. Thackerayana;. n importantepoch in his career. It was a continuous story, and one workedout with closer attention to the thread of the narrative than hehad hitherto produced—a fact due, no doubt, partly to its appear-ance in three volumes complete, instead of in detached monthlyportions. But its most striking feature was its elaborate imita-tion of the style and eventhe manner of thought of thetime of Queen Annes reign,in which its scenes were preparation of his Lectureon the Humorists had nodoubt suggested to him theidea of writing a story of thiskind, as it afterwards suggestedto
. Thackerayana;. n importantepoch in his career. It was a continuous story, and one workedout with closer attention to the thread of the narrative than hehad hitherto produced—a fact due, no doubt, partly to its appear-ance in three volumes complete, instead of in detached monthlyportions. But its most striking feature was its elaborate imita-tion of the style and eventhe manner of thought of thetime of Queen Annes reign,in which its scenes were preparation of his Lectureon the Humorists had nodoubt suggested to him theidea of writing a story of thiskind, as it afterwards suggestedto him the design of writing ahistory of that period which hehad long entertained, but inwhich he had, we believe, madeno progress when he died. Buthis fondness for the QueenAnne writers was of older allusions to SirRichard Steele—like himself aCharterhouse boy—and to Ad-dison, and Pope, and Swift, may be found in his earliest maga-zine articles. That the style with which the author of Vanity. THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY ESMOND. 177 Fair and Pendennis had so often delighted his readers was tosome degree formed upon those models so little studied in hisboyhood, cannot be doubt-ed by anyone who is fa-miliar with the literatureof the Augustan age ofEnglish authorship. Thewriters of that period werefond of French models, asthe writers of Elizabethstime looked to Italy fortheir literary inspiration;but there was no time whenEnglish prose was generallywritten with more purityand ease; for the translationof the Scriptures, which isgenerally referred to as anevidence of the perfectionof our English speech inElizabeths time, owed its strength and simplicity chiefly to the rejection by the pious trans-lators of the scholarly style most in vogue, in favour of the homelyEnglish then current among the people. If we except the pam-phlet writers of earlier reigns, the Queen Anne writers were thefirst who systematically wrote for the people in plain SaxonEnglish, not easy to i
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