Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/121

 eray and Arnold in England and Emerson in America, his presentation of the character is finely appreciative and attains a communicable glow of admiration. But one observes that he applies pretty consistently all his tests to all the cases that appear in his court; and the ordeal is a severe one. If the candidate for glory fails on two or three of the cardinal points, as Henry James and George Meredith do, he receives a sharply discriminating verdict. But if he fails on a majority of them, as Poe does, no seductions of style nor brilliance of ratiocinative power can save him; he leaves the court with only the rags of his honors. It would be profitable to examine closely the structure and the detail of these essays; for the structure stands examination, and inspection of the detail can only discover the scrupulosity of its finish, We must content ourselves with a few crucial instances.

Of all the writers of prose fiction Thackeray is manifestly the favorite. The essential soundness and sweetness of his character counts for him. The "effortless ease and simplicity" of his style counts for him. But what counts most decisively for him is this:

He was above all else a lover of truth. The love of truth was with him, indeed, less a sentiment than a passion. It absorbed his mind and inspired its activity. To the moral temperament thus attested falsehood of all kinds seemed the one thing in the universe worth the evocation of militant energy. The exposure of sham enlisted all his artistic faculty.