CHAPTER I. BIOGRAPHICAL.

In the foregoing volumes of this series of English Men of Letters, and in other works of a similar nature which have appeared lately as to the Ancient Classics and Foreign Classics, biography has naturally been, if not the leading, at any rate a considerable element. The desire is common to all readers to know not only what a great writer has written, but also of what nature has been the man who has produced such great work. As to all the authors taken in hand before, there has been extant some written record of the man's life. Biographical details have been more or less known to the world, so that, whether of a Cicero, or of a Goethe, or of our own Johnson, there has been a story to tell. Of Thackeray no life has been written; and though they who knew him,—and possibly many who did not,—are conversant² with anecdotes³ of the man, who was one so well known in society as to have created many anecdotes, yet there has been no memoir⁴ of his life sufficient to supply the wants of even so small a work as this purports⁷ to be. [Pg 2]For this the reason may simply be told. Thackeray, not long before his death, had had his taste offended by some fulsome⁸ biography. Paragraphs, of which the eulogy⁹ seemed to have been the produce rather of personal love than of inquiry¹⁰ or judgment¹¹, disgusted him, and he begged of his girls that when he should have gone there should nothing of the sort be done with his name.

We can imagine how his mind had worked, how he had declared to himself that, as by those loving hands into which his letters, his notes, his little details,—his literary remains¹², as such documents used to be called,—might naturally fall, truth of his foibles and of his shortcomings could not be told, so should not his praises be written, or that flattering portrait be limned¹³ which biographers are wont¹⁴ to produce. Acting¹⁵ upon these instructions, his daughters,—while there were two living, and since that the one surviving,—have carried out the order which has appeared to them to be sacred. Such being the case, it certainly is not my purpose now to write what may be called a life of Thackeray. In this preliminary chapter I will give such incidents and anecdotes of his life as will tell the reader perhaps all about him that a reader is entitled to ask. I will tell how he became an author, and will say how first he worked and struggled, and then how he worked and prospered¹⁶, and became a household word in English literature;—how, in this way, he passed through that course of mingled¹⁷ failure and success which, though the literary aspirant¹⁸ may suffer, is probably better both for the writer and for the writings than unclouded early glory. The suffering no doubt is acute, and a touch of melancholy¹⁹, perhaps of indignation, may be given to words which have been [Pg 3]written while the heart has been too full of its own wrongs; but this is better than the continued note of triumph which is still heard in the final voices of the spoilt child of literature, even when they are losing their music. Then I will tell how Thackeray died, early indeed, but still having done a good life's work. Something of his manner, something of his appearance I can say, something perhaps of his condition of mind; because for some few years he was known to me. But of the continual intercourse²⁰ of himself with the world, and of himself with his own works, I can tell little, because no record of his life has been made public.

William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Calcutta, on July 18, 1811. His father was Richmond Thackeray, son of W. M. Thackeray of Hadley, near Barnet, in Middlesex. A relation of his, of the same name, a Rev²¹. Mr. Thackeray, I knew well as rector of Hadley, many years afterwards. Him I believe to have been a second cousin of our Thackeray, but I think they had never met each other. Another cousin was Provost of Kings at Cambridge, fifty years ago, as Cambridge men will remember. Clergymen of the family have been numerous in England during the century, and there was one, a Rev. Elias Thackeray, whom I also knew in my youth, a dignitary, if I remember right, in the diocese of Meath. The Thackerays seem to have affected²³ the Church; but such was not at any period of his life the bias²⁴ of our novelist's mind.

His father and grandfather were Indian civil servants. His mother was Anne Becher, whose father was also in the Company's service. She married early in India, and was only nineteen when her son was born. She was left [Pg 4]a widow in 1816, with only one child, and was married a few years afterwards to Major Henry Carmichael Smyth, with whom Thackeray lived on terms of affectionate intercourse till the major died. All who knew William Makepeace remember his mother well, a handsome, spare, gray-haired lady, whom Thackeray treated with a courtly deference²⁶ as well as constant affection. There was, however, something of discrepancy²⁷ between them as to matters of religion. Mrs. Carmichael Smyth was disposed to the somewhat austere²⁸ observance of the evangelical section of the Church. Such, certainly, never became the case with her son. There was disagreement on the subject, and probably unhappiness at intervals²⁹, but never, I think, quarrelling. Thackeray's house was his mother's home whenever she pleased it, and the home also of his stepfather.

