the cause of this to-and-fro of judgment?  The main explanation is to be found in the changing literary ideals from 1850 to 1900.  When Dickens was active, literature, broadly speaking, was estimated not exclusively as art, but as human product, an influence in the world.  With the coming of the new canon, which it is convenient to dub by the catch-phrase, Art for Art’s Sake, a man’s production began to be tested more definitely by the technique he possessed, the skilled way in which he performed his task.  Did he play the game well?  That was the first question.  Often it was the first and last.  If he did, his subject-matter, and his particular vision of Life, were pretty much his own affair.  And this modern touchstone, applied to the writings of our two authors, favored Thackeray.  Simple, old-fashioned readers inclined to give Dickens the preference over him because the former’s interpretation of humanity was, they averred, kindlier and more wholesome.  Thackeray was cynical, said they; Dickens humanitarian; but the later critical mood rebounded from Dickens, since he preached, was frankly didactic, insisted on his mission of doing good—­and so failed in his art.  Now, however, that the l’art pour art shibboleth has been sadly overworked and is felt to be passing or obsolete, the world critical is reverting to that broader view which demands that the maker of literature shall be both man and artist:  as a result, Dickens gains in proportion.  This explanation makes it likely that, looking to the future, while Thackeray may not lose, Dickens is sure to be more and more appreciated.  A return to a saner and truer criterion will be general and the confines of a too narrow estheticism be understood:  or, better yet, the esthetic will be so defined as to admit of wider application.  The Gissings and Chestertons of the time to come will insist even more strenuously than those of ours that while we may have improved upon Dickens’ technique—­and every schoolboy can tinker his faults—­we shall do exceedingly well if we duplicate his genius once in a generation.  And they will add that Thackeray, another man of genius, had also his malaises of art, was likewise a man with the mortal failings implied in the word.  For it cannot now be denied that just as Dickens’ faults have been exaggerated, Thackeray’s have been overlooked.

Thackeray might lose sadly in the years to come could it be demonstrated that, as some would have it, he deserved the title of cynic.  Here is the most mooted point in Thackeray appreciation:  it interests thousands where the nice questions concerning the novelist’s art claim the attention of students alone.  What can be said with regard to it?  It will help just here to think of the man behind the work.  No sensible human being, it would appear, can become aware of the life and personality of Thackeray without concluding that he was an essentially kind-hearted, even soft-hearted man.  He was keenly sensitive to praise and blame, most affectionate and constant