BENSON. Can you suggest any better mode of bringing about the discovery?

THE GENERAL. If no better can be devised, that only throws the objection upon the choice of such a subject.

PETERS. That brings us to the point. Come, General, don't be nibbling all around the poem, like a mouse about a big cheese, but tell us what you think of it as a whole.

THE GENERAL. As a whole, then, let me ask Benson if he considers it to add much to Tennyson's poetic reputation?

BENSON. Is it perfectly fair to expect that each successive work of an author shall equal or surpass his former masterpieces?

THE GENERAL. Somewhat of a Quaker answer, that, but it involves an admission which I accept as a satisfactory reply.

PETERS. I have heard it objected to the Princess, that it was too evidently written with a moral and for a moral, and therefore could not be a really great poem.

BENSON. That is really too bad, Fred. According to that rule, no allegorical picture can be a great painting.

THE GENERAL. It certainly is not the objection I should make either. The idea that a great poem cannot have a moral, seems to me as one-sided and untenable as the theory of the extreme Wordsworthians, that a great poem must have a moral. My animadversion would be just of the opposite kind that the subject of the Princess is too slight. It would be well enough for a semi-ludicrous trifle; it is not sufficient for an elaborate poem, the work of years. While reading this production, the suspicion has crossed my mind a mere suspicion which it is perhaps uncharitable to utter that Tennyson has intended and striven to be eminently Shakspearian in it. Hence his peculiar phraseology, his changes from grave to gay and from gay to grave, his rigorous artistic propriety combined with his almost systematic chronological discrepancy, his introduction of comic characters, (though he must have seen by this time that humor is not his forte ;) even the very reference to the Winter's Tale is not without meaning. But Tennyson is said to be a modest man, and it is hardly fair to tax him with

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such impudence. But at any rate the Princess goes far to confirm me in the opinion I held before, that long poems are not Tennyson's line, so to speak. And he must have an inkling of this himself, else why does he not finish Morte d'Arthur? which is surely worth finishing, though it might not perhaps be "one of the epics of the world," as Carl thinks. There are many exquisite little gems in the Princess many of "those jewels five-words long," that the author speaks of; but as a whole, I should be slow to call it a great work of art.

BENSON. There are certainly also many things in it to which the General has taken exception, and which I am not prepared to defend. The thought has struck me that for some or all of these occasional lapses, we may have to thank the so-called "Water Cure" which the author underwent between his former volumes and this. PETERS. Not a bad idea that, Carl. The result was exceedingly likely.

THE GENERAL. So then the same cause will account for the difference between "Evangeline" and "The Voices of the Night," and that between the Princess and Locksley Hall.

BENSON. Well, we are agreed on one point at any rate. And having settled so much satisfactorily, let us refresh our inner man. Lift up the top of that oak windowseat, Fred; you are the nearest to it. What do you find there?

PETERS. Something that looks very like a gaté de joie gras reposing upon some old music; and a little basket with an assortment of soda buscuit and waters, and is there a Bologna in this roll of yellowish paper? BENSON. Precisely. Where's the General? Oh, one naturally looks to the other window-seat for the liquids. Quite right. You will find some jolly old Cognac there, and a bottle of the real "Drioli" Maraschino, if you are not above so ladylike a vanity. Help me to clear the table, Fred. Put Dr. Arnold on the top of Vanity Fair, and pitch those Boston reviews into the chiffonier basket. Spread this Literary World out: it will do for an extempore table-cloth. There, we have the edibles and potables arranged! let us give a good account of them.

THE GENERAL. We will endeavor to do them justice, as we have been trying to do justice to the Princess.

FANITY FAIR.

American Review, October 1848.

AN Anglo-Saxon can appreciate, although he may not altogether admire Gallic wit; but a Gaul is hopelessly incompetent to understand Saxon humor.* It is to him what the Teutonic humor is to both Saxon and Gaul, who suppose it must be humorous to the Teuton because he vastly delights in it, but find it, so far as themselves are concerned, dreary in the extreme, and utterly valueless for purposes of amusement. Here is a book which has a brilliant run in England, where its author is acknowledged as one of the first periodical writers; we doubt if any Frenchmann could go through it without falling asleep in spite of the pictures. In our own country, where the original Saxon character has become partially Gallicized, the public opinion (setting aside that class

