Yet all the while, like a low under-song, goes on his monotonous
assertion of his own goodness and his own injuries. No sermon could
teach more than that hateful book; if it is read aright, it will
supply men or women with an armoury of warnings, and enable them to
start away from the semblance of self-deception as they would from a
rearing cobra when the hood is up, and the murderous head flattened
ready to strike. Thackeray worked on the same theme in his story of
little Stubbs. Lyndon is the Lucifer of rascals; Stubbs--well, Stubbs
beggars the English vocabulary; he is too low, too mean for adjectives
to describe him, and I could almost find it in my heart to wish that
his portraiture had never been placed before the horrified eyes of
men. Yet this Stubbs--a being who was drawn from life--has a profound
belief in the rectitude of everything that he does. Even when he tells
us how he invited his gang of unspeakables home, to drink away his
mother's substance, he takes credit to himself for his fine display of
British hospitality. How Thackeray contrived to live through the
ordeal of composing those two books I cannot tell; he must have had a
nerve of steel, with all his softness of heart and benevolence.
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