Thackeray's early works are written in the same perfect, easy,
colloquial style, rich in natural literary allusions and frequently
rhythmic with poetic feeling, which marked his latest novel. He also
had perfect command of slang and the cockney dialect of the Londoner.
No greater master of dialogue or narrative ever wrote than he who
pictured the gradual degradation of Becky Sharp or the many
self-sacrifices of Henry Esmond for the woman that he loved.
Howells and other critics have censured Thackeray severely because of
his tendency to preach, and also because he regarded his characters as
puppets and himself as the showman who brought out their
peculiarities. There is some ground for this criticism, if one regards
the art of the novelist as centered wholly in realism; but such a hard
and fast rule would condemn all old English novelists from Richardson
to Thackeray.
It ought not to disturb any reader that Defoe turns aside and gives
reflections on the acts of his characters, for these remarks are the
fruit of his own knowledge of the world. In the same way Thackeray
keeps up a running comment on his men and women, and these bits of
philosophy make his novels a storehouse of apothegms, which may be
read again and again with great profit and pleasure. The modern novel,
with its comparative lack of thought and feeling, its insistence
upon the absolute effacement of the author, is seldom worth reading a
second time.
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