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The lecture on Congreve is Titmarsh all over. Addison meets with warmer eulogy than might have been expected. He is invariably mentioned with loving deference. We have not the heart to inquire, here, whether the portrait, as a whole-length, is not too flattering in its proportions, and too bright in coloring. But doubtless the lecturer might, and many, we surmise, expected that he would, take a strangely opposite view of Pope's " Atticus." . . . Steele is one of Mr. Thackeray's darlings.

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They [the readers] may stumble here and thereone at the estimate of Pope's poetical status, another at the panegyric on Addison, and some at the scanty acknowledgments awarded to Hogarth and to Sterne. But none will put down the book without a sense of ' growing respect for the head and the heart of its author, and a glad pride in him as one of the Representative Men of England's current literature.

From The Spectator (London), June 11, 1853.

Since

Mr. Thackeray is amongst us once again, and gives welcome notice of his reappearance by the publication of the famous lectures we heard two years ago. that time they have drawn crowds of interested listeners in many of our great towns. Those who came once to see and hear the author of " Vanity Fair," and to watch at a safe distance the terrible satirist, whose dressing-gown, like that of the old Frankish King, was trimmed with the scalps of slaughtered "snobs,'' were

attracted to continue their attendance to the close of the course by the engaging manner of the lecturer, just sufficiently elevated above the frank familiarity of the best society, by his expressive but always pleasant voice, by his unconcealed desire to make a favourable impression upon his audience, no less than by the sense, the sound feeling, the delicate irony, the profound human experience, or the fascinating style of the lectures. It has been a great triumph for Mr. Thackeray to have established this personal relation between himself and the admirers of his books; so that henceforth he speaks to them through these books, not as an abstraction, a voice issuing from a mask, but as a living man, and a friendly, companionable, accomplished gentleman.

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Mr. Thackeray's English success has been more than repeated in America; fulfilling the hope with which we closed our review of Esmond, that his genial presence would add another. to the many links which bind England to the United States. The Americans have been delighted with their guest; and he is not the man upon whom either the cordiality of their reception, or the greatness of their future, or the expanding energies of their present, are likely to be lost; nor will he regard every deviation from the Belgravian code of manners as necessarily an infringement upon those principles of manliness, kindness, simplicity, and feeling for the beautiful, by which all codes of manners will one day come to be tested. In him, American men, women, and institutions have a critic at once

frank, fearless, and friendly: already, as we hear, countesses and duchesses lift up astonished eyes at being told by one who is a favourite in their sacred circle, that the women of Boston, Baltimore, and New York-" creatures" belonging to merchants, lawyers, and men of letters-are as good as themselves.

In turning over the pages of Mr. Thackeray's Lectures, (which, by the way, abound in misprints, requiring the vigilance of the proof-corrector for the next edition,) we find, as we expected, many points of literary criticism on which questions could and will be raised. Persons whose tastes and studies have led them to our older literature and history, no less than those whose training is emphatically modern, will consider that Mr. Thackeray has placed far too high the general moral and intellectual level of the eighteenth century.

To those who attended the lectures the book will be a pleasant reminiscence, to others an exciting novelty; and all will be interested in looking over the accompanying notes, (which might have been and may yet be made more complete,) as an agreeable selection of the facts and passages from writings on which the lecturer's judgment was founded.

From The Examiner (London), June 11, 1853.

Followed by admiring audiences "in England, Scotland, and the United States of America, these lectures have obtained their purpose, have achieved all

reasonable fame as well as other substantial results for the lecturer, and present very little to us now to challenge attention from a reviewer. The chase is over, the sport run down, there was no place in the hunt for the critic, and where at last should he come in but with the laggers who fill up the cry. What matters his good or ill word? The book is sure to sell.

Of criticism in the strict sense of the word, indeed, however masterly their descriptive passages, the lectures may be said to have contained little, to have pretended to little.

the lecturer must excuse us for saying that he is too fond of looking up to great imaginary heights, or of looking down from the same; and that hence, too often, he places his heroes in the not enviable predicament on the one hand of being too much coaxed, patronised, or (which is much the same thing) abused; and on the other of being put upon a top shelf so very high and out of the way, that if we do not take Mr. Thackeray's word that they really are there, we should not, in those inaccessible places, be in the least likely ourselves to discover them. We could not for the life of us have recognised our old friend Addison in the grand, calm, pale, isolated attitude which he is here shown off in, as one of "the lonely ones of the world; any more than we should have looked for the wise and profound creator of Mr. Shandy and my Uncle Toby in the ruff and motley clothes of a travel

ling jester, laying down his carpet and tumbling in the

street.

But what fine things the lectures contain! what eloquent and subtle sayings, what wise and earnest writing! how delightful are their turns of humour; with what a touching effect, in the graver passages, the genuine feeling of the man comes out; and how vividly the thoughts are painted, as it were, in graphic and characteristic words. For those who would learn the art of lecturing, the volume is a study. The telling points are so happily seized, and the attention always so vividly kept up, yet never with a pressure or strain. The lecture-room is again before us as we read-the ready responses of the audience flashing back those instant appeals of the speaker—and a great, intelligent, admiring crowd, stirred and agitated in every part with genial emotions and sympathy.

Mr. Thackeray's lectures, we may observe in conclusion, are printed pretty much as they were spoken, except that additions have been made (we notice this particularly in Swift) in connection with particular writings of the humourists not at first introduced, and that a great many notes are appended illustrative of statements or opinions in each lecture. We are not quite sure that these notes will be thought an improvement. They are not generally very apt, they have no merit of rare or out-of-the-way reading, and here and there they have tant soit peu of a book-making aspect. The lectures had better have been left to run alone, which they could well afford to do,