The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-25 00:00:00

tun SUN, 'LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 25, 1863.

LITERATURE.

Richard Doyle's Christmas Book.
Birds Eye Views of Society. Taken by Richard
Doyle. Smith, Elder, and Company.
" The little corky bird"—as one of the greatest of
living reviewers once comically called that callow
nestling perched on the familiar capital letters R.D.
so often, and always rejoicingly, welcomed in the
left hand corner of we don't know how many
delightfully humorous illustrations—that same
" cocky little bird" perched on those capital letters
R. D. in perpetuo in the left hand corner of every
week's number of Punch, has here taken with its right
claw Sixteen successive " S ights" at Modern Society!
They will b© recognised at once, of course, upon the
first opening of the pages of this goodly oblong
folio, as the collective reprint of the well remembered
folding sketches contributed by Mr. Doyle to the
Cornhill Magazine. We should premise, at once,
that as they are here given in this collective edition
and not folded—they appear to far greater advan-
tage than they did when originally published, one
by one, and—folded ! There, in the Cornhill, they
never appeared to us satisfactorily. Whether it was
from their uncomfortably shutting together in that
way like so many clumsy book-maps, or their asso-
ciation there with an odiously coarse, and to our
fancy almost always dissatisfying jumble of embel-
lishments, we know not, bat the series did not ap-
pear to us there in the Cornhill, in any way what-
ever so satisfactorily as they do now in the
form of this at once elegant and grotesque volume,
in which Modern Society is good-humouredly
turned into ridicule by the most innocent and whim-
sical of all our carricaturists. " Taken" these
Bird's Eye Views of Modern Society are by Richard
Doyle, ever-memorable among our comic artists by
reason of his gloriously droll version of "Ye
Manners and ye Customes of ye Englishe,"
and by his no less delectably laughable
record of the immortal tour of the Messrs.
Brown, Jones, and Robinson—long-haired little
Brown, lanky Jones, fat Robinson. The drawings
are engraved in outline very cleverly by the Messrs.
Dalziel Brothers. The work is issued from the
press, as the delightfulest apropos volume of fun
and frolic, by the Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Corn-
pany,of Cornhill, and it should be said also, of " the"
Cornhill, in whose pages these Bird's Eye Views
first saw the light. Of the letterpress—hardly can it
be called the explanatory letterpress—we prefer
to say nothing—beyond this, at least, that it is
of just the feeblest possble description. As to
the Views themselves, who that knows the Corm-
hill, but bears them in recollection—even as they
appeared there, as we have said, comparatively
speaking, so very disadvantageously ? "At
Home Small and Early," viewed at the
time of the period of "Refreshments !" Whew !
Such a crush ! Such an agglomeration of
richly dressed, hungry, thirsty, fashionable,
people closely packed, and wedged, and scrunched
together in one dining-room at supper time ! " A
Juvenile Party"—not as Punch intimated slyly the
other day with a prefix of " jolly" to it—Pam !
,But a genuine juvenile (always fashionable) party
—dancing, playing, romping, coquetting, and going
through every imaginable kind of merry antic in a
drawing-room: here, again, allof them in full jig, and
here again, in a decided state of "jam" was ! Next,
"A Morning Party," with a little more breathing room
and elbow room, because in the open air—" ehew-
ing, the nobility and gentry playing the fashionable
game of the period." That fashionable game being
of course—(" 0 my prophetic soul, my Uncle !")
Aunt Sally. The fan of it all in the grave faces of
these male and female swells so engaged—being
just indescribable, " A County Ball" another
crush is capitally good, better, in fact, than
the majority of these highly elaborated drawings,
with its multiplicity of satiric touches lavished
upon the dancing, smiling, smirking, bow-
ing, strutting exquisites. " Bazaar and Fancy
Fair," though more ambitiously designed
end more minutely finished, does not appear
to us, however, nearly so successful. " A State
Party" may be remembered as a wonderful skit at
one of those appalling social ceremonies
hardly so much a Swell Dinner, as a Swell Ban-
quet, where, to be quite in keeping, half the
guests ought surely to be Banquos. "The Pic-
ture Sale" abounds in Hogarthian traits of
character. "At the Sea-side" is more various
in fun than almost any of these cartoons. "A
Popular Entertainment" represents Leotard at the
Alhambra, the Oxford, or the Canterbury, or some
other such noted place of musical and acrobatic
amusement. "Dining Down the River," a terrible
glimpseaof selfish batchelor enjoyment, is almost to
our fancy the best of the whole set of these embel-
lishments. " Belgravia out of Doors," " Belgravia
Atter Dinner," " Rotten Row in the Season," are
each of them abounding in incentives to laugh-
ter. But better than any of the three last-men-
tioned, there is the almost deafening view (merely
to look at) of the musical " At Home"—the last but
one of the crushes. The very last of those crushes,
here, being that one of the " Science and Art Con.
versazione." The last of the whole set of these
capital comic cartoons being "The Smoking Room
at the Club"—another wicked peep in upon a select
gathering of bachelor Sybarites. Altogether the
work is delightfully eeasonable as a source of inno-
cent social amusement. It will fully sustain, though
it will fail either to advance or to elevate Mr. Doyle's
reputation as a keen observer and a kindly satirist
of the whims and oddities of his fellow-mortals in a
high state of civilisation.