He was brought a child from India, and was sent early to the Charter House. Of his life and doings there his friend and schoolfellow George Venables writes to me as follows;

"My recollection of him, though fresh enough, does not furnish much material for biography. He came to school young,—a pretty, gentle, and rather timid boy. I think his experience there was not generally pleasant. Though he had afterwards a scholarlike knowledge of Latin, he did not attain³¹ distinction in the school; and I should think that the character of the head-master, Dr. Russell, which was vigorous, unsympathetic, and stern, though not severe, was uncongenial to his own. With the boys who knew him, Thackeray was popular; but he had no skill in games, and, I think, no taste for them.... He was already known by his faculty³² of making verses, [Pg 5]chiefly parodies³³. I only remember one line of one parody³⁴ on a poem of L. E. L.'s, about 'Violets, dark blue violets;' Thackeray's version was 'Cabbages, bright green cabbages,' and we thought it very witty³⁵. He took part in a scheme, which came to nothing, for a school magazine, and he wrote verses for it, of which I only remember that they were good of their kind. When I knew him better, in later years, I thought I could recognise the sensitive nature which he had as a boy.... His change of retrospective feeling about his school days was very characteristic. In his earlier books he always spoke³⁶ of the Charter House as Slaughter³⁷ House and Smithfield. As he became famous and prosperous his memory softened³⁸, and Slaughter House was changed into Grey Friars where Colonel Newcome ended his life."

In February, 1829, when he was not as yet eighteen, Thackeray went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was, I think, removed in 1830. It may be presumed, therefore, that his studies there were not very serviceable to him. There are few, if any, records left of his doings at the university,—unless it be the fact that he did there commence the literary work of his life. The line about the cabbages, and the scheme of the school magazine, can hardly be said to have amounted even to a commencement. In 1829 a little periodical was brought out at Cambridge, called The Snob³⁹, with an assurance on the title that it was not conducted by members of the university. It is presumed that Thackeray took a hand in editing this. He certainly wrote, and published in the little paper, some burlesque⁴⁰ lines on the subject which was given for the Chancellor⁴¹'s prize poem of the year. This was Timbuctoo, and Tennyson was the victor on the occasion. [Pg 6]There is some good fun in the four first and four last lines of Thackeray's production.
In Africa,—a quarter of the world,— Men's skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled; And somewhere there, unknown to public view A mighty⁴² city lies, called Timbuctoo.
       *       *       *       *       *
I see her tribes the hill of glory mount, And sell their sugars on their own account; While round her throne the prostrate⁴³ nations come, Sue for her rice, and barter⁴⁴ for her rum.

I cannot find in The Snob internal evidence of much literary merit beyond this. But then how many great writers have there been from whose early lucubrations no future literary excellence⁴⁵ could be prognosticated?

There is something at any rate in the name of the publication which tells of work that did come. Thackeray's mind was at all times peculiarly exercised with a sense of snobbishness⁴⁷. His appreciation⁴⁸ of the vice²⁵ grew abnormally, so that at last he had a morbid⁴⁹ horror of a snob—a morbid fear lest this or the other man should turn snob on his hands. It is probable that the idea was taken from the early Snob at Cambridge, either from his own participation⁵⁰ in the work or from his remembrance of it. The Snob lived, I think, but nine weeks, and was followed at an interval³⁰, in 1830, by The Gownsman, which lived to the seventeenth number, and at the opening of which Thackeray no doubt had a hand. It professed⁵¹ to be a continuation of The Snob. It contains a dedication⁵² to all proctors, which I should not be sorry to attribute to him. "To all Proctors, past, present, and future—
Whose taste it is our privilege to follow, Whose virtue⁵³ it is our duty to imitate, Whose presence it is our interest to avoid."

