The Melbourne Review - v. 9 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY Most of the readers and lovers of the great author .whose name heads this notice must have been conscious of a feeling of dissatis... more »faction, amounting almost to chagrin, when perusing the " Thackeray" of Mr. Trollope. It cannot be said that the book is pretentious, or that its exterior arouses any lively anticipations. Doubtless, justice could not be done to so ample a subject within the limits assigned ; yet, small as are the expectations excited, they as certainly remain ungratified; and we close the book possessed with no other feeling but one of wonder that it should have been possible to say so little to the purpose and so much beside the purpose—to exhibit so small a modicum of Thackeray, as against so intolerable a quantity of Trollope. Judging from the performance, it is hard to see what special fitness there was in the gentleman whom Mr. Morley selected to do Thackeray, unless it be that appropriateness of the man to the office which Dogberry recognized in Neighbour Seacoal—" You are thought here to be the most senseless and fit man for constable of the watch. Therefore, bear thou the lantern!" It is to be regretted that these remarks should be not undeserved by a book forming one of such a series as "English Men of Letters"—a series which we are, in effect, told is intended to give to the hurried youth of the period —those who, to quote the trite phrase of the advertisement, must "run as they read"—a knowledge of the works of the masters in British literature, without putting them to the trouble of perusing the originals. Of a series written with this avowed object, it is not too much to expect that the information supplied should be accurate, the critical notices intelligent and appreciative, the quotations such as to display and indic...« less