For this purpose Thackeray was equipped with a singularly easy and
sympathetic style, carved in slow soft curves where Dickens hacked out
his images with a hatchet. There was a sort of avuncular indulgence
about his attitude; what he called his "preaching" was at worst a sort
of grumbling, ending with the sentiment that boys will be boys and that
there's nothing new under the sun. He was not really either a cynic or a
_censor morum_; but (in another sense than Chaucer's) a gentle pardoner:
having seen the weaknesses he is sometimes almost weak about them. He
really comes nearer to exculpating Pendennis or Ethel Newcome than any
other author, who saw what he saw, would have been. The rare wrath of
such men is all the more effective; and there are passages in _Vanity
Fair_ and still more in _The Book of Snobs_, where he does make the
dance of wealth and fashion look stiff and monstrous, like a Babylonian
masquerade. But he never quite did it in such a way as to turn the
course of the Victorian Age.
It may seem strange to say that Thackeray did not know enough of the
world; yet this was the truth about him in large matters of the
philosophy of life, and especially of his own time.
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