Chapter CXXVIII: Goldsmith and Addison. (435)

William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811-1863, was born in Calcutta, and is one of the most popular of English novelists, essayists, and humorists. While a boy, he removed from India to England, where he was educated at the Charterhouse in London, and at Cambridge. When twenty-one years of age, he came into possession of about 20,000 pounds. He rapidly dissipated his fortune, however, and was compelled to work for his living, first turning his attention to law and then to art, but finally choosing literature as his profession. He was for many years correspondent, under assumed names, at the "London Times," "The New Monthly Magazine," "Punch," and "Fraser's Magazine." His first novel under his own name, "Vanity Fair," appeared in monthly numbers during 1846-8, and is generally considered his finest production: although "Pendennis," "Henry Esmond," and "The Newcomes" are also much admired. His lectures on "English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century," from which the following selections are taken, were delivered in England first in 1851, and afterwards in America, which he visited in 1852 and again in 1855-6. During the latter visit, he first delivered his course of lectures on "The Four Georges," which were later repeated in England. At the close of 1859, Thackeray became editor of the "Cornhill Magazine," and made it one of the most successful serials ever published.

Thackeray has been charged with cynicism in his writings, but he was noted for his happy temper and genial disposition towards all who came in contact with him. ###

1. GOLDSMITH.

To be the most beloved of English writers, what a title that is for a man! A wild youth, wayward, but full of tenderness and affection, quits the country village where his boyhood has been passed in happy musing, in idle shelter, in fond longing to see the great world out of doors, and achieve name and fortune--and after years of dire struggle, and neglect, and poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to his native place as it had longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, he writes a book and a poem, full of the recollections and feelings of home; he paints the friends and scenes of his youth, and peoples Auburn and Wakefield with the remembrances of Lissoy.

Wander he must, but he carries away a home relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant; in repose it longs for change: as on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. He passes to-day in building an air castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday's elegy; and he would flyaway this hour, but that a cage, necessity, keeps him. What is the charm of his verse, of his style, and humor? His sweet regrets, his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness which he owns?

Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the kind vagrant harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon, save the harp on which he plays to you, and with which he delights great and humble, young and old, the captains in the tents, or the soldiers round the fire, or the women and children in the villages, at whose porches he stops and sings his simple songs of love and beauty. With that sweet story of "The Vicar of Wakefield" he has found entry into every castle and every hamlet in Europe. Not one of us, however busy or hard, but once or twice in our lives has passed an evening with him, and undergone the charm of his delightful music.