owes their places to
Their money, not their wits;
And there's six attornies under them,
As here their living gits.

These lawyers, six and four,
Was a livin at their ease,
A sendin of their writs abowt,
And droring in the fees,
When their erose a cirkimstance
As is like to make a breeze.

It now is some monce since,

A gent both good and trew Possest an ansum oss vith vich

He didn know what to do: Peraps he did not like the oss, Peraps he was a scru.

This gentleman his oss

At Tattersall's did lodge;

There came a wulgar oss-dealer,

This gentleman's name did fodge,
And took the oss from Tattersall's:
Wasn that a artful dodge?

One day this gentleman's groom
This willain did spy out

A mounted on this oss,

A ridin him about;

"Get out of that there oss, you rogue,"

Speaks up the groom so stout.

The thief was cruel whex'd

To find hisself so pinn'd;

The oss began to whinny,

The honest groom he grinn'd ;

And the raskle thief got off the oss,

And cut avay like vind.

And phansy with what joy
The master did regard

His dearly bluvd lost oss again
Trot in the stable yard!

Who was this master good

Of whomb I makes these rhymes?
His name is Jacob Homnium, Exquire;
And if I'd committed crimes,

Good Lord! I wouldn't ave that mann
Attack me in the Times!

Now shortly after, the groomb
His master's oss did take up,
There came a livery-man

This gentleman to wake up;
And he handed in a little bill,
Which hanger'd Mr. Jacob.
For two pound seventeen
This livery-man eplied,

For the keep of Mr. Jacob's oss,

Which the thief had took to ride. "Do you see anythink green in me?" Mr. Jacob Homnium cried.

"Because a raskle chews

My oss away to robb,
And goes tick at your Mews
For seven-and-fifty bobb,
Shall I be call'd to pay ?-It is
A iniquitious Jobb."

Thus Mr. Jacob cut

The conwasation short;

The livery-man went ome,

Detummingd to ave sport,

And summingsd Jacob Homnium, Exquire,

Into the Pallis Court.

Pore Jacob went to Court,

A Counsel for to fix,

And choose a barrister out of the four,

An attorney of the six;

And there he sor these men of Lor,

And watch'd 'em at their tricks.

The dreadful day of trile

In the Pallis Court did come;

The lawyers said their say,
The Judge look'd wery glum,

And then the British Jury cast
Pore Jacob Hom-ni-um.

O a weary day was that

For Jacob to go through;

The debt was two seventeen

(Which he no mor owed than you),

And then there was the plaintives costs,

Eleven pound six and two.

And then there was his own,

Which the lawyers they did fix

At the wery moderit figgar

Of ten pound one and six.

His sense of beauty is warm and lively. If he had as much of the negative sense of good taste which discards the ugly and jarring elements as he has of the positive sense which detects and appreciates the beautiful, his works would be far pleasanter reading. He sees beauty every where; his love of it mingles with the affectionateness of his nature, and throws a softening grace over his pages, relieving a bitterness which without it would sometimes be scarcely sufferable. Though his genius leads him to deal with men, external nature has no light charms for him. He does not often paint landscape, but he can do so in brief exquisite touches. Most of us are familiar with some such a German scene as this:

"Pleasant Rhine gardens ! Fair scenes of peace and sunshine; noble purple mountains, whose crests are reflected in the magnificent stream; who has ever seen you that has not a grateful memory of those scenes of friendly repose and beauty? To lay down the pen, and even to think of that beautiful Rhineland, makes one happy. At this time of summer-evening the cows are trooping down from the hills, lowing, and with their bells tinkling, to the old town, with its old moats, and gates, and spires, and chestnut-trees, with long blue shadows stretching over the grass; the sky and the river below flame in crimson and gold; and the moon is already out, looking pale towards the sunset. The sun sinks behind the great castle-crested mountains; the night falls suddenly; the river grows darker and darker; lights quiver in it from the windows in the old ramparts, and twinkle peacefully in the villages under the hills on the opposite shore."

Of his bad taste his works furnish only too abundant evidence. It was a happy idea to look at society from the footman's point of view; but a very little of that sort of fun suffices. And Mr. Thackeray does not scruple to surfeit us. We have rough Warrington's excellent authority for the assertion, that "Mrs. Flanagan the laundress, and Betty the housemaid, are not the company a gentleman should choose for permanent association;" and we are not surprised at that "most igstrorinary" burst of indignation with which Jeames's career draws to its close in the Yellowplush Papers.

The advantage of using such a mouthpiece, if it be an advan

tage, is this, that it gives an opportunity of saying things more vulgar, biting, and personal, than a man's self-respect or shame would allow him to say out of his own mouth. It is a quasi shifting of the responsibility. But if we give Sheridan credit for his wit, we must give Thackeray credit for his vulgarity. This feature greatly disfigures his works, and shows itself not only in the gusto and ease with which he enters into the soul of a footman, but in a love of searching out and bringing into prominent view the more petty and ignoble sides of all things. We don't quarrel with a humorist for exposing the vulgar element in a vulgar man, and in taking all the fun he can out of it. Self-delineative dramatic vulgarity, used in moderation, is one of the fairest and readiest sources of laughter. What we quarrel with is vulgarity in the tone of the work; a charge for which it is not very easy to cite chapter and verse, as it is a thing which is felt by the instinct rather than detected by observation; but we will adduce one instance of the sort of thing we allude to. In the first volume of The Newcomes we are told how Warrington and Pendennis gave a little entertainment at the Temple, including among their guests little Rosey and her mother. It is a very pleasant charming picture, and the narrator speaks of the "merry songs and kind faces," the "happy old dingy chambers illuminated by youthful sunshine." What unhappy prompting, then, makes him drop this blot on his description: "I may say, without false modesty, that our little entertainment was most successful. The champagne was iced to a nicety. The ladies did not perceive that our laundress, Mrs. Flanagan, was intoxicated very early in the afternoon." And before the end of the description we are not spared another allusion to "Mrs. Flanagan in a state of excitement." It is vulgar, surely, to mar the pure and pleasant impression of the scene with this image of the drunken laundress not only introduced, but insisted on.

Not from false taste, but from something deeper, a warp in the very substance of his genius,-arises another unwelcome characteristic. Vanity Fair is the name, not of one, but of all Mr. Thackeray's books. The disappointment that waits upon human desires, whether in their fulfilment or their destruction, the emptiness of worldly things, the frailty of the affections, the sternness of fate, the hopelessness of endeavour, vanitas vanitatum,—these are his themes. The impression left by his books is that of weariness; the stimulants uphold you while you read; and then comes just such a reaction as if you had really mingled closely in the great world with no hopes or ambitions outside it; you feel the dust in your throat, the din and the babbling echo in your ears. may touch the deepest sources of passion: awe and grief and almost terror are as much within her province as laughter and calm;

Art