Word: thackeray
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
HAVE you ever read essays of Elia, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, or Vanity Fair? Then I am sure of your interest in a few words about those two old schools, Christ Hospital and Gray Friars, from whose walls have gone out, not only Charles Lamb, Coleridge, and Thackeray, but many more of England's noblest writers and workers...
...knew them by heart, and thoroughly understood and appreciated much that was in them! Would it not be better if we, in our day, could only bring ourselves to give up the one thousand and one others, and try to get some idea of the real spirit of Carlyle, Thackeray, Tennyson, or some great writer, till we felt ourselves equal to the study of the greatest, - Shakespeare...
...single writer to traverse the whole range of English literature without a stumble would be almost impossible. Mr. Taine, although on the whole wonderfully apt to be right, is acknowledged to have made some mistakes; and one of these mistakes is, I think, his estimation of Thackeray. It has always been the fashion to decry Thackeray as a cynic. While his critics unite in praise of his keen insight into all the foibles and vices of our nature, they are equally unanimous in declaring that he has turned this power to a bad use, that he has made...
...scorn which has no mixture of pity. We may blame him for his quickness in discovering our vices and our failings, or for his slowness to appreciate our virtues; we may complain that he seeks the disease rather than the remedy; yet we seldom accuse him of untruth. But Thackeray's sarcasm is a cloak for his compassion. He is content to assume the form of derision, that he may the better excite our indignant pity...
...this view of the case is wrong, and Thackeray is really a cynic, then indeed he is a most inconsistent and tender-hearted one. No other writer is more quick to admire purity and innocence. No other writer has shown so great respect for and appreciation of true womanliness, or has so well described it. In almost every chapter he has written there are sentiments as far removed from cynicism as is the most earnest and modest charity. Whatever a man's faults may be, or however contemptible, in the common sense, he may appear, if he has a kindly...