tist?" There was instant silence, and most But I was

these volumes to be the incarnation of to my neighbor on the right, our host, from buoyancy, good nature, and good fellow- the opposite end, where the conversation was ship. Mr. Payn and Mr. Yates seem both flagging, suddenly and apropos to nothing, of them to be brimming over with an exu- called out loudly to me across the table, and asked: "Pray, Mr. Gallenga" (he never berance of joyousness which may well excite the admiration of those whose moral omitted the mister), "pray, who is your denmercury seldom rises above a figure con- of the guests looked up at me. temptibly low. It is not so long since, if ready with my answer and spoke out instantly. I remember correctly, that Mr. Payn pub- "John Heath, No. 11, Albemarle Street, the lished a volume of stories called "High best in London." Upon which the guests Spirits." Mr. Payn's title has been from looked at each other for a few moments wonhis earliest youth Mr. Yates's property, dering, and soon the confused buzz of voices and as Mr. Payn, although he was not went on as before. What whim was it that addicted to any form of physical exercise, prompted Michael Angelo Titmarsh with that had as a boy a fatal propensity towards apparently idle question? Did it arise from practical jokes, so Mr. Yates's inborn an ill-natured desire to call attention to the vivacity was so indomitable that his de-havoc that time might have made with my partmental chief in the post-office bade him, as a preliminary discipline to the day's routine, walk from St. John's Wood to St. Martin's-le-Grand instead of being driven on the omnibus. For genuine amiability, as has been said, the palm must be given to Mr. Yates. His volumes are not only in their way a masterpiece, excellently written, whether as regards taste or literary style, with their component parts admirably arranged, the product at once of an exceedingly clever man, wielding a practised and artistic pen; they are also the product of a kindly, courteous, and considerate nature, strong and impetuous, but sympathetic even to As there were reasons which might tenderness. Unless Mr. Yates was en- have excused Mr. Yates if he had adopted dowed in an unusually liberal measure a very different tone in regard to Thackwith these qualities, it is certain that he would not have refrained from some ani-ray, so there is much in the unavoidable circumstances of a literary career which madversions which might have been par- might have prompted him, as well as Mr. donably severe on Thackeray. Mention Payn and Mr. Gallenga, to reflections far is made of Thackeray by Mr. Payn and Mr. Gallenga as well. Mr. Payn tells what some persons may suppose to be a characteristic anecdote of the great nov. elist. "Even B-I will call him B, for indeed he was busy enough, though he made no honey - speaking to Thackeray of Leitch Ritchie, admitted that he was

jaws and at the truly marvellous skill with which art now repairs the grievous losses of nature? Did he expect me to blush or faint like any middle-aged madam, the mystery of whose golden chignon or rosy cheek is by some untoward accident brought into light in the presence of her most devoted admirers? Or was that merely his pleasantry, his wish to give a fillip to a languid conversation by sup plying a new subject which might raise a laugh no matter at whose expense? If the latter was his purpose, it flew wide of the mark, for though some of our friends may have been struck by the strangeness of his sudden sally, no one seemed to perceive its drift. No one noticed its "fun" or humor. The joke, if joke it was, fell flat.

more acrimonious than are to be found in any of the volumes I am now considering. The life of a writer was defined by Pope as" a warfare upon earth." Few warriors could have illustrated the principles of amnesty with more generosity than Mr. Yates. Speaking of literature, Mr. Payn 'a very gentlemanly man.' But how does says there is "no calling so bright and pleasant, so full of genial friendship, so B know?' said Thackeray." Mr. Gallenradiant with the glories of success; but ga, as an instance of Thackeray's playful- there is also no pursuit so doubtful, so full ness, cites the following:

One day, at a large men's party, when we were sixteen present, as I was seated nearly at the lower end of the table and I was talking

of risks, so subject to despondency and disappointments, so open to despair. Oh, my young friend, with a turn for literature, think twice and thrice before committing

upon the subject. There is, I firmly be lieve, no instance on record of a man of letters who, having trodden so persistently the uphill path of an opposed career as Mr. Yates, and having gone through such a series of exertions and encounters, ever took so urbane and kind a retrospect of the past.

