Dickeray and Thackens 



Thackeray to Dickens. Thackeray has seen more of the 

 world they live in. Besides, he has more power of putting 

 a story cleverly together ; which, I believe, critics (who are 

 usually men that have the education of authors, without 

 sufficient genius to write good books, or rashness to write 

 bad) call the divine creative power. I take this to be 

 merely imagination corrected by knowledge of the world. 

 If there is less of the high poetical element in Thackeray's 

 writing, he has the power of framing a much more con- 

 sistent and credible body of fiction. Dickens imagines, as 

 it were, through a microscope, and patches the minutely- 

 painted pictures together higgledy-piggledy. Thackeray 

 takes the whole of his history into his telescopic field. In 

 fact, he imagines in larger pieces, or at any rate has 

 the art to make his work hang together by a subtile 

 tissue of unconscious evidence ; whereas the manage- 

 ment of Dickens's stories is often full of unconscious 

 inconsistencies. 



We now began to consider what we should do on our 

 visit to the celebrated venta. It was proposed and seconded 

 that we should revive, in the person of the present ventero^ 

 the right, as by tenure, of investing fit and proper persons 

 with the order of knighthood. If he was a man of humour, 

 like the real ventero in Don Quixote's time, he would easily 

 enter into the joke. But what should we call the order ? 

 As there was nothing remaining of the old premises but the 

 well, it was suggested we should be called " Caballeros de la 

 Orden del Pozo " (Knights of the Order of the Well). He 

 should slap our shoulders with his navaja (clasp-knife), for 

 want of a better sword, and sprinkle us with a little water 

 from the well. We would previously watch our pistols and 

 daggers for the space of time in which we could smoke a 

 cigarilloy and it should be counted a vigil. 



274 



