ABSTRACT
Mr. Thackeray has arrived at a peculiar distinction in the world of art. When we look at a new picture of any recognised school-suppose the Dutch School of Art-we do not expect to receive any entirely novel idea. We look at the pictures of Wouvermans’ and we ask where is the White Horse; we look at Teniers or Ostade, and we expect to see our old friends, the old clay jug, the old merry boors, the old natural bourgeois life. Of each new picture, we judge, or attempt to judge, whether that new specimen of the familiar class is of the first excellence in that class. If a person says, ‘Teniers is occupied with low subjects,’ we answer, ‘Of course he is! how young you are!’ In the same way, when we read a new book of Mr. Thackeray’s, we know precisely that which we have to anticipate. We are well aware that human life will be delineated in a certain characteristic way, and according to certain very peculiar and characteristic conventions. That is Thackeray, we say: we know what he is, and we do not expect him to change; we compare himself with himself; we only ask whether he is good to-day in comparison to what he was yesterday.
