The Atlantic Monthly, page 209 by Various Authors
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n he regarded other men. His strong sense of justice was always alert and active. He sometimes tore away the protecting drapery from the world's pet heroes and heroines, but, on the other hand, he desired no one to set him beside them. He never betrayed the least sensitiveness in regard to his place in literature. The comparisons which critics sometimes instituted between himself and other prominent authors simply amused him. In 1856, he told me that he had written a play which the managers had ignominiously rejected. "I thought I could write for the stage," said he; "but it seems I can't. I have a mind to have the piece privately performed, here at home. I'll take the big footman's part." This plan, however, was given up, and the material of the play was afterwards used, I believe, in "Lovel, the Widower."
I have just read a notice of Thackeray, which asserts, as an evidence of his weakness in certain respects, that he imagined himself to be an artist, and persisted in supplying bad illustrations to his own works. This statement does injustice to his self-knowledge. He delighted in the use of the pencil, and often spoke to me of his illustrations being a pleasant relief to hand and brain, after the fatigue of writing. He had a very imperfect sense of color, and confessed that his forte lay in caricature. Some of his sketches were charmingly drawn upon the block, but he was often unfortunate in his engraver. The original MS. of "The Rose and the Ring," with the illustrations, is admirable. He was fond of making groups of costumes and figures of the last century, and I have heard English artists speak of his talent in this genre: but he never professed to be more than an amateur, or to exercise the art for any other reason than the pleasure it gave him.
He enjoyed the popularity of his lectures, because they were out of his natural line of work. Although he made several very clever after-dinner speeches, he always assured me that it was accidental,--that he had no talent whatever for thi