Though not far beyond middle life, Thackeray felt the burden of years. and resigned the editor ship of the Co/ib/it in April, 1862. On the morning of December 24, 13,63. lie was found dead in his lied. He was admirable both as a man and as a novelist. Tennyson called him 'lovable' and 'noble-hearted.' So said Carlyle, and all who knew him well. He has been often called a cynic; and indeed lie was unsparing in the fierceness with which lie plied the lash on anything which savored of sham or pretense, and his keen vision detected alloy in the finest natures. Yet there is a tremendous contrast be tween his satire and that of Swift, a truer type of the cynic, who hated and despised human nature and rejoiced in laying bare its weak nesses. Thackeray wrote always with a noble tenderness and an utter reverence for all that was good and tree. Yet it must be admitted that, almost without exception, the strongest characters in his novels are the bad ones, and that he has drawn scarcely a woman whom we can love and admire without qualification.
This probably comes, however, less from what has been called his cynicism than from a more indisputable defeet—his lack of poetic imagina tion. Thackeray was a realist; in some ways he pointed out the path to the modern English realistic school. "I have no brains above my eyes," be said himself; "I describe what 1 see." lle describes the life of the upper classes, as Dickens that of the lower; and between them they give an unrivaled picture of English life in the middle of the nineteenth century, with its characteristic notes—one may say, for the first time in the history of literature, a picture of a society whose chief concern is the making or the spending of money. The interest in social ques tions which he was among the first to import into fiction has never died out; though Charlotte Bronq's enthusiastic picture of him (in the preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre) as a prophet "who comes before the great ones of society much as the son of lmlah came before the throned kings of Judah and Israel, and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as prophet like and as vital, a mien as dauntless and as daring," may seem to us overdrawn. The most indisputable of his qualities is his unfailing mastery of a singularly pure, perfect, and simple style—the natural unstrained expression of his thoughts, however lofty or however homely they may have been. "He blew on his pipe, and words came tripping round him, like children, like pretty little children who are perfectly drilled for the dance; or came, did he will it, treading in their precedence, like kings, gloom ily." His style. like the vividly realized world of
his characters, is the direct outgrowth of what has been called "perhaps the most intereAting personality that has expressed itself in prose." BIBLIOGRAPHY. Out of respect for Thackeray's Bibliography. Out of respect for Thackeray's request, no authorized biography of him has ever been written. His daughter, Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, however, has written sketches for each volume of the Biographical Edition of his works (London, 1898-99), and his son-in-law, Sir Leslie Stephen, wrote the article on him in the Dic tionary of National Biography. Another good edition of the 'Forks is that with introduction by Walter .Jerrold (New York, 1902). Anthony Trollope's Thaekeray, in the "English Men of Letters" series (London, 1879). is valuable for personal impressions. One of the latest biog raphies and certainly the most complete one is by Lewis Melville (London, 1S99). For early work, not found in the Biographical Edition, see Unidentified Contributions of Thackeray to Punch, ed. by Spiclmann (ib., 1899), and Thaekeray's Stray Papers, 1821 to 1847, ed. by Melville (ib., 1901). Consult also Hunter, The Thackerays in India (ib., 1897) : the biography by Merlynle and Marzials in the "Great Writers" series (ib., 1891) ; Whibley (ib., 1903) : Crowe, Homes and Haunts of Thaokeray (ib., 1897) ; id., With. Thackeray in America (ib., 1893) ; Thackeray in the United States (New York, 1004). For criti cism. consult especially the essays by Harrison, in Early Victorian Literature (London, 1895): Brownell. in Victorian Prose Masters (New York, 1901) : Scudder, Social Ideals in English Letters (Boston, 1898) : Lilly. in Four English Hu-morists of the Nineteenth Century (London, 1895) Skelton, Table Talk of Shirley (ib., 1895).
THADD/ErUS (Lat., from Gk. OwStiaine, Thaddaios). The name assigned to one of the twelve Apostles in the list given in Mark iii. 16 19. In the corresponding list in Matt, a. 2-4 the name is Lebhxus, while in Luke vi. 14-16, Acts i. 14 it is given as Judas [son] of James. Some of these readings are not above suspicion, as tho manuscripts differ considerably. It is possible that the original name was Judas Thaddeus, for which Judas Lebbreus was often used, Lebbreus being a euphemism for Thaddreus. Eusebius makes Thachheirs one of the seventy, and sent by Thomas the Apostle to Abgar, King of Edes sa, to heal him and to evangelize his people. Eusebius claims to have taken this story direct from Syrian sources. The Syrian tradition embodied in the "Doctrine of Addai" makes Ad dai, one of the s-eventy, the apostle of the Syr ian Church.