his life and his writings? So people may ask, and yet how futile is
the answer! Life has a different meaning, a different riddle, a
different reply for each of us. There is not one sphinx, but many
sphinxes--as many as there are women and men. We must all answer
for ourselves. Pascal has one answer, "Believe!" Moliere has
another, "Observe!" Thackeray's answer is, "Be good and enjoy!" but
a melancholy enjoyment was his. Dr. John Brown says:

"His persistent state, especially for the later half of his life,
was profoundly morne, there is no other word for it. This arose in
part from temperament, from a quick sense of the littleness and
wretchedness of mankind . . . This feeling, acting on a harsh and
savage nature, ended in the saeva indignatio of Swift; acting on the
kindly and sensitive nature of Mr. Thackeray, it led only to
compassionate sadness."

A great part of his life, and most of his happiness, lay in love.
"Ich habe auch viel geliebt," he says, and it is a hazardous kind of
happiness that attends great affection. Your capital is always at
the mercy of failures, of death, of jealousy, of estrangement. But
he had so much love to give that he could not but trust those
perilous investments.

Other troubles he had that may have been diversions from those. He
did not always keep that manly common sense in regard to criticism,
which he shows in a letter to Mrs. Brookfield. "Did you read the
Spectator's sarcastic notice of 'Vanity Fair'? I don't think it is
just, but think Kintoul (Rintoul?) is a very honest man, and rather
inclined to deal severely with his private friends lest he should
fall into the other extreme: to be sure he keeps out of it, I mean