'What is right must always be right, before it was practised as well as after. And if such and such a commandment delivered by Moses was wrong, depend upon it, it was not delivered by God, and the whole question of complete inspiration goes at once. And the misfortune of dogmatic belief is that, the first principle granted that the book called the Bible is written under the direct dictation of God—for instance, that the Catholic Church is under the direct dictation of God, and solely communicates with Him—that Quashimaboo is the directly appointed priest of God, and so forth—pain, cruelty, persecution, separation of dear relatives, follow as a matter of course.... Smith's truth being established in Smith's mind as the Divine one, persecution follows as a matter of course—martyrs have roasted over all Europe, over all God's world, upon this dogma. To my mind Scripture only means a writing, and Bible means a book.... Every one of us in every part, book, circumstance of life, sees a different meaning and moral, and so it must be about religion. But we can all love each other and say "Our Father."'
This is true, stout-hearted, individualistic liberty of believing—an excellent thing and wholesome, though it by no means covers the whole ground, or meets all difficulties. The logical consequence is a strong distaste for theology, and no very high opinion of the priesthood, wherein we may probably find the root of Thackeray's proclivity, already mentioned, toward unmerited sarcasm upon the clergy. In the Introduction to Pendennis is a letter written from Spa, in which he says, 'They have got a Sunday service here in an extinct gambling-house, and a clerical professor to perform, whom you have to pay just like any other showman who comes.' It does not seem to have occurred to Thackeray that the turning of a gambling-house into a place of prayer is no bad thing of itself, or that you have no more right to expect your religious services to be done for you in a foreign land without payment than your newspapers or novels.
But these are blemishes or eccentricities which are only worth notice in a character of exceptional interest and a writer of great originality. Thackeray's work had a distinct influence on the light literature of his generation, and possibly also on its manners, for it is quite conceivable that one reason why his descriptions of snobbery and shams appear to us now overdrawn, may be that his trenchant blows at social idols did materially discredit the worship of them. His literary style had the usual following of imitators who caught his superficial form and missed the substance, as, for example, in the habit which arose of talking with warm-hearted familiarity of great eighteenth-century men, and parodying their conversation. It was easy enough to speak of Johnson as 'Grand Old Samuel,' and to hob-nob with Swift or Sterne, seeing that, like the lion's part in Pyramus and Thisbe, 'you can do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.'
Thackeray will always stand in the front rank of the very remarkable array of novelists who have illustrated the Victorian era; and this new edition is a fresh proof that his reputation is undiminished, and will long endure.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, with Biographical Introductions by his daughter, Anne Ritchie. In 13 volumes. London, 1898.—Edinburgh Review, October 1898.
[11] Now Lady Ritchie.