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THACKERAY'S LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS.
"Heroes and Hero-worship"—a subject chosen by Mr. Carlyle, when he arose to discourse before the sweet-shady-sidesmen of Pall Mall and the fair of Mayfair—is not at all the res vexanda one would predicate for a course of lectures by Mr. Titmarsh. If the magnificence of the hero grows small by degrees and beautifully less before the microscopic scrutiny of his valet, so might it be expected to end in a minus sign, after subjection to the eliminating process of the "Book of Snobs." Yet one passage, at least, there is in the attractive volume[1] before us, instinct with hero-worship, and, some will think (as coming from such a quarter) surcharged with enthusiasm,—where the lecturer affirms, "I should like to have been Shakspeare's shoeblack—just to have lived in his house, just to have worshipped him—to have run on his errands, and seen that sweet serene £ace." At which sally, we can imagine nil admirari folks exclaiming (if they be capable of an exclamation), "Oh, you little snob!" Nevertheless, that sally will go far to propitiate many a reader hitherto steeled against the showman of "Vanity Fair," as an inveterate cynic—however little of real ground he may have given for such a prejudice. Many, we believe, who resorted to the lectures when orally delivered, were agreeably disappointed in finding so much of genial humanity in the matter and manner of the didaskalos—
the best good Christian he,
Although they knew it not.
And the vastly enlarged circle of observers to whom this volume will make the lectures known, will find in it clear if not copious proof of the man's fine, open, loving nature—its warmth, and depth, and earnestness—not to be belied by an outward show of captious irony, a pervading presence of keen-witted raillery. There seems a ludicrously false notion rife among not a few, that Mr. Thackeray's creed is of close kin to that of our laureate's "grey and gap-tooth'd man as lean as death, who slowly rode across a wither'd heath, and lighted at a ruin'd inn, and said"—inter alia—
Virtue!—to be good and just—
Every heart, when sifted well,
Is a clot of warmer dust,
Mix'd with canning sparks of hell.
........
Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
Let any infatuated sufferer under such obstinate delusion at once buy and study this series of lectures, and learn to laugh and love with the
- ↑ The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century: a Series of Lectures delivered in England, Scotland, and the United States of America. By W. M. Thackeray. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. 1853.
