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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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5 external show pass for sterling worth-to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose-to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it-to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him. Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good concerning him, but evil; probably he liked the sycophant son of Chenaanah better; yet mightAhab have escaped a bloody death, had he but stopped his ears to flattery, and opened them to faithful counsel. There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle delicate ears: who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of society, much as the son of Imlah came before the throned Kings of Judah and Israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as prophet-like and as vital-a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is the satirist of Vanity Fair admired in high places? I cannot tell; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin- brand of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time-they or their seed might yet escape a fatal Ramoth-Gilead.Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, Reader, because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognised; because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day-as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things; because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent. They say he is like Fielding: they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle does a vulture: Fielding could stoop on carrion, but Thackeray never does. His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet- lightning playing under the edge of the summer-cloud does to the electric death-spark hid in itswomb. Finally, I have alluded to Mr. Thackeray, because to him-if he will accept the tribute of a total stranger-I have dedicated this second edition of Jane Eyre. CURRER BELL. December 21 st , 1847. THE AUTHOR’S NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION I AVAIL myself of the opportunity which a third edition of Jane Eyre affords me, of again addressing a word to the Public, to |
