Page:Sultan Stork, and other stories and sketches (IA sultanstorkother00thac).pdf/9



INTRODUCTION

By the Editor.

HAT so exquisite and finished a product of Thackeray's mature genius and humour as Sultan Stork should have escaped the author's attention when republishing his Miscellanies thirty years ago is perhaps more easily intelligible than its omission from the two supplementary volumes, containing pieces hitherto uncollected, issued in the winter of last year by the publishers of his collected Works, and which must be taken to represent and include their final gleanings in that field. In neither case is the omission of the radiant and sunny little jeu d'esprit which gives its leading title to the present volume easily explicable, except on the assumption of forgetfulness of its existence on the one hand on the part of the writer, or of ignorance of its existence on the other on the part of his posthumous publishers—a supposition rendered all the more likely in the latter case by the fact that "Sultan Stork" does not happen to be recorded in the original edition of the "Bibliography of Thackeray."

At any rate it seemed to us, with every desire to leave the territory, if possible, in possession of its