Mr. Thackeray, who promises to come and see us, and who, of course, will talk about us with the world afterwards, is delivering a course of six lectures in London upon the English humorists. The first was good, and as good as was expected, which is great praise—for few things are so difficult as for a famous man to satisfy public expectation. The London Leader thus speaks of it:
"On Thursday the great satiric painter of social life—the Fielding of our times—commenced at Willis's rooms the first of those 'Lectures on the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century,' which many months ago we announced as in preparation. We have never heard a lecture that delighted us more. It was thoughtful and picturesque, with some wonderful traces of pathos and far-reaching sentences. Dwelling upon the moral aspects of Swift's position and career, rather than attempting a criticism on his works, Thackeray held his audience from first to last. He gave a vivid picture of the early life and loneliness of the great satirist amidst the exasperating servilities and insults endured from Temple's household, as also of the turbulent political bravo coming up to London to carve for himself a pathway among lords whom he despised. In this part of the lecture it was felt that, while satirizing that condition of political corruption which made Swift a bravo, and used him as such, the censor still touched upon living foibles; at the allusion to the South Sea Bubble, with its railway parallel, we observed some fair shoulders wince! Nor were religious cant and formalism untouched in the admirable picture of Swift's sacrifice of his life to an hypocrisy. The audience was of the elite—Thomas Carlyle, Macaulay, Milman, Milnes, Sir Robert Inglis, the Duke and Duchess of Argyle, the Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Constance Leveson Gower, Lady Lichfield, with many others, not a few lovely women, and several men well known in literature and art."
Of his second lecture we quote the Times:
"The heroes of his second lecture were Congreve and Addison. For Congreve, while he admitted the brilliancy of his wit, he evinced no great respect. He characterized him as the greatest literary "swell" that ever lived. With an air of greatness, Congreve put on his best clothes, stalked among wits who all thronged to admire him, however eminent they might be, and approached fine ladies with a certainty of conquest. The "I am the great Mr. Congreve!" was the complacent ejaculation which seemed to break through all he said and did. His character as a man of gallantry was illustrated by citations from his poems, in which he adulates or insults the ladies whom he immortalizes, and every where appears as the irresistible seducer, sure to be victorious in the end. And who could resist that very great Mr. Congreve, with his very fine coat, squeezing a hand, covered with diamonds, through the ringlets of a dishevelled periwig? Of the moral principle of his comedies Mr. Thackeray spoke with disgust, and traced the worship of youth and recklessness, and the disrespect of old age, which are such leading characteristics in those brilliant works, through a whole series of dramatic categories from the comedy to the puppet-show. The constant tendency, he humorously described, is a recommendation to "Eat and drink, and go to the deuce, when your time comes, if deuce there be; and he confessed that he regarded these witty banquets without love as he would contemplate the ruins of Sallust's house at Pompeii, with all its ghastly relics of festivity. The foppish depreciation of his own literary productions with which Congreve met the compliments of Voltaire, Mr. Thackeray rather commended than otherwise, but not for a reason which would have pleased the great man. He really did think his productions worthless, if weighed against one kindly line of Steele or Addison.
"Addison is evidently Mr. Thackeray's favorite of the 'humorists' he has brought before the public. If Swift was the most wretched of mankind, Addison appeared to him as the most amiable. He admired the serene, calm character, who could walk so majestically among his fellow-creatures, and viewing with love all below him, could raise his eyes with adoration to the blue sky above. He admitted that Addison was not profound, and that his writings betray no appearance of suffering—which probably he never knew prior to his unlucky marriage—but at the same time he expatiated on the kindliness of his wisdom and the genuine character of his piety. The foible of drinking he did not attempt to conceal, but observed that we should have liked Addison less had he been without it, as we should have liked Sir Roger de Coverley less without his vanities. Greatly he admired the gentle spirit of Addison's sarcasm, as distinguished from the merciless onslaught of Swift, remarking, that in his mild court only minor cases were tried. Nor were words of commendation the only means by which Mr. Thackeray indicated his predilection for Addison. Of Swift he scarcely read a line; Congreve he illustrated, not by extracts from the comedies in which he lives for posterity, but by those minor poems which, though admired by his cotemporaries, are now little regarded; but he read several extracts from the Spectator, and also Addison's well known hymn, as a specimen of his deep feeling of devotion. Addison and Congreve were both prosperous men in a wordly point of view, and they were therefore introduced with a survey of that golden age, when an epithalamium on some noble marriage, or an ode to William III., was rewarded out of the public purse to an extent that made the poet comfortable for life. Congreve's first literary achievements earned for him, through the patronage of Lord Halifax, places in the commission for licensing hackney-coaches, in the Custom-house, and in the Pipe-office. 'Alas!' said Mr. Thackeray, 'there are no Pipe-offices now; the public have smoked all the pipes!"
Theodore S. Fay—of whom the literary world has heard nothing for a long time—has in the press of the Appletons, a poem, entitled Ulric, or the Voices. Mr. Fay wrote good verses twenty years ago, and we shall see whether he has lost his art.
Mr. Hart, of Philadelphia, has lately published, in a very handsome style, several handbooks in the mechanic arts, which are much commended. Among them are The Manufacture of Steel, by Frederick Overman; The Practical Dyer's Guide; the American Cotton Spinner's Guide, and the London Year Book of Facts.