Dalziel's Illustrated Arabian .Nights Entertain-

ments. Part I. Ward and Lock,

One of the loveliest and yet also one of the
cheapest illustrated periodical works now being
published has with this initial number of
"Dalziel's Arabian Night's Entertainments" been
commenced. It is an exquisite production. Nor can
we be supposed to exaggerate, in any way, when
speaking of it thus emphatically, even at its very
commencement, when we have said that the
embellishments to the work are from the hands of
artists no less gifted than Millais, and Tenniel, and
Watson—J. E. Millais, the Associate of the Royal
Academy; John Tenniel, the inimitable cartoonist
of Punch; and that wielder of a bold, facile pencil,
I. W. Watson, who is fast securing to himself a
more and more brilliant reputation as on il-
lustrator. These drawings, moreover, as the title
of the Edition in fact intimates, are in a
fair way of
.having fall justice done to them—
carvelled upon boxwood, as their minutest lines and
and dots are being, by the delicate implements most
dexterously wielded by the indefatigable Dalziel
Brothers. Printed from clear bold type, and upon ex-
cellent tinted paper at the Camden Press, the work
is now, it appears, being published in sixpenny
monthly instalments by the Messrs. Ward and Lock,
of Fleet-street—as the popular, we may be cer-
tain of that, as the popular edition par excel-
lence of the world famous " Arabian Night's En-
tertainments." A wonderfully bold and picturesque
representation, by Tenniel, of the Sleeping Genie
and the Lady, prepares us for the marvels here ac-
cumulated, in the way of embellishment, to the mar-
vellous series of romantic narratives told to the
Sultan Shehriar, by his Grand Vizier's
Daughter, the Princess, afterwards, in fact,
the Sultana • Sheherazade. An astounding
effigy it is, this fore-shortened, prostrate
form of the sleeping, open-mouthed, snoring, snarl-
ing Genie ! Another while, we have that other Genie
and the group of affrighted merchants ! The Fisher-
man and the smoking Casket he has drawn up in
his net upon the beach and then opened! With a
profusion 'of other sketches, scattered with lavish
hands and rapid pencils among the delightful letter-
press. Dalziel's edition of the "Arabian Tales,',
in effect commands, what it is certain to receive,
a cordial welcome—winning for itself, as it is se-
ture of doing, wherever it is seen, a wider and
wider circulation.

~.............

Christnzae Number of Punch.

Although a good part of the current number of
Punch is taken up with the title-page, the index,
hnd the preface to that funny old gentleman's forty
fifth volume, it has within it plenty of seasonable
provocatives to laughter and good humour. Ths
title-page is capital in more than the letters and
Agures (Vol. 45) Mr, Punch is dexterously cutting

out with his skates upon the ice (the ice that is not
this winter)—it 'is capital, beyond this, as a
comic sarcasm upon the state of things generally.
The cartoon representing The Lord Chancellor
Punch presenting a goodly slice of the national
plum•pudding to the New Judge, with " My dear
Mr. Sergeant Shee, I have rnuch.pleasure in hand-
ing you, &e." is excellent as a bit of well-
timed pleasantry.

Cha»zbers's Journal— Extra (double) New Year's-

day Number—"ln the Box."

