WORKS OF THACKERAY.  The beginner will do well to omit the earlier satires of Thackeray, written while he was struggling to earn a living from the magazines, and open Henry Esmond (1852), his most perfect novel, though not the most widely known and read.  The fine historical and literary, flavor of this story is one of its most marked characteristics, and only one who knows something of the history and literature of the eighteenth century can appreciate its value.  The hero, Colonel Esmond; relates his own story, carrying the reader through the courts and camps of Queen Anne’s reign, and giving the most complete and accurate picture of a past age that has ever appeared in a novel.  Thackeray is, as we have said, a realist, and he begins his story by adopting the style and manner of a scholarly gentleman of the period he is describing.  He has an extraordinary knowledge of eighteenth-century literature, and he reproduces its style in detail, going so far as to insert in his narrative an alleged essay from the Tatler.  And so perfectly is it done that it is impossible to say wherein it differs from the style of Addison and Steele.

In his matter also Thackeray is realistic, reflecting not the pride and pomp of war, which are largely delusions, but its brutality and barbarism, which are all too real; painting generals and leaders, not as the newspaper heroes to whom we are accustomed, but as moved by intrigues, petty jealousies, and selfish ambitions; showing us the great Duke of Marlborough not as the military hero, the idol of war-crazed multitudes, but as without personal honor, and governed by despicable avarice.  In a word, Thackeray gives us the “back stairs” view of war, which is, as a rule, totally neglected in our histories.  When he deals with the literary men of the period, he uses the same frank realism, showing us Steele and Addison and other leaders, not with halos about their heads, as popular authors, but in slippers and dressing gowns, smoking a pipe in their own rooms, or else growing tipsy and hilarious in the taverns,—­just as they appeared in daily life.  Both in style and in matter, therefore, Esmond deserves to rank as probably the best historical novel in our language.

The plot of the story is, like most of Thackeray’s plots, very slight, but perfectly suited to the novelist’s purpose.  The plans of his characters fail; their ideals grow dim; there is a general disappearance of youthful ambitions.  There is a love story at the center; but the element of romance, which furnishes the light and music and fragrance of love, is inconspicuous.  The hero, after ten years of devotion to a young woman, a paragon of beauty, finally marries her mother, and ends with a few pious observations concerning Heaven’s mercy and his own happy lot.  Such an ending seems disappointing, almost bizarre, in view of the romantic novels to which we are accustomed; but we must remember that Thackeray’s purpose was to paint life as he saw it, and that in life men and things often take a different way from that described in romances.  As we grow acquainted with Thackeray’s characters, we realize that no other ending was possible to his story, and conclude that his plot, like his style, is perhaps as near perfection as a realistic novelist can ever come.