“sithole ubhushu nomkhonto ngaphansi kombhede, esisola ukuthi umshaye ngakho. umalume uthe umshaye ngenduku ngoba wambulalela amawindi endlu yakhe. kodwa simbheke sabona ukuthi ugencwe ekhanda nasemzimbeni. uma simbuza umalume akaphiki ukuthi umshayile kodwa ulokhu ethi umshaye ngenduku kuphela,” kusho unksz dlamini. bekunecala okuthiwa umufi ubeligqigqela enkantolo lokushaya intombi kaninalume. imeya ithe zonke lezi zinhlelo zizala izinto ezinhle zodwa eziwusizo kuleli dolobha. kusimama nesimo sezomnotho, nosomabhizinisi bathola ithuba lokuxhumana nezinhlaka eziwusizo kubona. It is however very remarkable, though it perhaps has not always been remarked, how uniform Thackerays literary characteristics are. It is usual, and is sufficiently correct, to describe him as standing to Fielding in very much the same relation as that in which Dickens stands to Smollett. But the resemblance is far less intimate and pervading in the one case than in the other. Thackeray and Fielding are alike in their almost always kindly, but for the most part rather melancholy, humour, in the singular perfection with which each (when he had arrived at the practice of the art in which he was born a master) succeeded in imparting life, character, individuality to all his personages, great and small, and in the analytical mastery of human nature of which this success is the synthetic result. But nothing can be less like Fieldings precise and almost mathematical engineering of his plot than Thackerays haphazard construction, which, aggravated by the system of publication in parts, sometimes makes his books as little of the epic and as much of the mere chronicle as anything of Smolletts own. It may be a matter of less general agreement whether there is or is not a likeness between Fieldings regular habit of prefatory and intermediate dissertation and Thackerays habitual but irregular custom of addressing the audience at any moment of his story. 5