ABSTRACT
Of Thackeray’s style there is not much to be said. He founded it upon the masters of the eighteenth century; and in this respect his books bear comparison with Addison and Fielding and Steele. I cannot remember that I have ever had to re-read a sentence in any of his writings to understand its meaning. ‘The great thing is to write no sentence without a meaning to it; that is what style really means,’ he told his elder daughter. Long Latin words, too, were to be avoided as much as possible, he added; and he showed her a page of The Newcomes altogether re-written, with simpler words put in the place of longer ones. He was never guilty of enthusiastic writing, and this, Dr. John Brown has suggested, made him sacrifice something of the power of his original wording.
