THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKBPEACE, novelist and satirist, was b. at Calcutta in 1811. He was of a good old English family, represented about the middle of last century by Dr. Thackeray, an eminent scholar, and head-master of Harrow. His father was in the civil service of the East India co., and, dying young, he left his son a fortune of £20,000. The latter, when a boy seven years of age, was sent to England, and placed in the Charterhouse school, that ancient Carthusian foundation, which he loved to commemo rate in his writings. He next went to Cambridge, but left the university without taking a degree. In 1831 he was at Weimar, and saw Goethe. His ambition was to become an artist, and he traveled over most of Europe, studying at Paris and Rome. His draw ings were not without merit; they were quaint, picturesque, and truthful, but somehow they missed the bright touches of a master-hand. He next took to literature, beginning with rare patience and contentment at the lowest step of the ladder. Under the characteristic name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, or that of Fitz-Boodle, lie became a constant contributor to Frazer's Magazine, and wrote for it two of the best of his minor works, The Great Hoggarty Diamand and Barry Lyndon. The latter is the story of an Irish sharper, and is told with a spirit, variety of adventure, and humor worthy of Le Sage or Fielding. Under the pseudonym of Titmarsh he also published The Paris Sketch vols. 1840); The Second Funeral of Napoleon, and Chronicle of the Drum (1841); and the Irish (2 vols., 1843). The greater part of Thackeray's fortune hav ing been spent in foreign travel and unsuccessful speculations at home, lie continued to work steadily at literature as a profession. He was_never widely popular, but a few good judges appreciated his keen wit, observation, and irony, and his command of a style singularly pure, clear, and unexaggerated. The establishment of Punch afforded a more congenial field for Thackeray, and Snob Papers and Jeames's Diary were hailed with delight by all readers. Their author's reputation was still more advanced by his novel of Tranity Fair (1846-48), published in monthly parts in the style of Pickwick, and illustrated by the novelist himself, or, as he expressed it, "illuminated with the author's own candles." During the progress of Vanity Fair appeared Notes of a Journey from Cornkill to Grand Cairo, being an account of a journey undertaken for the benefit of his health; also Mrs. Perkins's Ball, a short Christmas tale, and two works of a similar kind enlitled Our Street, and Doctor Birch and his Young P•iends. In 1849 he began a second serial fiction, Pendennis, in which much of his own history and experiences are recorded. Next followed Rebecca and Rowena (1850), and The Eickleburys on the Rhine (1851). The latter work was sharply criticised by the Times, and Thaekeray replied in a caustic and humorous Essay on Thunder and Small Beer, prefixed to a second edition of the satirical sketch. In 1851 the indefatigable novelist delivered a course of lectures on the English Humorists of the Eighteenth graceful, discriminating sketches, with pas sages of real power and eloquence. In 1852-55 appeared two more novels, the most
richly imaginative and highly finished of his works, Esmond and The Newcontes. These were followed by The I irginians (a much inferior novel), by Lectures on the Four Georges (first delivered iu America), by Lord the Widower and Philip (two short tales of somewhat coarse texture), and by a series of pleasant gossiping essays, entitled Round about Papers. These originally appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, of which Thackeray was for a time editor; and in the same miscellany he had begun and published part of a new novel, Dennis Dural, which promised to be one of the most carefully elaborated and successful of his works of fiction. He contemplated also Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Anne, which would have served as a continuation to Macaulay's History. He knew that period well, front his previous studies for Esmond, and as a moral anatomist and master of English he stood unrivaled. But, alas! such dreams and anticipations were suddenly dispelled. To the grief of all lovers of genius and of manly and noble character, Thackeray was cut off in the fullness of his powers in his 52d year, dying alone and unseen in his chamber before daybreak on the morning of Dec. 24, 1863. His medical attendants found that death was caused by effusion on the brain, and that his brain was one of the largest, weighing no less than 581 ounces.
In his delineation of the character and genius of Fielding, Thackeray has drawn his own. He had the same hatred of all meanness, cant, and knavery, the same large sym pathy, relish of life, thoughtful humor, keen insight, delicate irony, and wit. There was, however, one personal difference: Fielding was utterly careless as to censure of his works, whereas his successor was tremblingly alive to criticism, and was wounded to the quick by the slightest attack. His morbidly delicate organization made him exquisitely susceptible of either pain or pleasure. He had suffered much from physical maladies and from domestic calamity; and his earlier works, especially his Vanity Fair, were tinged with a degree of cynicism which seemed to countenance the charge of his unfriendly critics, that he delighted in representing the baser side of human nature, and was skeptical as to the existence of real virtue in the world. His strength lay in portray ing character rather than inventing incidents; and in Becky Sharp, col. Newsome, Harry Foker, Laura Pendennis, and Paul de Florae, to say nothing of the picaroon, Barry Lyndon, he has left us a living gallery, certainly not surpassed by any modern novelist. In his later writings the dark shades no longer preponderate. The mellowing influence of years and sickness, and calmer as well as more extensive observation of life, had sunk the merciless satirist in the genial humorist and philosophic observer. He had still ample scorn for falsehood and vice, and satire for folly and pretense; but he had also smiles and tears, and tenderness and charity, that gave a moral beauty and interest to the last decade of his brilliant career as an author.