ume, which are to be noted. Perhaps the most remarkable of these is the letter from Thackeray, written on the eve of his departure for America, and beginning with the words, "My dearest old Friend." (p. 221.)

The intellectual despondency to which I have referred, and its curious combination with a sort of emotional exuberance, is illustrated by his views of his contemporaries and friends. His admiration of Alfred Tennyson is unfailing, and so is his belief in the poet's powers. But he always thinks that the last thing which his friend has published is far below work that he has previously done, and very far below what he might do, did he not waste his energies upon unfruitful and trifling themes. Now despondency concerning Tennyson and his doings is common enough, so common as to be in itself almost a characteristic of the century. Young men and women, having arrived at the Tennysonian age, have been enraptured with the works of the poet, and the impression of these works has been permanent, entering into the very fiber of the soul. Having passed the Tennysonian age, they have been greatly disappointed with his subsequent productions. You shall find, if you care to look, that appreciation of Tennyson's works is very thoroughly stratified. You can guess somewhat accurately the age of a man, if you can find out what works of Tennyson he most admires. They will be, in nine cases out of ten, those which were published while this particular man was between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. It is an extraordinary tribute to the power of the poet over the mind of man, that this early allegiance is never shaken. But with all the varied belief in the deterioration of Tennyson's work, which we find everywhere, there has never been any other believer who held it so strenuously and so long as did FitzGerald. What we are accustomed to regard as the earlier poems of Tennyson seemed to him a terrible falling off from what he had done, and this faith was kept through the times of "The Princess" and "Maud," and "In Memoriam," and the "Idylls." But the successive shocks of these publications never shook FitzGerald's firm belief in the poet's powers, and still less his affection for the man, whom he had loved in his youth and whom he rarely saw in his later life. A similar

illustration of this trait is found in his judgments of the work

of Thackeray.

Writing to George Crabbe, two or three weeks after Thackeray's death, he says:

Have we exchanged a word about Thackeray since his Death? I am quite surprised to see how I sit moping about him to be sure, I keep reading his books. Oh, the Newcomes are fine. And now I have got hold of Pendennis, and seem to like that much more than when I first read it. I keep hearing him say so much of it; and really think I shall hear his Step up the Stairs to this Lodging as in old Charlotte Street thirty years ago. Really, a grand Figure has sunk under Earth. (p. 295.)

Ten days later, he writes to Thompson:

... his letters, and former works, bring me back the old Thackeray. . . . I had never read Pendennis and the Newcomes since their first appearance till this last month. They are wonderful; Fielding's seems to me coarse work in comparison. I have indeed been thinking of little this last month but of these Books and their Author. (p. 296.)

In a letter to Frederic Tennyson, under date of Dec. 7, 1849, he had written (Pendennis being then in course of publication):

I saw poor old Thackeray in London: getting very slowly better of a bilious fever that had almost killed him. People in general thought Pendennis got dull as it got on; and I confess I thought so too: he would do well to take the opportunity of his illness to discontinue it altogether. (p. 198.)

There can be no doubt as to what induced this remarkable judgment of one of the masterpieces of fiction. FitzGerald's. literary sense was of the strongest. What "people in general thought" ordinarily had no more effect upon his judgment than the howling of a dog. But in this case his affections were engaged, and his nervous fear that his friend would not do himself justice was enough to offset his faith in the ability of the

man.

Carlyle once wrote to FitzGerald: "Thanks for your friendly human letter; which gave us much entertainment in the reading (at breakfast time the other day), and is still pleasant to think of. One gets so many inhuman letters, ovine, bovine, porcine, &c., &c. I wish you would write a little oftener."

We have here a hint of what makes the real charm of these letters. They are intensely human. It is, moreover, a nineteenth century humanity. While it exhibits those permanent traits of humanity which are of all time, its peculiarities and interests are largely the peculiarities and interests of his age. He was essentially a man of letters, and the very catholicity of his literary taste is a note of the times to which he belonged. That taste was a thing which Horace Walpole and his contemporaries would have looked upon with astonishment and incredulity. Moreover this "eccentric man of genius, who took more pains to avoid fame than others did to seek it," exerted, as we shall see in another paper, a powerful influence on the literature of his time, unconsciously, we may say unintentionally, but really. That he was able to do so was due to the profound sympathy which he felt with certain moods of thought and feeling, which were of his time rather than of himself.

