Came through the jaws of Death, Left of six hundred. When can their glory fade! 6. THE EAGLE. FRACMENT. He clasps the crag with hookéd hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. XIX. — WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. LIFE AND WORKS. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY was born July 18, 1811, at Calcutta, where his father resided as a civil servant of the British East India Company. His mother was Anne Becher, whose father was also in the Company's service. She married early, and was only nineteen when her son William Makepeace was born. He was brought a child from India, and was sent early to the famous Charter House School in London. A schoolfellow speaks of him at this time as "a pretty, gentle, and rather timid boy." Though he had afterwards a scholarlike knowledge of Latin, he did not attain distinction in the school. With the boys who knew him, Thackeray was popular; but he had no skill in games, or taste for them. While still a schoolboy he became known for his skill in making verses, chiefly parodies. One of these was a parody on a poem of L. E. L.'s, about "Violets, dark blue violets." Thackeray's version was "Cabbages, bright green cabbages,” and his classmates thought it very witty. When eighteen years of age (1829), Thackeray was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. A little periodical called The Snob was, during that year, brought out in Cambridge, and Thackeray took a hand in editing it. Tennyson was at this time in his last year at Trinity; and it will be remembered, that, in our sketch of the poet, it was mentioned that Tennyson that year won the chancellor's medal for a prize poem on "Timbuc too." In The Snob, Thackeray published some burlesque lines on the prize subject. In two of the stanzas there is fairly good fun; as, "In Africa- a quarter of the world Men's skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled; I see her tribes the hill of glory mount, While round her throne the prostrate nations come, After a year's study at Cambridge, Thackeray was withdrawn from college; and he spent the next two years at Weimar and in Paris, studying drawing, it being the desire of his heart to become an artist. Though he never learned to draw in the technical sense, he acquired a peculiar talent for making effective sketches. Later on, he illustrated his own books; and these plates, while very incorrect as delineations, are excellent as illustrations. Dickens has informed us that he first met Thackeray in 1835, on which occasion the young artist aspirant, looking, no doubt, after profitable employment, "proposed to become the illustrator of my earliest book." It is singular that such should have been the first interview between the two great novelists. The offer was rejected by "Boz." When Thackeray came of age (1832), he inherited a considerable fortune; but in a year or two it all passed through his hands, partly from the failure of an India bank, partly from losses incurred in trying to establish a newspaper in which he was concerned, partly from losses—at cards. Thus early thrown on his own resources, he was fain to take up literature as a profession. His first regular employment was on Fraser's Magazine, in which he wrote under the invented name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. Such sketches as The Great Hoggarty Diamond revealed at once the hand of a great master. Yet Thackeray met but small appreciation at the time (1837-38) when Dickens, one year his junior, had taken the public by storm with Pickwick and Oliver Twist. Thackeray's fame was of slow growth, and in these early years he had to suffer coldness and rebuffs that sorely tried his sensitive soul. In 1837 Thackeray married Isabella, daughter of Colonel Matthew Shawe; and from this union came three daughters. His married life was grievously unhappy, but this was in no wise due to human fault. Says his biographer, Anthony Trollope, - There "His wife became ill, and her mind failed her. was a period during which he would not believe that her illness was more than illness; and then he clung to her, and waited on her with an assiduity of affection which only made his task the more painful to him. At last it became evident that she should live in the companionship of some one with whom her life might be altogether quiet, and she has since been domiciled with a lady with whom she has been happy. Thus she was, after but a few years of married life, taken away from him, and he became, as it were, a widower till the end of his days." About 1841 began Thackeray's connection with the famous London Punch. In "a good day for himself, the journal, and the world, Thackeray found Punch," said his friend Shirley Brooks, afterwards editor of the paper. His active connection with the famous repository of humor, fun, and satire lasted during the twelve years from 1841 to 1853; that is, from his thirtieth to his forty-second year. Much of Thackeray's best work appeared in its pages. In Punch he found an appreciative hearer and a liberal paymaster. In the mean time he began (1846) to publish, in numbers ("parts" we call them), the novel of Vanity Fair. It was brought out in twenty-four numbers, and was completed in 1848. Then it was, that, at the age of thirty-seven, Thackeray first achieved for himself name and fame. He became at once one of the recognized stars of the literary heaven of the day. Pendennis, Esmond, and The Newcomes followed Vanity Fair; not very quickly, indeed, always at an interval of two years, -in 1850, 1852, and 1854. This ought to have been a very happy period in Thackeray's life. All the good things that he had coveted, success, the rewards of success, popularity, the love of a small circle of friends, he had amply won. But over it all hung the melancholy shadow of his wife's malady. Add to this, his own health was shattered; a severe fever that attacked him in 1849 left him liable to spasms that were most depressing in their effects. Thus, at the height of his fame, he was left without either home or health. It is in the new character of a lecturer that Thack |