Page 7 Advertisements Column 4

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 3956, 23 January 1900, Page 7

Mr Lewis Melville’s new “Life of Thackeray,” recently, published in England, has beer, very cordially, received. Much of its matter has been anticipated in the delightful “personal reminisences” which' are contributed as prefaces by Mrs Richmond Ritchie (Thackeray’s daughter) to the new “Biographical Edition” recently issued by Messrs Smith, Eider and Co. Here and there, however, Mr Melville strikes on new ground. The novelist was, he says; more a spectator of the world than an actor in it. Thus:—-“'He loved his home, and his friends, and books, drawings and music: he enjoyed a good dinner, and sometimes a jovial party. Yet he went through the world a .spectator—a dignified Dobbin in the larger Vanity Eair-—a melancholy, lonely man, a sad and splendid, a weary King Eoclesiast. He found sadness in humour, and a tear on the eyelid of every jest. To some extent the author of “Vanity Fair” was an amused,» if not cynical, spectator of his own life. ‘T often think to myself,” he once said, ‘what a humbug you are, and I wonder people don’t find you out.’ ” “lan McLaren,” in “Pearson’s Magazine,” describes his adventures as a lecturer. He says that he has had varied experiences of chairmen. “There was one who introduced me In a single sentence of five minutes’ length, in which ho stated that as he .would treasure every word I said more than pure gold he did not wish to curtail my time by a smgle minute: He then fell fast asleep,.and I had the honour of waking him at the close of the lecture. Had he slept anywhere else I should not have had tne smallest objection, but his restful attitude in the high estate of the chair had an nnedifying and discomposing effect on the audience?’ “ lan McLaren ” adds “A lecturer is also much refreshed amid his labour by the assurance of his chanman that he has simply lived upon Lis. books for years, and has been looking■ forward ”'tb this evening -for 1 the, last three months with high expectation, -when after these flattering remarks he does not know year name, and can only put it • before the audience after a hurried consultation with the secretary cf the lec'ture course."