FitzGerald was on terms of startling good-fellowship with the immortals. There is a certain audacity in his relations with the great minds of past ages which is more than amusing. The way in which he associates himself as a collaborateur with Eschylus and Sophocles, Omar and Calderon, would be ridiculous on the part of most men. If good Homer nods, FitzGerald is ready to poke him in the ribs and tell him to wake up. If Eschylus seems at a disadvantage before modern readers, because of the cumberous restrictions of Greek dramatic rules, this obliging friend is at hand to divest him of the clumsy trappings and give him a chance to show his native grace and power before all eyes. The fact is that FitzGerald was not troubled with timidity in the presence of the great. He felt very much at home with them, as with his equals, and took liberties which would have been unendurable, if another had ventured upon them. This interesting attitude of mind had very interesting results, which we shall examine later, and it is one of the most striking traits of this very pronounced personality. It appears perhaps quite as strongly in his letters, as in the finished results of his literary work. Indeed, we fail to get the best understanding of the value and power of that work, unless we study it with the personal commentary which is furnished by the letters.

It would be a pleasant thing to collect from these letters such examples of FitzGerald's literary judgments, his intellectual likes and aversions, as to give a picture of his mind. But it is impossible so to do. Many of these judgments are so unexpected, many of his aversions so apparently groundless, when taken by themselves, that the true FitzGerald could not be so pictured. But the letters themselves present a remarkable portrait of the man. Shy of society, faithful in his friendships, lofty in his thoughts, with a literary gift of very rare quality which he was a good deal inclined to hide in a napkin, few men have been so distinctly presented to the public by their letters. It is a queer figure, one of the queerest! The reader laughs at him, and with him, wonders at his genius, sympathizes with his moods and vagaries, and, when he lays down the volume at the end, finds that this strange being, who so took possession of the hearts of some of the noblest men of his time, has won his affection also: quia multum amavit.

If I have failed to give any just impression of the charm of these letters, it is partly because that charm defies definition. Such a singular combination of fun, and serious thought, of keen humor and pathetic humanness, has not been given to the world in our generation. It is the most important collection of letters written by a man of letters that has illustrated the times, and its importance is not the less because it seems probable that it is the last of its kind. Of FitzGerald's genius and literary remains I may yet speak in another paper.

THOMAS RUTHERFORD BACON.

ARTICLE IV.-MR. GEORGE S. MERRIAM'S "STORY OF WILLIAM AND LUCY SMITH."

The Story of William and Lucy Smith. Edited by GEORGE S. MERRIAM. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1889. 12mo, pp. 400.

names.

“WILLIAM AND LUCY SMITH" Sound like very commonplace In the present instance, they were the names of by no means commonplace people, in respect of gifts or culture or literary and speculative significance. So at least it seemed to Mr. Merriam, who has made the preparation of this volume a work of love, and in its literary features, if we except some peculiarities of handling and some exuberance of matter, a great success. If we say in addition that the editor performed his task without any personal acquaintance with either of the parties of whom he wrote except by letter, and also that his critic knew both of them but through this medium only, we shall have said all and more than needs to be made known. And yet it seems no more than fair and just that the mutual relations of all these parties to one another should be understood.

William Smith so far as he has been known to the public was best known as the author of "Thorndale," a philosophical novel which was reviewed by the present writer in the NEW ENGLANDER, in August, 1859, and "Gravenhurst," another novel of the same character, which was reviewed in January, 1864. He was also the author of a volume of Dramatic Poems and a series of Essays on "Knowing and Feeling." His stated occupation was that of Literary Critic and Essayist for Blackwood's Magazine, for which he contributed with more or less steadiness from 1839 till 1871-more than thirty years. His most significant productions however were "Thorndale," and "Gravenhurst," both of which are remarkable for careful and polished diction, for lucid and consistent reasoning, and a cer. tain pathetic sadness at the mystery of moral evil and the necessity for human suffering which the author takes no pains