Every periodical must distinguish itself at Christ-
mas, and among the number we are glad to recognise
Chambers—the patriarch among our weekly serials.
The twelve stories, of very miscellaneous character,
" Grave and Gay," &c., which diversify this double
number, are narrated in a somewhat incongruous
place—" In the Box," namely, in the jury-
men's box, or rather in their retiring-room,
while undergoing the process of deliberation.
In the first place the case is stated ;" then follows,
" what Mr. Sunnyside thought of it, and his story,
which calls up Mr. Drumfinch. But Mr. Crasket
is not convinced, and Mr. Richards is induced to
tell his story, which Mr. Watkins caps; and the.
Messrs. Rooster they tell their Aunt Sarah's story,
which satisfies Mr. Crasket, and the twelve are
agreed, and all goes merry as marriage bells," and
the public being called upon for their verdict, give
it in favour of the jurymen " In the Box."

Fun Almanac for 1862-1883-1864.

Of all times in the year Christmas is par excel.
lance the season in which Fun reigns paramount.
We have before us a goodly and grotesque volume
in which the Past, the Present, and the Future
years are caricatured before us, after that ludicrous
fashion with which the readers of " Fen" are familiar.
While moralists theorise about the fight of time,
there are still some jocund spirits left to make
" Fun" of it.

Every Boys' Magazzne.

"Every Boy'' will be delighted with the
coloured almanack for the coming year with
which his own peculiar magazine this month pre-
sents him. Among the seasonable contents of this
number is a most interesting narrative by Thomas
Miller, entitled " Christmas Eve in the Snow,"
which relates a perilous adventure and marvellous
escape

meat and no little flutter in high polite circles, for the
deposition from the throne of railwaydom of the famous
original of " Jeames de la Pluche" had hardly then begun,
though it was probably accelerated by the universal titters
of recognition which welcomed the weekly accounts of the
changing fortunes of " Jeames." The " Snob Papers,"
in the same periodical, were an awkward blow at conven-
tional abuses—Tory snobbism, Radical snobbism, Clerical
snobbism, University snobbism, ellsoc genus:omne—being
impartially castigated, amid great applause from the classes
which, for the week, had no castigation.
Mr. Charles Dickens hail entered on a professional

literary career earlier than Mr. Thackeray, though
he was about the same age. Mr. Thackeray followed
followed him into his own domain of novels in monthly
instalments. In 1846-8 appeared " Vanity Fair ," and who
can forget the sensation which the pictures of " Rawdon
Crawley," "Becky Sharp," the "Marquis of Steyne," and
other characters created ? Mr. Thackeray's reputation as a
humorist of a powerfully satirical turn of mind was hence-
forth made, and it was considerably increased by "Penden-
nis," Arthur Pendennis is one of the most charming of
characters, such a one as Thackeray loved to draw—a noble,
pure-minded lad at " Grayfriars" (Charter Ilouse)—plucky,
but plucked, at "Oxbridge" (Cambridge)—leading a fine,
honourable bachelor life in London till his marriage with
his cousin Laura—an exquisite creation of a genius which
could only draw what was beautiful and good. The gentle,
loving mother, the old military uncle, are all good in their
way. A natural product of this novel was the "Newcomes,"
a work even more noticeable for the increasing development
which it exhibited of the author's surprising keenness of
observation and insight into character. No man, certainly
no Carthusian, can forget during a lifetime the noble cha-
racter of Colonel Newcome, one of the finest portraitures of
a Christian gentleman ever drawn. His love for " Gray-
friars," exhibited on his return from India in taking his
little son Clive Newcome to his old school, his dignified
character when a man of property, and his grand bearing
under his pecuniary misfortunes—magnus in prosperis, in
adversis major—are touching in the extreme, and few readers
can fail to have been moved by the beautiful account of the
dear old colonel, compelled to accept the hospitable asylum
of the Charter House in his old age, and dying with
thoughts of school-days passing through his brain—he
feebly "said, Adsum' and stood in the :presence of the
Master." The characters of Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart.,
and his precious son Barnes are capital.
In 1851 Mr. Thackeray delivered a remarkable course of
lectures on the Humorists at Willis's rooms before crowded
assemblages, which comprised all the intellect and the rank
of London. Few can forget the lecturer's diagnoses of Swift
and Sterne—how he created somewhat of a sensation by
his enunciation of Swift's remark about poor "Stella,"
"only a woman's hair ;" and how the audience were moved
to laughter at the lecturer's ridicule of Sterne's sentimen
tality on a "dead donkey." These lectures were repeated
in Scotland and in various parts of England; also in
America, where the author was well received.
"Esmond," a historical novel of the 17th century, dis-
closed the more serious and lofty qualities of Mr.
Thackeray's genius. Subsequently, he has written the
" Virginians," a work too well known to be mentioned ex-
cept by name.

