Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/170

Rh kit-kats, in "Coningsby," or the still less thinly veiled characters in "Wynville; or, Clubs and Coteries." But, to be implicated in such a game as fast and loose—not to find unity of character on the right hand or the left—to be tantalised by a chaotic jumble of elements, one paragraph taken from the Annual Register, and the next coined from the romancer's stock in trade—this has a spice of irritation in it. Some minds, however, may find nought to cavil at in this hybrid type; and those who do cavil, will own the dashing skill with which Mrs. Gore has ignored their possible objections, and delineated in her own witty. Whiggish, wilful way, a picture of official life in 1830. The performers are many and amusing.

Lord Laxington, a privy councillor, with a jargon and technical dialect as inveterate as that of a horse-dealer; his arguments full of ministerial mysticism—his jokes all parliamentary—his notes of invitation formal as official documents—his anecdotes authenticated by dates; one who speaks as if before a committee, and scarcely knows how to leave the room without the ceremony of pairing off, or to hazard an opinion, lest he should be required to justify it to his party. His son, again, Augustus Hamilton, a heartless dandy, who quarrels with a grain of pepper too much in his soup—the Alcibiades of Brook-street—a pretender to the vacant throne of Brummeldom—who forbears to enter the Opera pit during one of Pasta's airs, lest he should distract the attention of the house—who has the niclnackery of life at his fingers' ends, and can spout vertu in the choicest cant of connoisseurship; a cold-blocked libertine, moreover, and assuming the pride of the serpent, when he is, in truth, the weakest of worms.

William Tottenham, another of the same order—lively and good-natured, so long as the sun shines and his hair keeps in curl, and his linen is starched to the sticking point; but whose wits will not suffice to pay his hairdresser's bill, and whose head and heart are alike bankrupt. Cadogan, the model of a "perfectly gentlemanlike man"—that is, by Mrs. Gore’s interpretation, one who must not offend the public eye, ear, or conscience—neither violent in his politics, vehement in his affections, nor eccentric in his dress—one whose greatness consists in his mediocrity, and who, while following in meek subservience the dictates of society, affects unbounded independence. Bernard Forbes, sallow, saturnine, hard-featured, uncompromising, self-respecting, outspoken; in spite of Us brown-holland complexion and quizzical coat, one of "those remarkable men who make up, with ninety-nine of mediocre capacity, the complement of every hundred of the human race:" dressing like a dustman, and tying his cravat as other men cord a portmanteau; but verifying the adage that it is often the fruit of roughest rind that is sweetest at the core. Claneustace—one of those characters, which "like certain minerals, remain soft during the process of formation, to harden at last into the sternest compactness."

And then for the women. Susan, whom everybody loves—so mild, so benevolent, so forbearing, so unpresuming; such a patient, devoted, much-wronged nature as Mr. Thackeray loves to depict amid crowds of selfish, hollow-hearted men; an innocent, slow to believe in the existence of wickedness, that die trusts her happiness, her person, the purity of her mind, to the keeping of one who despises all things good and holy; and