In his chapter entitled "The Influence of Pendennis," Mr. Yates gives us what is, from an autobiographical point of view, one of the most interesting portions of his work:

To get admitted into the ranks of literary men, among whom I might possibly, by inbegan to be my constant thought; and I was dustry and perseverance, rise to some position, encouraged in the hope that I might succeed, perhaps more than anything else, by reading the career of "Pendennis," which, in its wellremembered yellow cover, had then been appearing month by month for the last two years, and in its complete form was just obtainable at the libraries. There is no prose story in our English language, not even the "Christmas Carol," not even "The Newcomes," not even the "Scenes of Clerical Life" or "Silas Marner" - and now I have named what are to me the most precious- which interests and affects me like "Pendennis." It had this effect from the very first. I knew most of it so thoroughly. The scenes in the provincial theatre-the Fotheringay, her father, the prompter, the company. were such perfect creations (to this day I have never seen any

yourself to it, or you may bitterly regret to find yourself where that turn may take you." Yet though these are Mr. Payn's sentiments, everything is rose-colored in his autobiography, and as it is with Mr. Payn so is it in a greater degree with Mr. Yates. Now it is no sufficient explana tion of this circumstance in the case of a man like Mr. Yates to say that he has been brilliantly successful. Success in most men is no remedy for resentment, and does not remove the causes of embitterment. If there ever existed a calling which could justify embitterment and resentment, it is that of the professional writer. Thackeray in one of the most acid chapters in his "Book of Snobs," after having shown that literature was full of them, exclaimed in bitter irony, "There are no snobs in literature." Mr. Yates has had a good deal more to do with journalism than Mr. Payn: he has therefore been brought more into contact with all kinds and conditions of gentlemen who write. He has had as many opportunities as an Old Bailey barrister, or Mr. George Lewis himself, of seeing the seamy side of human nature. It is not too much to say that the social commerce and the professional intercourse inseparable from a literary life is to moderately sensitive natures a protracted torture. The competition which must be encountered and defeated before the position is won, is incessant, bitter, and frequently humiliatint as to where Thackeray got his study of ing. When a sort of tableland of success line); the position of Pendennis and his these people, who were quite out of his usual and influence has been reached, and the mother was so analogous to that of me and competitor has at his disposal some degree mine-her devotion, his extravagance; the of literary patronage, he is upon the thres- fact that I was personally acquainted with hold of fresh troubles. The responsible Andrew Arcedeckne, the original of Foker, in conductor of any literary enterprise has whom he was reproduced in the most ludito deal with every sort of knavery and crously lifelike manner: all this awakened in incapacity as to which let the intelligent me a special interest in the book; and when, reader consult Mr. Payn's remarks in the in the course of Pen's fortunes, he enters upon last hundred pages of his volume. He is the literary career, writes his verses for the perpetually assailed by the importunity of Spring Annual," dines with Bungay, visits incompetence and the impudence of inapti- and chums with Warrington, who makes that Shandon, is engaged on the Pall Mall Gazette, tude. He will find himself beset alter-ever-to-be-quoted speech about the power of nately by the entreaties and impertinences of the opiniated dullard whose conceit is a bar to his improvement, and who in his relations with the men whose kindly offices he solicits begins with flattery, then breaks into a snarl, and ends by suing with a whine. The monitions of experience are thrown away upon these persons. They are the parasites of our literary system, and it is infinitely to the credit of Mr. Yates's native kindliness that he should have been able to practise a self-control beyond that of Mr. Payn, and not have had an unkind word to say

the press : "Look at that, Pen! There she is, the great engine; she never sleeps," etc.,when I came to this portion of the book my fate was sealed. To be a member of that wonderful Corporation of the Goosequill, to be recognized as such, to be one of those jolly fellows who earned money and fame, as I thought, so easily and so pleasantly, was the tion could do it, I determined that my desire one desire of my life; and, if zeal and applicashould be gratified.

One can understand that men should, even from the sober eminence of middle age, look back to the novels of Marryat

