to a political career; and since 1812, he has for the most part had a seat in the House of Commons. His parliamentary history since 1818 has been that of a reformer of abuses and enemy of monopoly, and he is respected even by those who differ from him in opinion.
Our next specimen is
'Thackeray, William Makepeace, author, was born in India, in 1811. He is of good family, and was originally intended for the bar, of which he is now a member. He kept seven or eight terms at Cambridge, but left the university without taking a degree, for the purpose of becoming an artist. After about three years' desultory practice, he devoted himself to literature, abandoning the design of making a position as a painter, and only employed his pictorial talents in illustration of his own writings. For a short time, he conducted a literary and artistic review, similar in plan to the Athenæum ; but the new journal, although characterised by great ability, perished in competition with established rivals. He also, with the assistance of Dr Maginn, started a newspaper; but this was unsuccessful. His first distinction was won as a writer in Fraser's Magazine , Punch , and other periodicals of character. In the latter amusing periodical appeared his Jeames's Diary , a clever satire on the follies of the railway mania, exposing the hollow foundation upon which railway fortunes and reputations were made. His Snob Papers , published in the same manner, have since been collected and reprinted with great success. His satire is as keen as that of Fielding. His Paris Sketch-Book appeared in 1840. His Irish Sketch-Book , with numerous engravings drawn by the author, was published in 1845. In the next year, appeared his Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo ; and in 1847, the first numbers of Vanity Fair appeared, in the proper name of their author. This, Thackeray's first fully-developed novel, has been followed by Arthur Pendennis , completed in 1851. His Christmas-book, entitled The Kickleburies on the Rhine , was attacked by a writer in the Times ; whereupon Mr Thackeray replied, in a very unmistakable way, in a preface to the second edition of the work. The critic fared very badly in the contest.' The charge made against Mr Thackeray is, that he abuses the characters of the literary class with a view apparently of catering to public prejudice. We believe that any such imputation is entirely unfounded; and that Mr Thackeray's observations on the infirmities of authors are due to an honest exposition of his subject. Mr Thackeray has lately imparted much delight by delivering lectures on the literary personages of last century; and in this very act has gracefully raised the public estimation of living authorcraft.
We may extract the following passages respecting the early career of Mr Dickens:
'Dickens, Charles, the most popular writer of his time, was born in February 1812, at Landport, Portsmouth. His father, the late Mr John Dickens, in the earlier part of his life, enjoyed a post in the Navy Pay Department, the duties of which required that he should reside from time to time in different seaports: now at Plymouth, now at Portsmouth, and then at Sheerness. "In the glorious days" of the war with France, these towns were full of life, bustle, and character; and the father of "Boz" was at times fond of dilating upon the strange scenes he had witnessed. One of his stories described a sitting-room he once enjoyed at Blue-town, Sheerness, abutting on the theatre. Of an evening, he used to sit in this room, and could hear what was passing on the stage, and join in the chorus of God save the King , and Britannia rules the Waves then the favourite songs of Englishmen. The war being at an end, amongst those who left the public service with a pension was the father of our novelist. Coming to London, he subsequently found lucrative employment for his talents on the press as a reporter of parliamentary debates. Charles Dickens may, therefore, be said to have been in his youth familiarised with "copy;" and when his father, with parental anxiety for his future career, took the preliminary steps for making his son an attorney, the dreariness of the proposed occupation fell so heavily upon the mind of the future author, that he induced his father to permit him to resign the law, and join the parliamentary corps of a daily newspaper. His first engagement was on the True Sun , an ultra-liberal
The word 'synonym,' as the archbishop observes, is, in strict reality, a misnomer. 'Literally, it implies an exact coincidence of meaning in two or more words, in which case there would be no room for discussion; but it is generally applied to words which would be more correctly termed pseudo-synonymsthat is, words having a shade of difference, yet with a sufficient resemblance of meaning to make them liable to be confounded. And it is in the number and variety of these that, as the Abbé Girard well remarks, the richness of a language consists. To have two or more words with exactly the same sense, is no proof of copiousness, but simply an inconvenience. A house would not be called well furnished from its having a larger number of chairs and tables of one kind than were needed, but from its having a separate article for each distinct use. The more power we have of discriminating the nicer shades of meaning, the greater facility we possess of giving force and precision to our expressions. Our own language possesses great advantages in this respect; for being partly derived from the Teutonic, and partly from the Latin, we have a large number of duplicates from the two sources, which are, for the most part, though not universally, slightly varied in their meaning.