Thackeray Part 11

Hark to the preacher, preaching still!

He lifts his voice and cries his sermon, Here at St. Peter's of Cornhill, As yonder on the Mount of Hermon--

For you and me to heart to take (O dear beloved brother readers), To-day,--as when the good king spake Beneath the solemn Syrian cedars.

It was just so with him always. He was "crying his sermon," hoping, if it might be so, to do something towards lessening the evils he saw around him. We all preach our sermon, but not always with the same earnestness. He had become so urgent in the cause, so loud in his denunciations, that he did not stop often to speak of the good things around him. Now and again he paused and blessed amid the torrent of his anathemas. There are Dobbin, and Esmond, and Colonel Newcome. But his anathemas are the loudest. It has been so I think nearly always with the eloquent preachers.

I will insert here,--especially here at the end of this chapter, in which I have spoken of Thackeray's matter and manner of writing, because of the justice of the criticism conveyed,--the lines which Lord Houghton wrote on his death, and which are to be found in the February number of _The Cornhill_ of 1864. It was the first number printed after his death.

I would add that, though no Dean applied for permission to bury Thackeray in Westminster Abbey, his bust was placed there without delay.

What is needed by the nation in such a case is simply a lasting memorial there, where such memorials are most often seen and most highly honoured. But we can all of us sympathise with the feeling of the poet, writing immediately on the loss of such a friend:

When one, whose nervous English verse Public and party hates defied, Who bore and bandied many a curse Of angry times,--when Dryden died,

Our royal abbey's Bishop-Dean Waited for no suggestive prayer, But, ere one day closed o'er the scene, Craved, as a boon, to lay him there.

The wayward faith, the faulty life, Vanished before a nation's pain.

Panther and Hind forgot their strife, And rival statesmen thronged the fane.

O gentle censor of our age!

Prime master of our ampler tongue!

Whose word of wit and generous page Were never wrath, except with wrong,--

Fielding--without the manner's dross, Scott--with a spirit's larger room, What Prelate deems thy grave his loss?

What Halifax erects thy tomb?

But, may be, he,--who so could draw The hidden great,--the humble wise, Yielding with them to G.o.d's good law, Makes the Pantheon where he lies.

THE END.

CHARLES d.i.c.kENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY.

These Short Books are addressed to the general public with a view both to stirring and satisfying an interest in literature and its great topics in the minds of those who have to run as they read. An immense cla.s.s is growing up, and must every year increase, whose education will have made them alive to the importance of the masters of our literature, and capable of intelligent curiosity as to their performances. The Series is intended to give the means of nourishing this curiosity, to an extent that shall be copious enough to be profitable for knowledge and life, and yet be brief enough to serve those whose leisure is scanty.

The following are arranged for:

SPENSER The Dean of St. Paul's. [In the Press.

HUME Professor Huxley. [Ready.

BUNYAN James Anthony Froude.

JOHNSON Leslie Stephen. [Ready.

GOLDSMITH William Black. [Ready.

MILTON Mark Pattison.

COWPER Goldwin Smith.

SWIFT John Morley.

BURNS Princ.i.p.al Shairp. [Ready.

SCOTT Richard H. Hutton. [Ready.

Sh.e.l.lEY J. A. Symonds. [Ready.

GIBBON J. C. Morison. [Ready.

BYRON Professor Nichol.

DEFOE W. Minto. [Ready.

BURKE John Morley.

HAWTHORNE Henry James, Jnr.

CHAUCER A. W. Ward.

THACKERAY Anthony Trollope. [Ready.

ADAM SMITH Leonard H. Courtney, M.P.

BENTLEY Professor R. C. Jebb.

LANDOR Professor Sidney Colvin.

POPE Leslie Stephen.

WORDSWORTH F. W. H. Myers.

SOUTHEY Professor E. Dowden.