gentle intonations. There was sweet music in his way of repeating the most hackneyed lines, which freshened them anew."

The success which attended his first course of lectures on The English Humorists in England not only sent him to America in 1852 to repeat them there, but pointed out to him how sure and comparatively easy a method he had discovered of providing for his family, and led him to write his second series on The Four Georges, to read them in England, and again to visit America in 1855. The two courses did serve their purpose most effectually, and though they made a pretty severe drain upon his strength, and became in their delivery rather irksome to him, they afforded him great satisfaction as he saw how abundantly they were repaying him. In letters to friends in England, written during his first visit to America, he says:

"At present, I incline to come to England in June or July and get ready a new set of lectures, and bring them back with me. That second course will enable me to provide for the children and their mother finally and satisfactorily, and my mind will be easier after that, and I can sing Nunc Dimittis without faltering. There is moneymaking to try at, to be sure, and ambition, I mean in public life; perhaps that might interest a man, but not novels, nor lectures, nor fun any more. . . . The lectures are enormously suivies and I read at the rate of a pound a minute nearly. The curious thing is, that I think I improve in the reading; at certain passages a sort of emotion springs up. I begin to understand how actors feel affected over and over again at the same passages of the play; they are affected off the stage too, I hope I shan't be.

In another hour that dreary business of 'In speaking of the

English Humorous writers of the last, etc.' will begin, and the wonder to me is that the speaker once in the desk (today it is to be a right down pulpit in a Universalist church and no mistake), gets interested in the work, makes the points, thrills with emotion and indignation at the right place, and has a little sensation whilst the work is going on; but I can't go on much longer, my conscience revolts at the quackery. I am getting so rich and ashamed of the confounded old lectures that I wonder I have the courage to go on delivering them. I shan't read a single review of them when they are published; anything savage said about them will serve them right. They are popular enough here. The two presidents at Washington came to the last, and in this pretty little town (Richmond) the little Athenæum Hall was crowded so much that it's a pity I had not hired a room twice as big; but £2500 is all I shall make out of them. Well that is £200 a year in this country, and an immense comfort for the chicks." Mr. Fields has described Thackeray's acceptance of his success.

"During Thackeray's first visit to America his jollity knew no bounds, and it became necessary often to repress him when he was walking in the street. I well remember his uproarious shouting and dancing when he was told that the tickets to his first course of readings were all sold, and when we rode together from his hotel to the lecture-hall he insisted on thrusting both his long legs out of the carriage window, in deference, as he said, to his magnanimous ticketholders. A comical incident occurred just as he was about leaving the hall, after his first lecture in Boston. A shabby, ungainly looking man stepped briskly up to him in the ante-room, seized his hand, and announced himself as 'proprietor of the Mammoth Rat,' and proposed to ex

change season tickets. Thackeray, with the utmost gravity, exchanged cards and promised to call on the wonderful quadruped next day. . . . While he was staying at the Clarendon Hotel, in New York, every morning's mail brought a few lines, sometimes only one line, sometimes only two words, from him, reporting progress. One day he tells me: Immense hawdience last night.' Another day he says: Our shares look very much up this morning.' On the 29th of November, 1852, he writes: 'I find I have a much bigger voice than I knew of, and am not afraid of anybody.'"

Not only was Thackeray run after because he was a celebrity, but his lectures were of avail in disclosing the real man to readers who drew not from his books but from current criticism the impression that the novelist was a cynic, a misanthrope, an embittered satirist of his fellow-men. It was with distinct intention of combating this charge which runs through all the earlier criticism of his work that he introduced as a sort of footnote to his lecture on Charity and Humor when he gave it in America a reading of a tender little sketch describing a visit of charity to the house of a poor woman. In a letter from Baltimore to Mr. Reed, he makes a reference to some criticism of this sort: "That splendid crowd on the last lecture night I knew would make our critical friend angry. I have not seen the last article, of course, and don't intend to look for it. And as I was reading the George III. lecture here on Monday night, could not help asking myself, 'What can the man mean by saying that I am uncharitable, unkindly that I sneer at virtue ?' and so forth. My own conscience being pretty clear, I can receive the Bulletin's displeasure with calmness bering how I used to lay about me in my own youthful days, and how I generally took a good tall mark to hit at."

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Other more specific criticism was launched against these lectures, especially by the English press when it accused him of a disloyalty to his own country in spreading the follies of the Georges before an audience supposed to be peculiarly ready to take pleasure in such a view of royalty. He refers to this in a letter to Miss Perry from Savannah, February 14, 1855. "What is this about the Saturday Review? After giving Vernon Harcourt 2-6 to send me the first 5 numbers, and only getting No. 1, it is too bad they should assault me- and for what? My lecture is rather extra loyal whenever the Queen is mentioned, — and the most applauded passage in them I shall have the honor of delivering to-night in the Lecture on George II., where the speaker says, 'In laughing at these old-world follies and ceremonies shall we not acknowledge the change of to-day ? As the mistress of St. James passes me now I salute the sovereign, wise, moderate, exemplary of life, the good mother, the good wife, the accomplished Lady, the enlightened friend of Art, the tender sympathizer in her people's glories and sorrows.' I can't say more, can I? and as for George III., I leave off just with the people on the crying point. And I never for one minute should think that my brave old Venables would hit me; or if he did that he had n't good cause for it."

The

Bayard Taylor refers to the same matter more fully. "After his four lectures on the Georges had been delivered in New York, a storm of angry abuse was let loose upon him in Canada and the other British Provinces. British-Americans, snubbed both by Government and society when they go to England, repay the slight, like true Christians, by a rampant loyalty unknown in the mothercountry. Many of their newspapers accused Thackeray of

pandering to the prejudices of the American public, affirming that he would not dare to repeat the same lectures in England, after his return. Of course, the papers containing the articles, duly marked to attract attention, were sent to him. He merely remarked, as he threw them contemptuously aside: 'These fellows will see that I shall not only repeat the lectures at home, but I shall make them more severe, just because the auditors will be Englishmen.' He was true to his promise. The lecture on George IV. excited, not indeed the same amount of newspaper abuse as he had received from Canada, but a very angry feeling in the English aristocracy, some members of which attempted to punish him by a social ostracism. When I visited him in London, in July, 1856, he related this to me, with great good-humor. 'There, for instance,' said he, 'is Lord (a prominent English statesman) who has dropped me from his dinner-parties for three months past. Well, he will find that I can do without his society better than he can do without mine.' A few days afterward Lord resumed his invitation. About the same time I witnessed an amusing interview, which explained to me the great personal respect in which Thackeray was held by the aristocratic class. He never hesitated to mention and comment upon the censure aimed against him in the presence of him who had uttered it. His fearless frankness must have seemed phenomenal. In the present instance, Lord who had dabbled in literature, and held a position at court, had expressed himself (I forget whether orally or in print) very energetically against Thackeray's picture of George IV. We had occasion to enter the shop of a fashionable tailor, and there found Lord. Thackeray immediately stepped up to him, bent his strong frame over the disconcerted cham