In Memoriam--W.M. Thackeray - Page 2

verbal postscript), urging me to "come down and make a speech, and
tell them who he was, for he doubted whether more than two of the
electors had ever heard of him, and he thought there might be as
many as six or eight who had heard of me". He introduced the
lecture just mentioned, with a reference to his late electioneering
failure, which was full of good sense, good spirits, and good
humour.

He had a particular delight in boys, and an excellent way with them.
I remember his once asking me with fantastic gravity, when he had
been to Eton where my eldest son then was, whether I felt as he did
in regard of never seeing a boy without wanting instantly to give
him a sovereign? I thought of this when I looked down into his
grave, after he was laid there, for I looked down into it over the
shoulder of a boy to whom he had been kind.

These are slight remembrances; but it is to little familiar things
suggestive of the voice, look, manner, never, never more to be
encountered on this earth, that the mind first turns in a
bereavement. And greater things that are known of him, in the way
of his warm affections, his quiet endurance, his unselfish
thoughtfulness for others, and his munificent hand, may not be told.

If, in the reckless vivacity of his youth, his satirical pen had
ever gone astray or done amiss, he had caused it to prefer its own
petition for forgiveness, long before:-

I've writ the foolish fancy of his brain;
The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain;
The idle word that he'd wish back again.

In no pages should I take it upon myself at this time to discourse
of his books, of his refined knowledge of character, of his subtle
acquaintance with the weaknesses of human nature, of his delightful
playfulness as an essayist, of his quaint and touching ballads, of
his mastery over the English language. Least of all, in these
pages, enriched by his brilliant qualities from the first of the
series, and beforehand accepted by the Public through the strength
of his great name.

But, on the table before me, there lies all that he had written of
his latest and last story. That it would be very sad to any one--
that it is inexpressibly so to a writer--in its evidences of matured
designs never to be accomplished, of intentions begun to be executed
and destined never to be completed, of careful preparation for long
roads of thought that he was never to traverse, and for shining
goals that he was never to reach, will be readily believed. The
pain, however, that I have felt in perusing it, has not been deeper
than the conviction that he was in the healthiest vigour of his
powers when he wrought on this last labour. In respect of earnest
feeling, far-seeing