“ ‘Sir, having defended the standard of liberty in the New World, having taught a lesson useful to those who inflict and those who feel oppression, you retire with the blessings of your fellow citizens; though the glory of your virtues will not terminate with your military command, but will descend to remotest ages.’ ”
Which was the most splendid spectacle ever witnessed:—the opening feast of Prince George in London, or the resignation of Washington? Which is the noble character for after-ages to admire;—yon fribble dancing in lace and spangles, or yonder hero who sheathes his sword after a life of spotless honour, a purity unreproached, a courage indomitable, and a consummate victory? Which of these is the true gentleman? What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to have lofty aims, to lead a pure life, to keep your honour virgin; to have the esteem of your fellow citizens, and the love of your fireside; to bear good fortune meekly; to suffer evil with constancy; and through evil or good to maintain truth always? Show me the happy man whose life exhibits these qualities, and him we will salute as gentleman, whatever his rank may be; show me the prince who possesses them, and he may be sure of our love and loyalty. The heart of Britain still beats kindly for George III,—not because he was wise and just, but because he was pure in life, honest in intent, and because according to his lights he worshipped Heaven. I think we acknowledge in the inheritrix of his sceptre, a wiser rule, and a life as honourable and pure; and I am sure the future painter of our manners will pay a willing allegiance to that good life, and be loyal to the memory of that unsullied virtue.
Footnotes
[1.]The influence of Scott on Thackeray is undoubted and freely confessed. But I cannot fall in with “certain persons of distinction” in making Esmond very specially indebted to Woodstock. Woodstock is a very great book in itself and amazing when one knows its circumstances: but it is, even for Scott, very specially and exclusively objective. Esmond is subjective also in the highest degree.[2.]This form, which he used elsewhere than in the Biographia Literaria, is better than esemplastic which he employed there.[3.]The justice or accuracy of his individual presentments and even of his general view of the time is quite another matter. We may touch on part of it presently. But the real point is that the whole is of a piece at least in potentia: that it gives a world that might have existed.[4.]The lectures on the Humourists were, of course, delivered before Esmond was published; but, in another sense, they are only aftercrops or by-products. The notes, sometimes very interesting, are James Hannay's.[5.]
As might perhaps have been expected from its original appearance, not piecemeal but in the regular three-volume form, Esmond was not very much altered by its author in later issues. There was, indeed, a “revised” edition in 1858, in which a considerable number of minor changes, nearly all for the better, were made. These have been carefully considered, but in practically every case there was really nothing to do but to follow them silently. For it would be absurd, in the present edition, to chronicle solemnly the rectification of mere misprints like “Hoxton” for “Hexton”, or the change from “was never” to “never was”. In some points of orthography “Chelsea” and “Chelsey”, for instance, Thackeray never reached full consistency, and he has sometimes been caught in the intricacies of the Castlewood relations and nomenclature, &c. So, too, Walcote, which is near Wells at first, moves to the neighbourhood of Winchester later; and there are other characteristic oversights. But, on the whole, there is little need of comment, and none of variants, save in a very few instances, where the “revised” edition seems to have been altered for the worse.
On the other hand, in recent editions of Thackeray, published by his representatives, considerable alterations to The English Humourists, &c., in text and notes have been introduced, dates being changed in accordance with later researches, quotations (in which Thackeray was pretty lax) adjusted to their originals, and so forth. As the chief authorities consulted in making these alterations were the late Sir Leslie Stephen, Mr. Austin Dobson, and Mr. Sidney Lee, there need not be much question as to their accuracy: and it perhaps shows undue hardihood in the present editor not to adopt them. But it seems to him that Thackeray's books are not so much text-books of history, literary and other, where accuracy is the first point, as literature, where it is not. Such corrections could be most properly introduced in the notes of a fuller commentated edition: less so, it may seem, in an almost unannotated text. In particular, Thackeray's misquotations (they are not seldom distinct improvements) sometimes directly form the basis of his own remarks, which become less apposite if the citations are corrected.
As the text of this volume has few original illustrations some miscellaneous sketches are added to it.
Our grandfather's hatred of the Duke of Marlborough appears all through his account of these campaigns. He always persisted that the duke was the greatest traitor and soldier history ever told of: and declared that he took bribes on all hands during the war. My lord marquis (for so we may call him here, though he never went by any other name than Colonel Esmond) was in the habit of telling many stories which he did not set down in his memoirs, and which he had from his friend the Jesuit, who was not always correctly informed, and who persisted that Marlborough was looking for a bribe of two millions of crowns before the campaign of Ramillies.