*Nothing shows this more clearly than the use which the French have made, and not made, of their own one great humorist. They bray about him of course, for he is part of their natural glory; they talk about reading him "bring me the tongs and a volume of Pantagraet," as that precious Theophile Gautier says. Possibly they even read him as a bit of "business," though it may be doubted if he is not and has not generally been more read in England than in France Certainly he has left a greater impress on English than on French literature. Setting aside minor writers, there is no great modern French author, so Rabelaiesque as Swift or Southey. Most of the direct and professed imitations of Rabelais which one meets with in modern French are utterly inadequate. Balzac sontes Drolatiques are very clever in their way but have little of their model except the antiquated spelling. Even their indecency, on which the author so prides himself in his preface is the indecency of Balzac and not of Rabelais. One man alone among contemporary French authors is imbued with the style and spirit of the old humorist, and that without making any parade of such inspiration; the resemblance too is more striking in the serious than in the comic portions of his works. Napoleon le petit is exactly such a book as Rabelais might have written had he been in Victor Hugo's place.

of readers, unfortunately too large, who are the willing slaves of the publishers, and feel bound to read and talk about a book because it is advertised by a big house, in big letters, as "Thackeray's Masterpiece,") is about equally divided, some much enjoying "Vanity Fair," others voting it a great bore.

French wit and English humor! We do not mean to expatiate on this oftendiscussed theme, tempting though it be, affording copious opportunity for antitheses more or less false, and distinctions without differences, but shall merely hint at what seems the most natural way to explain this national diversity of taste and appreciation in respect of the two faculties. Wit consists in the expression more than in the matter it depends very considerably on the words employed and hence the wittiest French sayings are, if not inexpressible, at least inexpressive in English. Under the homely Saxon garb they generally become very stupid or very wicked remarks - not unfrequently both. But an Englishman with a respectable knowledge of French can understand and be amused by French wit, though he will probably not enter into it very heartily. Humor, on the other hand, depends on a particular habit of mind; so that, to enjoy English humor, a Frenchman must not only understand English, but become intellectually Anglicized to a degree that is unnatural to him. In proof of this, it may be noticed that French-educated or French-minded Americans find Thackeray tedious, and (to take a stronger case, where no national prejudice but a favorable one can be at work,) yawn over Washington Irving.

And yet, if we wished to give an idea of Thackeray's writings to a person who had never read them, we should go to France for our first illustration; but it would be to French art, not French literature. No one who has ever been familiar with the pictured representations of Parisian life which embellish that repository of wicked wit, the Charivari no one who knows Les Lorettes, Les Enfans Terribles, &c., would think of applying to the designs of Gavarni and his brother artists the term caricatures. He would say, "There is no caricature about them; they are life itself." And so it is with Thackeray's writings; they present you with humorous sketches of real life literal comic pictures never rising to the

ideal or diverging into the grotesque. Thus, while his stories are excellent as a collection of separate sketches, they have but moderate merit as stories, nor are his single characters great as single characters. Becky Sharpe is the only one that can be called a firstrate hit; for "Chawls Yellowplush" is characterized chiefly by his ludicrous spelling, and his mantle fits "Jeemes" just as well. And just as Gavarni differs from Hogarth, should we say Thackeray differs from Dickens, a writer with whom he is sometimes compared, and to whom he undoubtedly has some points of resemblance, though he cannot with any propriety be called "of the Dickens school," or "an imitator of Dickens," any more than Gavarni could be called an imitator of Hogarth.

Thackeray has his points of contact, also, with another great humorous writer, Washington Irving. Very gracefully and prettily does Mr. Titmarsh write at times; there is many a little bit, here and there, in the "Journey from Cornhill to Cairo," that would not disgrace Geoffrey Crayon in his best mood. But his geniality is not so genuine, or so continuous. Not that there is anything affected about his mirth he is one of the most natural of modern English writers: Cobbett or Sidney Smith could hardly be more so; but it is dashed with stronger ingredients. Instead of welling up with perennial jollity, like our most good-humored of humorous authors, he is evidently a little blaze, and somewhat disposed to be cynical.

To compare Thackeray with Dickens and Irving, most of our readers will think paying him a high compliment, but we are not at all sure that his set would be particularly obliged to us; for it is the fortune good in some respects, evil in others of Mr. Titmarsh to be one of a set. But wherever there are literary men there will be sets; and those who have been bored and disgusted by the impertinence and nonsense of stupid cliques will be charitable to the occasional conceits of clever ones. Having had some happy experience of that literary society which is carried to greater perfection in England than in any other country, we can pardon the amiable cockneyism with which Michael Angelo's thoughts revert to his Club even amid the finest scenery of other lands, and the semi-ludicrous earnestness with which he