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or Lever as the sources from which they | Sir William de Bathe, Samuel Lover, first derived their passion for a naval or Robert Bell, Charles Reade, Peter Cunmilitary career. But this is very different ningham, Frank Fladgate, better known from a man of Mr. Yates's maturity and as Papa," and J. D., "most mellow of experience deliberately asserting that elderly topers, with all the characteristics "Pendennis "impelled him into literature. of Bardolph of Brasenose' — a veteran It may be so, and there seems throughout who drank and swore in the good old-fash Mr. Yates's nature a strong vein of senti-ioned way, and who came to a sad end, ment which would partially account for the fact. But the prosaic critic may be pardoned for suspecting that he has unconsciously exaggerated the influence of the book. Mr. Yates had from the very first, partly, it may be, as a result of his thorough training in French and German, partly as a gift of nature, a real capacity for literature. He has always possessed a faculty of neat and concise expression, flavored by wit, fun, and irony, that is ex ceedingly rare amongst English writers, and that renders him, in certain kinds of composition, unsurpassed by any and unapproached by most of his contempora ries. Ability of this sort would have found its right field of display, and if Mr. Yates will forgive "the young gentleman, then fresh from Oxford, who called upon him in 1866, at the Post Office, with a letter of introduction from Tom Hood," and of whose articles in Temple Bar he was good enough to approve, for saying it, neither "Pendennis" nor its author had perhaps as much to do as he supposes with the initial step he took on the road to literary fame. At the same time Mr. Yates ought to know and the fact that he is now deliberately of opinion that such is the case, even if he misconceives the circumstances, furnishes a suggestive clue to, and is a significant commentary on, the appreciative, impulsive, and sympathetic aspects of his character. It is curious that if "Pendennis" first made Mr. Yates a writer, the author of "Pendennis" should have been directly instrumental in investing the year 1858 with "the vast importance" with which, in his seventh chapter, Mr. Yates says "it was fraught to him." The reference is to the events that led to Mr. Yates's withdrawal from the Garrick Club. Both for its interest and its taste the Garrick chapter is excellent. "The most striking portion of the club in those days was the smoking room on the ground floor, built out over the leads a good-sized apartment, comfortably furnished, well-ventilated, and adorned by large pictures specially painted for it by Stanfield, David Roberts, and Louis Haghe." Among the habitués of the establishment were Charles Kemble, Assassin" Smith, Clarkson Stanfield,

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poor fellow, dying alone in his Temple chambers, on a Christmas eve, of loss of blood from an accident, while the men in the rooms below heard him staggering about and groaning, but took no notice, as they fancied their neighbor was only in his usual condition." Thackeray was the presiding genius of the place. As Mr. Gallenga has said in his concluding chapter, "Thackeray was a member but not much of a frequenter of the Athenæum Club, his preference being all for the Gar. rick, a club better suited to the free and easy, somewhat Bohemian, tastes and habits of his early days." When Mr. Yates was first admitted to the Garrick he was not eighteen years of age. When he left it he was twenty-seven, and Thackeray, who was the cause of his leaving it, was forty-seven. The little article contributed by Mr. Yates to a paper long since dead, at which Thackeray took grave umbrage, scarcely deserves the censures passed upon it by its author. It is simply a piece of smart, hurried, impertinent, and curiously young writing. Now, as Thackeray was then twenty years Mr. Yates's senior, what one might have expected from him was, if he had been incurably wounded, silent contempt; or if he had been merely annoyed, a sharpish caution to Mr. Yates. The article in question did not violate the sanctity of club life. It disclosed no private or semi-private conversations; it said absolutely nothing more about Thackeray than was at the time on the lips of every one, and was, therefore, public property. Thackeray, however, very absurdly, as all cool-headed persons will think, addressed to Mr. Yates a formal letter, which, as its recipient says, was severe to the point of cruelty-being, indeed, an inexplicably bitter outburst of personal feeling, and "a censure, in comparison with the offence committed, ludicrously exaggerated." What, however, under the circumstances, Mr. Yates ought to have done is perfectly clear. Young men of twenty-seven cannot allow themselves the luxury of engaging their superiors and elders in single combat. Their business is to be conciliatory and to wait. Mr. Yates should clearly have written to Thackeray an apologetic disclaimer, as

In regard to the Garrick Club, I called Mr. Thackeray's attention to the fact that he had not merely, in his "Book of Snobs," and under the pseudonym of Captain Shindy, given an exact sketch of a former member, Mr. Stephen except, indeed, once, some thirty years Price, reproducing Mr. Price's frequent and well-known phrases; he had not merely, in the ago, when the great man, coming down same book, drawn on a wood-block a close to West Somerset to inspect a small resemblance of Wyndham Smith, a fellow-country house which he then thought of member, which was printed among the "Sport- buying or renting, noticed him as a child ing Snobs," Mr. W. Smith being a sporting man; he had not merely, in "Pendennis," made a sketch of a former member, Captain Granby Calcraft, under the name of Captain Granby Tiptoff, but in the same book, under the name of Foker, he had most offensively, though amusingly, reproduced every characteristic, in language, manner, and gesture, of our fellow member, Mr. Andrew Arcedeckne, and had gone so far as to give an exact woodcut portrait of him, to Mr. Arcedeckne's intense an