REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
Vanity Fair, a Novel without a Hero. By W. M. Thackeray. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 8vo.
This is one of the most striking novels of the season. It bears little resemblance in tone, spirit and object, to the other popular romances of the day. The author follows in the track of Fielding rather than Bulwer, and aims at representing the world as it is. Though his mind is not creative, it is eminently delineative, and he has succeeded in cramming into one volume a large variety of characters, each expressing one of the different forms of worldliness, and all belonging strictly to the world we live in. Though the novel thus relates exclusively to the world, and indicates a most remarkable knowledge of the selfish element in human nature, in the multitudinous modifications which that element receives from individual peculiarities, the general tone of the author himself is so far from being worldly, that it is distinguished by singular manliness, cheerfulness and generosity. There is nothing morbid, nothing of the hater or the sentimentalist in his representations. He trusts himself resolutely to the genuine emotions of the heart, but he guards himself against all superfine feelings and manufactured sentiment. His characters are so true that at first we are inclined to consider them commonplace. In their development, however, we soon find that the author is a master in his art, that without pretension and without exaggeration, he touches profound springs of thought and sentiment, and represents with a graceful decision, and in clear light, those evanescent and unconscious transpirations of character, in which a novelist's capacity is most truly exhibited.
The animating spirit of the novel is that master-piece of address and cunning, little Becky Sharp. Tact and talent never had a worthier representative than this character. She indicates the extreme point of worldly success to which these qualities will carry a person, and also the impossibility of their providing against all contingencies in life. Becky steadily rises in the world, reaches a certain height, makes one inevitable mistake, and then as steadily falls, while many of her simple companions, whom she despises as weaklings, succeed from the very simplicity with which they follow the instinctive sagacity of pure and honest feeling. Colonel Rawdon Crawley, a brainless sensualist, whom Becky marries, and in some degree reforms, but who, by having an occasional twinkle of genuine sentiment in his heart, always was her superior, is drawn both with a breadth and a nicety of touch which is rare in such delineations. The exact amount of humanity which coexists with his rascality and stupidity, is given with perfect accuracy. Sir Pitt Crawley, coarse, uneducated, sordid, quarrelsome, his small, sharp mind an epitome of vulgar shrewdness, is a personation to force laughter from the lungs of a misanthrope. Old Mr. Sedley is a most truthful representation of a broken-down merchant, conceived in the spirit of that humane humor which blends the ludicrous and the pathetic in one. Joe Sedley, the East Indian, slightly suggests Major Bagstock. He has the major's physical circumference, apoplectic turn and swell of manner, with the addition of Cockney vulgarity and cowardice. His retreat from Brussels, just before the battle of Waterloo, is described with the art of a comic Xenophan.
In the characters of George Osborne, Dobbin and Amelia, the author has succeeded admirably. They are wonderfully true to nature, and indicate even a finer power of characterization than is exhibited in the more strongly marked personages of the work.
The test of the excellence of a novel is the clearness with which its events and characters are remembered after it has been read. We think that Vanity Fair will bear this criterion. All its characters are recognized in memory as living beings, and we would refer to and quote them with as much confidence as to any of the acquaintances we hold in remembrance.
Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats. Edited by Richard Moncton Milnes. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.