be easy penmen, and to have language very readily at their command; both also seem to convey their meaning as simply as they can, and to be careful, according to their notions of verbal accuracy; but in Mr. Dickens's sentences there is a leafiness, a tendency to words and images, for their own sake; whereas in Mr. Thackeray's one sees the stem and outline of the thought better. We have no great respect for that canon of style which demands in English writers the use of Saxon in preference to Latin words, thinking that a rule to which there are natural limitations, variable with the writer's aim and with the subject he treats; but we should suppose that critics who do regard the rule would find Mr. Thackeray's style the more accordant with it. On the whole, if we had to choose passages at random, to be set before young scholars as examples of easy and vigorous English composition, we would take them rather from Thackeray than from Dickens. There is a Horatian strictness, a racy strength, in Mr. Thackeray's expressions, even in his more level and tame passages, which we miss in the corresponding passages in Mr. Dickens's writings, and in which we seem to recognise the effect of those classical studies through which an accurate and determinate, though somewhat bald, use of words becomes a fixed habit. In the ease, and, at the same time, thorough polish and propriety with which Mr. Thackeray can use slang words, we seem especially to detect the University man. Snob, swell, buck, gent, fellow, fogy-these, and many more such expressive appellatives, not yet sanctioned by the Dictionary, Mr. Thackeray employs more frequently, we believe, than any other living writer, and yet always with unexceptionable taste. In so doing he is conscious, no doubt, of the same kind of security that permits Oxford and Cambridge men, and even, as we can testify, Oxford and Cambridge clergymen, to season their conversation with similar words-namely, the evident air of educated manliness with which they can be introduced, and which, however rough the guise, no one can mistake. In the use of the words genteel, vulgar, female, and the like-words which men diffident of their own breeding are observed not to risk; as well as in the art of alternating gracefully between the noun lady and the noun woman, the Scylla and Charybdis, if we may so say, of shy talkersMr. Thackeray is also a perfect master, commanding his language in such cases with an unconscious ease, not unlike that which enables the true English gentleman he is so fond of portraying, either to name titled personages of his acquaintance without seeming a tuft-hunter, or to refrain from naming them without the affectation of Radicalism. In Mr. Dickens, of course, we have the same perfect taste and propriety; but in him the result appears to arise, if we may so express ourselves, rather from the

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keen and feminine sensibility of a fine genius, whose instinct is always for the pure and beautiful, than from the self-possession of a mind correct under any circumstances, by discipline and sure habit. Where Mr. Dickens is not exerting himself, that is, in passages of mere equable narrative or description, where there is nothing to move or excite him, his style, as we have already said, seems to us more careless and languid than that of Mr. Thackeray; sometimes, indeed, a whole page is only redeemed from weakness by those little touches of wit and those humorous turns of conception which he knows so well how to sprinkle over it. It is due to Mr. Dickens to state, however, that in this respect his "Copperfield" is one of his most pleasing productions, and a decided improvement on its predecessor "Dombey." Not only is the spirit of the book more gentle and mellow, but the style is more continuous and careful, with fewer of those recurring tricks of expression, the dead remnants of former felicities, which constituted what was called his mannerism. Nor must we omit to remark also, that in passages where higher feeling is called into play, Mr. Dickens's style always rises into greater purity and vigour, the weakness and the superfluity disappearing before the concentrating force of passion, and the language often pouring itself forth in a clear and flowing song. This, in fact, is according to the nature of the luxuriant or poetical genius, which never expresses itself in its best or most concise manner unless the mood be high as well as the meaning clear; for maintaining the excellence of the style of a terse and highly reflective writer, such as Thackeray, on the other hand, the presence of a clear meaning is at all times sufficient, though, of course, here also the pitch and melody will depend on the mood.

But it would be unfair to our courteous publisher, as well as to the reader, if we had quoted the foregoing extracts only as samples of the style and manner of our two novelists. We believe also, that they will suggest, or at least illustrate, certain more prominent and tangible differences between them.

Regarding the general intellectual calibre, for example, of the two men, viewing that as far as possible without reference to their special function as artistic writers, we should say that the passages we have quoted represent pretty fairly their average powers of thought; their competence, either by native faculty or acquired culture, to deal intellectually with any subject that might be submitted to them. Now, here again, our impression is, that Thackeray's is the mind of closer and more compact, Dickens's the mind of looser, richer, and freer texture. In the passage we have quoted from Thackeray there is certainly no positive or express display either of thought or of learning, and we would by no

means cite it as a specimen of what he could do in the way either of speculation or of erudite allusion; still there is about it a knowingness, an air of general ability and scholarship, that suggests that the man who wrote it could take an influential place, if he chose, either in an assembly of critics, or in a committee of men of business. There is a general force of talent, a worldly shrewdness and sagacity, as well as a certain breadth of culture, latent in it, from which we argue that the writer would in any company make himself felt, if not as a man of energetic activity, at least as a man of quiet brain and vigour. Mr. Dickens, too, is of course a man whose intellect would be remarkable anywhere; for no writer could rise to his degree of excellence in any department without much of that general force and fulness of mind which would have enabled him to excel in any other; perhaps, also, his natural versatility is greater than that of Mr. Thackeray; still we do not see in him that habitual knowingness, that closegrained solidity of view, that impressive strong sense, which we find in what Thackeray writes. Mr. Dickens may be the more pensive and meditative, but Mr. Thackeray is the more penetrating and reflective writer. The contrast between them in this respect is not unlike that which might, though at the risk of confusion, be drawn between some of the best recent novelists of France and their contemporary Balzac. Like Balzac, Thackeray strikes us by his shrewd, hard, and all but remorseless insight, thus creating the impression that in the matter of general sagacity, the mere lumen siccum which all men need, he must be superior to many who could still rival him as artists. Dickens, we should suppose, would be more apt to fall into commonplace than Thackeray; indeed, in the passage on model prisons which we have quoted from "Copperfield," and which, as it is an important passage, and controversial in its tone, may be regarded as a fair average specimen of Mr. Dickens's habits as a thinker, it is only the soundness of the conclusion, and the evident sincerity of the feeling, that redeem the writing from a dangerous resemblance to common talk. Neither, on the one hand, does Mr. Dickens deepen and elaborate his thoughts by special effort, which might be deemed unsuitable in a novel; nor, on the other hand, do all his thoughts on their first expression, carry with them that air of native weight which would belong, we imagine, to the opinions of Thackeray. A writer of Mr. Dickens's celebrity ought not to devote a whole page to the repetition of what everybody says, in very nearly the same words that everybody uses. He ought, by giving his own reasons as profoundly as possible, to elevate and strengthen the common opinion. Here, of course, however, the same remark is of force that we applied to the matter of Mr. Dickens's style. As Mr. Dickens's language, though loose

