And it was natural
to him,--his early works ("The Great Hoggarty Diamond," for example)
being as perfect, as low in tone, as the latest. He was in all respects
the most finished example we have of what is called a man of the world.
In the pardonable eulogies which were uttered in the fresh grief at his
loss there was a tendency to set him too high. He was even ranked above
Fielding,--a position which no one would have been so eager in
disclaiming as himself. No, let us leave the old fames on their
pedestals. Fielding is the greatest creative artist who has written in
English since Shakespeare. Of a broader and deeper nature, of a larger
brain than Thackeray, his theme is Man, as that of the latter is
Society. The Englishman with whom Thackeray had most in common was
Richard Steele, as these "Roundabout Papers" show plainly enough. He
admired Fielding, but he loved Steele.
TWO GREAT AUTHORS
SWIFT[1]
I
[Footnote 1: [A review of _The Life of Jonathan Swift_, by John Forster.]]
The cathedral of St. Patrick's, dreary enough in itself seems to grow
damper and chillier as one's footsteps disturb the silence between the
grave of its famous Dean and that of Stella, in death as in life near
yet divided from him, as if to make their memories more inseparable and
prolong the insoluble problem of their relation to each other.
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