Tulkinghorn? How would George Warrington appreciate Mr. Pickwick?
Yes, the two great novelists were as opposed as two men could be--in
manner, in style, in knowledge of books, and of the world. And yet
how admirably Thackeray writes about Dickens, in his letters as in
his books! How he delights in him! How manly is that emulation
which enables an author to see all the points in his rival, and not
to carp at them, but to praise, and be stimulated to keener effort!

Consider this passage. "Have you read Dickens? O! it is charming!
Brave Dickens! It has some of his very prettiest touches--those
inimitable Dickens touches which make such a great man of him, and
the reading of the book has done another author a great deal of
good."

Thackeray is just as generous, and perhaps more critical, in writing
of Kingsley. "A fine, honest, go-a-head fellow, who charges a
subject heartily, impetuously, with the greatest courage and
simplicity; but with narrow eyes (his are extraordinarily brave,
blue and honest), and with little knowledge of the world, I think.
But he is superior to us worldlings in many ways, and I wish I had
some of his honest pluck."

I have often wished that great authors, when their days of creation
were over, when "their minds grow grey and bald," would condescend
to tell us the history of their books. Sir Walter Scott did
something of this kind in the prefaces to the last edition of the
Waverley Novels published during his life. What can be more
interesting than his account, in the introduction to the "Fortunes
of Nigel," of how he worked, how he planned, and found all his plots
and plans overridden by the demon at the end of his pen! But Sir