"Mbt gopectator," Member 210, 1850
THACKERAY'S PEN1DENNIS
Premising that Pendennis is just as incomplete,, just as fragmentary as its predecessor [Vanity Paid,. and therefore no more entitling its author to rank with our greatest novel-Writers than it did, we are quite prepared to agree with the praise which we have heard generally bestowed upon the numbers as they successively appeared. The canvas is marvellousy crowded with characters, most of them well and strikingly grawn ; the incidents are upon the whole probable, though occasionally of too melodramatic a cast to harmonize with the everyday life and people depicted ; the dialogue is appropriate to the speakers and the occasions—smart, grave, i'arcastic, or pathetic, by turns, and always, except where slang, fashionable- or otherwise, is demanded by dramatic propriety, phrased in pure, terse, idiomatic English.... We regard Pendennis, no leis than Vanity Fair, as a protest against the corruption of the individual by society ; as a lesson to each one of us against that sin which is the root of all bitterness ; ;as a timely warning to society to draw back from the gulph which it is approaahitig. The nineteenth century is quite self-complacent enough, or we might hint that the protest and the warning would be more effective if accompanied by a recognition of the .forces which are un- deniably at Wetik in Our country to counteract the anti social tendency—may we not say, finally to triumph over it.
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