Mr. Thackeray wrote also, in 1851, the "Kickleburys up
the Rhine," which, being unfavourably criticised by a con-
temporary, as the work of an author sceptical of the exist-
ence of any virtue and amiability in the world, produced
from the author an "Essay on Thunder and Small Beer,"
which was said to have demolished the indiscreet critic.

It is impossible to describe or analyse the others of Mr.
Thackeray's writings at this time, his beautiful children's
story of the " Rose and the Rug ; or, the Pietur es of Prince
Bulbo," "Dr. Bird and his Young Friends," "Rebecca
and Rowena," and " Our Street." The lectures on the
"Four Georges" are noteworthy as giving a not wholly
untruthful, but rather exaggerated, view of the condition
of English society under their Majnties, but every one
who heard and every one who has read them will appreci-
ate the touching account of the death of George 111., and
the character of his sacred successor, who had "under
his coat a waistcoat, under that another waistcoat, under
that another waistcoat, and under that—NOTILING."
In 1860 Mr. Thackeray was induced to become the editor
of the Cornhill Magazine. His " Roundabout Papers"
have been generally admired, but his " Adventures of
Philip on his Way through the World" may be called a
success, though not a distinguished one, The editor retired
from his post a year or so ago. feeling convinced, probably,
that he was too much one of the genus irrttabile to endure
with patience the nuisance of correspondence and com-
plaints addressed to him by every post, and bombarding
even his private residence.
Mr. Thackeray's genius has gradually developed itself.
His philosophical intellect contrived to accumulate for itself
stores'of observation and of humour. In his earlier works
was displayed the germ of his humour ; it was matured
by prolonged reflection. His knowledge of life, indeed—
of London life and Paris life—was rarely equalled. He
could diarise the walks of " Pleaceman X ;" and he could
delight London with the account of " Bouillabaisse" at
Monsieur Terraine's in Paris—

" 'Rue Neuve des Petits Cbamps' its name is—
The new street of the little fields."
He could also write the most wonderful Irish ballads about

" O'Brine, the Oirish line," and all sorts of " chaff" of the
Irish Nationalists, "vainly so called."
It would be improper to speak of Mr. Thackeray's per-
sonal character in this place, as he has been brought so
much, and at times so invidiousl3, before the public.
This much may be said of him, that he was a thorough
gentleman by feeling as well as by education ; that he
" never wrote a line which, dying, he might wish to blot;"
that he was generous to his less fortunate brethren, but
that he was not popular generally in consequence of a
somewhat captious and over-sensitive nature, such as was
hardly to be expected in the delineator of the Marquis of
Steyne and Mr. Foker.
In July, 1857, Mr. Thackeray stood in the Liberal inte-
for the city of Oxford, his opponent being the Right Hon.
Edward Cardwell. The votes were :—for Cardwell, 1,085 ;
for Thackeray, 1,018. On the announcement of the poll,
Mr. Thackeray, with his characteristic good feeling, told
the story of Gully, the prizefighter, going up to his defeated
opponent Gregson, and offering him water as an example of
his own feeling towards his own victorious opponent.
Some one called out (against Mr. Cardwell's friends) "It's
bribery and corruption." "Why," said Mr. Thackeray,
"call out bribery and corruption ?' If you know of it,

prove it. lam innocent of bribery myself, and I choose to
fancy that my opponents have acted with the same fairness
and the same honesty." There spoke out the true English
gentleman.
Mr. Thackeray was called to the bar by the lion Society
of the Middle Temple, May 26, 1848, though ho never

practised, and never, probably, intended to do so. He lived
in the Temple for come time, and some of the pleasantest
of his papers in Punch are redolent of that historical seat of
possible learning and undoubted good-fellowship and friend-
liness, as witness the poem on the demolition of " 10,
Crown Office-row," said to be Mr. Thackeray's. The
George Warrington of " Pendennis" will always be re-
membered as the model bachelor Templar—rough, cynical,
generous, literary —very like Mr. Thackeray.
Mr. Thackeray leaves behind him, we believe, two
daughters to mourn his loss. It is no secret that one of
them, inheriting much of her father's talent, Is the author
of the "Story of Elizabeth" in the Cornhill Magazine.