It seems
that there is everything to be said for making a drama of the narrator
himself.
And so Thackeray evidently felt, for in all his later work he refused
to remain the unaccountable seer from without. He did not carry the
dramatizing process very far, indeed, and it may be thought that the
change in his method does not amount to much. In The Newcomes and its
successors the old Thackerayan display seems essentially the same as
ever, still the familiar, easy-going, intimate outpouring, with all
the well-known inflexions of Thackeray's voice and the humours of his
temperament; certainly Pendennis and Esmond and George Warrington and
Thackeray have all of them exactly the same conception of the art of
story-telling, they all command the same perfection of luminous style.
And not only does Thackeray stop short at an early stage of the
process I am considering, but it must be owned that he uses the device
of the narrator "in character" very loosely and casually, as soon as
it might be troublesome to use it with care. But still he takes the
step, and he picks up the loose end I spoke of, and he packs it into
his book; and thenceforward we see precisely how the narrator stands
towards the story he unfolds. It is the first step in the
dramatization of picture.
A very simple and obvious step too, it will be said, the natural
device of the story-teller for giving his tale a look of truth.
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