Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/390

 378 Dictionary of English Literature

profession, and studied for a time at Paris and Rome. In 1836, while acting as Paris correspondent for the second of his journals, he m. Isabella, dau. of Colonel Shawe, an Irish officer, and the next year he returned to England and became a contributor to Fraser's Magazine, in which appeared The Yellowplush Papers, The Great Hoggarty Diamond, Catherine, and Barry Lyndon, the history of an Irish sharper, which contains some of his best work. Other works of this period were The Paris Sketch-book (1840) and The Irish Sketch-book ( (1843). His work in Fraser, while it was appreciated at its truei worth by a select circle, had not brought him any very wide recogni- } tion: it was his contributions to Punch the Book of Snobs and Jeames's Diary which first caught the ear of the wider public. The turning point in his career, however, was the publication in monthly numbers of Vanity Fair (1847-48). This extraordinary work gave him at once a place beside Fielding at the head of English novelists, and left him no living competitor except Dickens. Pen- dennis, largely autobiographical, followed in 1848-50, and fully maintained his reputation. In 1851 he broke new ground, and ap peared, with great success, as a lecturer, taking for his subject The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, following this up ittj 1855 with the Four Georges, first delivered in America. Meanwhile Esmond, perhaps his masterpiece, and probably the greatest novel of its kind in existence, had appeared in 1852, and The Newcomes (1853),) The Virginians, a sequel to Esmond, which, though containing much' fine work, is generally considered to show a falling off as compared) with its two immediate predecessors, came out in 1857-59. In 1860: the Cornhill Magazine was started with T. for its ed., and to it he- contributed Lovell the Widower (1860), The Adventures of Philip (1861-62), The Roundabout Papers, a series of charming essays, and Denis Duval, left a mere fragment by his sudden death, but which gave promise of a return to his highest level of performance. In! addition to the works mentioned, T. for some years produced! Christmas books and burlesques, of which the best were The Rosen and the Ring and The Kickleburys on the Rhine. He also wrotet graceful verses, some of which, like Bouillabaisse, are in a strain of? humour shot through with pathos, while others are the purest rollick j ing fun. For some years T. suffered from spasms of the heart, and he d. suddenly during the night of December 23, 1863, in his 53r4 year. He was a man of the tenderest heart, and had an intense^ enjoyment of domestic happiness; and the interruption of this,; caused by the permanent breakdown of his wife's health, was a heavy calamity. This, along with his own latterly broken health! and a sensitiveness which made him keenly alive to criticism, doubtJ less fostered the tendency to what was often superficially called his cynical view of life. He possessed an inimitable irony and a powe of sarcasm which could scorch like lightning, but the latter is almost invariably directed against what is base and hateful. To humanf weakness he is lenient and often tender, and even when weaknesl passes into wickedness, he is just and compassionate. He saw human nature " steadily and saw it whole," and paints it with a light but sure hand. He was master of a style of great distinction- and individuality, and ranks as one of the very greatest of English! novelists.