Rooms in the same year, and re-delivered in the United States in 1852 and 1853, as was afterwards the series called The Four Georges. Both sets were written for the purpose of lecturing. In 1854 was published a most delightful burlesque, The Rose and the Ring, whereof the origin has already been mentioned. In 1857 Thackeray stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate for Oxford against Mr Cardwell, and in the same year appeared the first number of The Virginians, a sequel to Esmond. This is a most unequal work inferior, as sequels are apt to be, to Esmond as an historical romance, less compact and coherent, prone to divagation and desultoriness, yet charming enough in its lifelikeness, in the wit and wisdom of its reflexions, and, as has been said, in its portrait of Beatrix grown old. The last number of The Virginians came out in 1859, and in the same year Thackeray undertook the editorship of the Cornhill Magazine. This was a task which, as readers of his Roundabout Paper “Thorns in the Cushion” will remember, the kindliness and sensitiveness of his disposition made irksome to him, and he resigned the editorship in April 1862, though he continued to write for the magazine until he died. In the Cornhill appeared from his pen Lovel the Widower, previously written, with different names for some of the personages, in dramatic form; The Adventures of Philip (1861-62); the Roundabout Papers; and (1860-63) the story, unhappily never finished, called Denis Duval. Lovel the Widower, changed from the dramatic to the narrative form, remains a piece of high comedy in which the characters are indicated rather than fully worked out, with a bold and practised touch. The Roundabout Papers, a small storehouse of some of Thackeray's best qualities as an essayist, came out in the Cornhill Magazine simultaneously with Lovel the Widower and with The Adventures of Philip. Among these papers is one differing in form from the rest, called “The Notch on the Axe — a Story à la Mode.” It is an almost perfect specimen of the author's genius for burlesque story-telling; but it contains an odd instance, which a careful reader will not fail to discover, of that odd habit of inaccuracy of which Thackeray himself was conscious. The Adventures of Philip is, as has been before said, in the nature of a sequel to or a completion of A Shabby Genteel Story. As with the other direct sequel, it is a work of great inequality. It contains scenes of humour, pathos, satire, which rank with Thackeray's best work; some old friends from others of the novels make brief but pleasant reappearances in its pages; there are fine sketches of journalistic, artistic and diplomatic life, and the scene from the last-named in Paris is inimitable. The Little Sister is altogether delightful; the Twysden family are terribly true and vastly diverting; the minor characters, among whom old Ridley, “J. J.'s” father, should be mentioned, are wonderfully hit off; nor did Thackeray ever write a better scene than that of the quarrel between Bunch, Baynes and McWhirter in the Paris pension. Philip himself is impossible; one cannot say that the character is ill-drawn — it is not drawn at all. It is an entirely different personage in different chapters; and it has here and there a very unpleasant touch which may perhaps have come of rapid writing. Yet so admirable are many parts of the book that Philip cannot be left out of the list of Thackeray's most considerable works. Denis Duval, which reached only three numbers, promised to be a first-rate work, more or less in the Esmond manner. The author died while it was in progress, on the day before Christmas day 1863. He was buried in Kensal Green, and a bust by Marochetti was put up to his memory in Westminster Abbey.
Little has yet been said of Thackeray's performances in poetry. They formed a small but not the least significant part of his life's work. The grace and the apparent spontaneity of his versification are beyond question. Some of the more serious efforts, such as “The Chronicle of the Drum” (1841), are full of power, and instinct with true poetic feeling. Both the half-humorous, half-pathetic ballads and the wholly extravagant ones must be classed with the best work in that kind; and the translations from Beranger are as good as verse translations can be. Thackeray had the true poetic instinct, and proved it by writing poetry which equalled his prose in grace and feeling.
There can be little doubt that Thackeray will always be ranked among the foremost English writers of fiction, or that his more infrequent work as essayist and poet will go hand in hand with his wider achievements as a novelist. Many attempts have been made at many times to institute a comparison between Thackeray and Dickens as novelists. In truth it would be as much to the purpose, to borrow a homely metaphor, to compare chalk with cheese. The two authors were so radically different in their purviews, in their modes of thought, in their methods of expression, that critical comparison between them is of its nature absolutely unprofitable. It is better to recognize simply that the two novelists stood, each in his own way, distinctly above even their most distinguished contemporaries. As to preference, that is a matter with which criticism has nothing, and individual inclination has everything, to do.
The books of reference that can be best commended to the student of Thackeray's life and works are Merivale and Marzials' Life of Thackeray (1891); R. H. Shepherd, Bibliography of Thackeray (1880); C. P. Johnson, The Early Writings of Thackeray (1888); Charles Whibley's Thackeray (1905), a critical commentary; the edition of Thackeray's Works with biographical introductions (1897-1900), by his daughter, Lady Ritchie; the Life of Thackeray (“English Men of Letters Series,” 1899) by Anthony Trollope. It is curious that Trollope showed in his own Autobiography far more appreciation of Thackeray's great qualities than is apparent in the formal Life.
THAÏS, a Greek courtesan, who lived during the time of Alexander the Great. She accompanied him on his Asiatic campaign, and is chiefly known from the story which represents her as having persuaded the conqueror to set fire to the city of Persepolis. This anecdote forms the subject of Dryden's Ode to Saint Cecilia's Day. But its authenticity is doubtful, since it is based upon the authority of Cleitarchus, one of the least trustworthy of the historians of Alexander. Thaïs subsequently became the wife of Ptolemy Lagus, king of Egypt. Numerous anecdotes and witticisms attributed to her will be found in Athenaeus.
See Diod. Sic. xvii. 72; Plutarch, Alexander, 38; Athenaeus xiii. 576, 585; Quintus Curtius v. 7.
THALBERG, SIGISMOND (1812-1871), German pianist and composer, was born at Geneva in 1812 (May the 5th or January the 7th). In 1822 he was taken to Vienna, where, under the watchful care of Count Dietrichstein, his education was completed. He made his first appearance as a pianist at Prince Metternich's in 1826, and published his first composition — a Fantasia on Airs from “Euryanthe” — in 1828, but it was not until 1830 that he was first fairly introduced to the public, with such brilliant success that from that time forward his only rival was Liszt (q.v.). In 1834 he was appointed “kammervirtuos” to the emperor of Austria. He first appeared in Paris in 1837; and in 1838 he went to England, astonishing his hearers with the novel effects produced in his Variations on God Save the Queen, while he charmed them with his delicate touch and the purity of his expression. Thenceforward his
career was a succession of triumphs. In order to disprove the popular idea that he could execute no music but his own, he played Beethoven's Concerto in C minor (Op. 37) at the London Wednesday Concerts, held in 1846-47 at Exeter Hall, with a keen intelligence which proved his power of interpreting the works of the great masters to be at least on a level with his wonderful technique. Besides his pianoforte compositions, which are almost innumerable, Thalberg produced two operas — Cristina, which proved a complete failure, and Florinda, which fared but little better at Her Majesty's Theatre in 1851. He played in London for the last time in 1863, and afterwards
retired to his estate near Naples. He died at Naples on the 27th of April 1871.
THALE, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Saxony, charmingly situated under the northern declivity of the Harz Mountains, 8 m. by rail S.W. of Quedlinburg, at the entrance to the romantic gorge of the Bode, and in the
