All day, thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land
    Though the dark night is near.

    And soon that toil shall end,
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
    Soon, o’er thy sheltered nest.

    Thou’rt gone; the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart,
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,
    And shall not soon depart.

He, who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright. 
—­Bryant.

CXXVIII.  GOLDSMITH AND ADDISON. (435)

William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811-1863, was born in Calcutta, and is one of the most popular of English novelists, essayists, and humorists.  While a boy, he removed from India to England, where he was educated at the Charterhouse in London, and at Cambridge.  When twenty-one years of age, he came into possession of about 20,000 pounds.  He rapidly dissipated his fortune, however, and was compelled to work for his living, first turning his attention to law and then to art, but finally choosing literature as his profession.  He was for many years correspondent, under assumed names, at the “London Times,” “The New Monthly Magazine,” “Punch,” and “Fraser’s Magazine.”  His first novel under his own name, “Vanity Fair,” appeared in monthly numbers during 1846-8, and is generally considered his finest production:  although “Pendennis,” “Henry Esmond,” and “The Newcomes” are also much admired.  His lectures on “English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century,” from which the following selections are taken, were delivered in England first in 1851, and afterwards in America, which he visited in 1852 and again in 1855-6.  During the latter visit, he first delivered his course of lectures on “The Four Georges,” which were later repeated in England.  At the close of 1859, Thackeray became editor of the “Cornhill Magazine,” and made it one of the most successful serials ever published.

Thackeray has been charged with cynicism in his writings, but he was noted for his happy temper and genial disposition towards all who came in contact with him. ###

1.  Goldsmith.

To be the most beloved of English writers, what a title that is for a man!  A wild youth, wayward, but full of tenderness and affection, quits the country village where his boyhood has been passed in happy musing, in idle shelter, in fond longing to see the great world out of doors, and achieve name and fortune—­and after years of dire struggle, and neglect, and poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to his native place as it had longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, he writes a book and a poem, full of the recollections and feelings of home; he paints the friends and scenes of his youth, and peoples Auburn and Wakefield with the remembrances of Lissoy.