strenuous life, he had better say them now through the image of Cromwell, about whom our emotions are more classified; better still if he says them through the image of King Arthur, who much more than Cromwell has become a precise symbol in the imagination. Arthur was to have been the hero of Milton’s epic—at least, Milton considered him for a possible hero but discarded him in favor, not of Cromwell or Hampden, but of Adam; and again the choice was wise, since Adam is still an image more universally understood than any of Milton’s contemporaries, and we know what we are expected to feel when we hear his story. To say then that in writing, even when our purpose is art and not satire, we should express ourselves in terms of the life about us, is to lay down a formula which has been contradicted in practise by the influential writers of the world. To find a language already wide-spread and therefore intelligible, the artist will always draw to some extent on the past, even though he does so unconsciously, and how far he goes back into the past will depend on what it is he wants to express. In _Henry Esmond_, Thackeray used the age of Marlborough to express a flavor of romance that could not be said in life of a later date. But when he had satire for his purpose, as in _Vanity Fair_, he chose a period comparatively modern. It is but fair to observe, however, that Thackeray follows this principle with very uncertain skill. The period he chose for his great satire was somewhat more remote than for _Pendennis_ or _The Newcomes_, where his purpose was less obviously and exclusively moral; the resulting effect in each case is somewhat peculiar, since most of us, unless we count up the dates, perhaps get the impression that _Vanity Fair_ was the contemporary book. In one sense it makes little difference, and we might use the illustration to indicate that it is the method of treatment, rather than the life portrayed, that will make a book seem contemporary. But we are left to wonder also whether Thackeray did not intend _Vanity Fair_ to be more satirical in its effect than it actually is, and _The Newcomes_ to be less so. Did the great but easy-going artist make here a careless choice of the time for his story?