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and redundant in the tame and level passages, gathers itself up and acquires concentration and melody under the influence of passion or pathos, so his thought, ordinarily lax and unwrought, attains real pith and volume when his feelings are moved. For this, we repeat, is the prerogative of an essentially susceptible and poetic nature, that every part and faculty of it, judgment as well as fancy, does its best when the frenzy is upon it. As a man, therefore, more capable of the poetic excitement than the majority of his literary contemporaries, Mr. Dickens might occasionally, we think, strike into a quæstio vexata with peculiar effect, and render to the public a positive intellectual service. Still, our impression is, that as regards the possession and habitual practice of a cool, masculine, and decisive judgment, Thackeray's writings shew him to be a man more competent to exert an influence on current affairs. Dickens, when enthusiasm did call upon him to interfere, would act more resistlessly; but Thackeray would be the man of more sound and steady intelligence.

Yet, curiously enough, the two writers seem, in this respect, to have exchanged their parts. Dickens is by far the more opinionative and aggressive, Thackeray by far the more acquiescent and unpolemical, writer. The passage on model prisons quoted above, wherein Mr. Dickens attacks the silent system of prison management, is but one instance out of hundreds in which he has, while pursuing his occupation as a novelist, pronounced strong judgments on disputed social questions. To whatever cause the fact is to be attributed-whether to a native combativeness conjoined with great benevolence of disposition, or to external circumstances that have developed in him the habit of taking a side in all current controversies-we should say, without hesitation, that few men, dominated so decidedly by the artistic temperament, have shewn so obvious an inclination as Mr. Dickens to step beyond the province of the artist, and exercise the functions of the social and moral critic. It was a law of Solon, that no Athenian should stand neutral at a time. when any great question agitated the state ;-whosoever did not come to the poll, give his vote like a man, and take his due part in the public business, was to be punished with death as a useless and immoral fellow. There was a profound sense in this law; and Mr. Dickens seems but to appreciate it, and to act up to his duty as an English citizen, when, by means of pamphlets, public speeches, letters to the newspapers, articles in periodicals, and other such established methods of communicating with his fellow-subjects, he speaks his mind freely on practices or institutions that offend him. It ought, indeed, to be a matter for congratulation, when such a man comes forward to give a practical opinion at all; he ought to be listened to with special deference,

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and his suggestions ought to be carefully considered. Nor is it a secret that Mr. Dickens, following the dictates of a warm and generous heart, has rendered, on various occasions, very zealous and important services to the cause of public morality and benevolence. Recently, indeed, his shrewd observation and brilliant powers of writing, have been employed from week to week in the express task of exposing certain anomalies and abuses in our social arrangements, lying, as it would seem, quite snugly out of sight of official vigilance. In all this he merits only encouragement and success. We cannot, however, assent so easily to his habit of interspersing controversial remarks, and direct passages of social criticism and remonstrance, through his fictions. Clearly as these works belong to the department of artistic writing, there is not one of them that does not contain matter that is purely dogmatic in its import-judgments pronounced promptly and peremptorily by Mr. Dickens in his own name on various questions of morals, taste, or legislation. Prisondiscipline, the constitution of the ecclesiastical courts, the management of schools, capital punishments; Mr. Dickens's opinions on these, and many other such topics of a practical kind, are to be found explicitly affirmed and argued in his novels. Nor is he content with expressing his views merely on practical points. Modes of thinking, doctrines, theological and speculative tendencies, likewise come in for a share of his critical notice. Passages might be quoted from his stories, for example, where he has distinctly attacked and denounced transcendentalism in philosophy, and puritanism in religion. Now, of course, a man must have his views on these subjects, and these views must break out in his works, however artistic their form; but it is a dangerous thing thus openly and professedly to blend the functions of the artist with those of the declaimer. A man who does so must needs be very sure of himself, and must have his own beliefs elaborated as a whole into their most complete and living form of combination. For, as we have before said, when a man like Dickens dogmatises, one is entitled to expect something that shall, both in reason and in expression, have a finish and beauty beyond the art of the mere platform speaker. Every thought should then be conceived under the extreme pressure of a wish to say all in little space; and every word should sparkle like a well-set jewel. For our respect for the talent a man shews as an artist, ought not, as a matter of course, to extend itself so as to shelter all his dicta as a moralist or practical politician. It may be requisite to adjust our relations to him differently, according as he talks to us in the one capacity or in the other. We may owe one degree of respect for Mr. Dickens as the describer of Squeers and Creakle, and quite