to read aloud the passage, 'Go, wretches, curse of my life,' but he was interrupted by tears.

Thanks, eloquent and judicious scholar, so lately gone from the world of letters! A love of what is best in art was the habit of Sainte-Beuve's life, and so he too will be remembered as one who has kept the best company in literature,—a man who cheerfully did homage to genius, wherever and whenever it might be found.

I intend to leave as a legacy to a dear friend of mine an old faded book, which I hope he will always prize as it deserves. It is a well-worn, well-read volume, of no value whatever as an edition,—but it belonged to Abraham Lincoln. It is his copy of "The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., to which is prefixed the life of the author by Dr. Johnson." It bears the imprint on the title-page of J.J. Woodward, Philadelphia, and was published in 1839. Our President wrote his own name in it, and chronicles the fact that it was presented to him "by his friend N.W. Edwards." In January, 1861, Mr. Lincoln gave the book to a very dear friend of his, who honored me with it in January, 1867, as a New-Year's present. As long as I live it will remain among my books, specially treasured as having been owned and read by one of the noblest and most sorely tried of men, a hero comparable with any of Plutarch's,—

THACKERAY

What Emerson has said in his fine subtle way of Shakespeare may well be applied to the author of "Vanity Fair."

"One can discern in his ample pictures what forms and humanities pleased him; his delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful giving.

"He read the hearts of men and women, their probity, and their second thought, and wiles; the wiles of innocence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices slide into their contraries."

II. THACKERAY.

Dear old Thackeray!—as everybody who knew him intimately calls him, now he is gone. That is his face, looking out upon us, next to Pope's. What a contrast in bodily appearance those two English men of genius present! Thackeray's great burly figure, broad-chested, and ample as the day, seems to overshadow and quite blot out of existence the author of "The Essay on Man." But what friends they would have been had they lived as contemporaries under Queen Anne or Queen Victoria! One can imagine the author of "Pendennis" gently lifting poor little Alexander out of his "chariot" into the club, and revelling in talk with him all night long. Pope's high-bred and gentlemanly manner, combined with his extraordinary sensibility and dread of ridicule, would have modified Thackeray's usual gigantic fun and sometimes boisterous sarcasm into a rich and strange adaptability to his little guest. We can imagine them talking together now, with even a nobler wisdom and ampler charity than were ever vouchsafed to them when they were busy amid the turmoils of their crowded literary lives.

As a reader and lover of all that Thackeray has written and published, as well as a personal friend, I will relate briefly something of his literary habits as I can recall them. It is now nearly twenty years since I first saw him and came to know him familiarly in London. I was very much in earnest to have him come to America, and read his series of lectures on "The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century," and when I talked the matter over with some of his friends at the little Garrick Club, they all said he could never be induced to leave London long enough for such an expedition. Next morning, after this talk at the Garrick, the elderly damsel of all work announced to me, as I was taking breakfast at my lodgings, that Mr. Sackville had called to see me, and was then waiting below. Very soon I heard a heavy tread on the stairs, and then entered a tall, white-haired stranger, who held out his hand, bowed profoundly, and with a most comical expression announced himself as Mr. Sackville. Recognizing at once the face from published portraits, I knew that my visitor was none other than Thackeray himself, who, having heard the servant give the wrong name, determined to assume it on this occasion. For years afterwards, when he would drop in unexpectedly, both at home and abroad, he delighted to call himself Mr. Sackville, until a certain Milesian waiter at the Tremont House addressed him as Mr. Thackuary, when he adopted that name in preference to the other.

Questions are frequently asked as to the habits of thought and composition of authors one has happened to know, as if an author's friends were commonly invited to observe the growth of works he was by and by to launch from the press. It is not customary for the doors of the writer's work-shop to be thrown open, and for this reason it is all the more interesting to notice, when it is possible, how an essay, a history, a novel, or a poem is conceived, grows up, and is corrected for publication. One would like very much to be informed how Shakespeare put together the scenes of Hamlet or Macbeth, whether the subtile thought accumulated easily on the page before him, or whether he struggled for it with anxiety and distrust. We know that Milton troubled himself about little matters of punctuation, and obliged the printer to take special note of his requirements, scolding him roundly when he neglected his instructions. We also know that Melanchthon was in his library hard at work by two or three o'clock in the morning both in summer and winter, and that Sir William Jones began his studies with the dawn.

The most popular female writer of America, whose great novel struck a chord of universal sympathy throughout the civilized world, has habits of composition peculiarly her own, and unlike those belonging to any author of whom we have record. She croons, so to speak, over her writings, and it makes very little difference to her whether there is a crowd of people about her or whether she is alone during the composition of her books. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was wholly prepared for the press in a little wooden house in Maine, from week to week, while the story was coming out in a Washington newspaper. Most of it was written by the evening lamp, on a pine table, about which the children of the family were gathered together conning their various lessons for the next day. Amid the busy hum of earnest voices, constantly asking questions of the mother, intent on her world-renowned task, Mrs. Stowe wove together those thrilling chapters which were destined to find readers in so many languages throughout the globe. No work of similar importance, so far as we know, was ever written amid so much that seemed hostile to literary composition.

I had the opportunity, both in England and America, of observing the literary habits of Thackeray, and it always seemed to me that he did his work with comparative ease, but was somewhat influenced by a custom of procrastination. Nearly all