1901.
[60] _A History of English Poetry_. 1895 (in progress).
THACKERY'S "ESMOND"
At this date, Thackeray's _Esmond_ has passed from the domain of
criticism into that securer region where the classics, if they do not
actually "slumber out their immortality," are at least preserved from
profane intrusion. This "noble story"[61]--as it was called by one of its
earliest admirers--is no longer, in any sense, a book "under review."
The painful student of the past may still, indeed, with tape and
compass, question its details and proportions; or the quick-fingered
professor of paradox, jauntily turning it upside-down, rejoice in the
results of his perverse dexterity; but certain things are now
established in regard to it, which cannot be gainsaid, even by those who
assume the superfluous office of anatomising the accepted. In the first
place, if _Esmond_ be not the author's greatest work (and there are
those who, like the late Anthony Trollope, would willingly give it that
rank), it is unquestionably his greatest work in its particular kind,
for its sequel, _The Virginians_, however admirable in detached
passages, is desultory and invertebrate, while _Denis Duval_, of which
the promise was "great, remains unfinished. With _Vanity Fair_, the
author's masterpiece in another manner, _Esmond_ cannot properly be
compared, because an imitation of the past can never compete in
verisimilitude or on any satisfactory terms with a contemporary picture.
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