There is, however, nothing beyond fancy to induce me to [Pg 7]believe that Thackeray was the author of the dedication, and I do not know that there is any evidence to show that he was connected with The Snob beyond the writing of Timbuctoo.

In 1830 he left Cambridge, and went to Weimar either in that year or in 1831. Between Weimar and Paris he spent some portion of his earlier years, while his family,—his mother, that is, and his stepfather,—were living in Devonshire. It was then the purport⁶ of his life to become an artist, and he studied drawing at Paris, affecting especially Bonnington, the young English artist who had himself painted at Paris and who had died in 1828. He never learned to draw,—perhaps never could have learned. That he was idle, and did not do his best, we may take for granted. He was always idle, and only on some occasions, when the spirit moved him thoroughly⁵⁵, did he do his best even in after life. But with drawing,—or rather without it,—he did wonderfully well even when he did his worst. He did illustrate⁵⁷ his own books, and everyone knows how incorrect were his delineations. But as illustrations they were excellent. How often have I wished that characters of my own creating might be sketched⁵⁸ as faultily, if with the same appreciation of the intended purpose. Let anyone look at the "plates," as they are called in Vanity Fair, and compare each with the scenes and the characters intended to be displayed, and there see whether the artist,—if we may call him so,—has not managed to convey in the picture the exact feeling which he has described in the text. I have a little sketch⁵⁹ of his, in which a cannon-ball is supposed to have just carried off the head of an aide-de-camp,—messenger I had perhaps better say, lest I might affront⁶⁰ military feelings,—who is kneeling on the field of battle and delivering a despatch⁶¹ to Marlborough [Pg 8]on horseback. The graceful⁶² ease with which the duke receives the message though the messenger's head be gone, and the soldier-like precision with which the headless hero finishes his last effort of military obedience⁶³, may not have been portrayed⁶⁴ with well-drawn⁶⁵ figures, but no finished illustration ever told its story better. Dickens has informed us that he first met Thackeray in 1835, on which occasion the young artist aspirant, looking no doubt after profitable employment, "proposed to become the illustrator of my earliest book." It is singular that such should have been the first interview between the two great novelists. We may presume that the offer was rejected.

In 1832, Thackeray came of age, and inherited his fortune,—as to which various stories have been told. It seems to have amounted to about five hundred a year, and to have passed through his hands in a year or two, interest and principal. It has been told of him that it was all taken away from him at cards, but such was not the truth. Some went in an Indian bank in which he invested it. A portion was lost at cards. But with some of it,—the larger part as I think,—he endeavoured, in concert with his stepfather, to float a newspaper, which failed. There seem to have been two newspapers in which he was so concerned, The National Standard and The Constitutional. On the latter he was engaged with his stepfather, and in carrying that on he lost the last of his money. The National Standard had been running for some weeks when Thackeray joined it, and lost his money in it. It ran only for little more than twelve months, and then, the money having gone, the periodical came to an end. I know no road to fortune more tempting⁶⁶ to a young man, or one that with more certainty leads to ruin. Thackeray, who in a way more or [Pg 9]less correct, often refers in his writings, if not to the incidents, at any rate to the remembrances of his own life, tells us much of the story of this newspaper in Lovel the Widower⁶⁷. "They are welcome," says the bachelor, "to make merry at my charges in respect of a certain bargain which I made on coming to London, and in which, had I been Moses Primrose⁶⁸ purchasing green spectacles, I could scarcely have been more taken in. My Jenkinson was an old college acquaintance, whom I was idiot enough to imagine a respectable man. The fellow had a very smooth tongue and sleek⁶⁹ sanctified exterior⁷⁰. He was rather a popular preacher, and used to cry a good deal in the pulpit. He and a queer wine merchant and bill discounter, Sherrick by name, had somehow got possession of that neat little literary paper, The Museum, which perhaps you remember, and this eligible⁷¹ literary property my friend Honeyman, with his wheedling⁷² tongue, induced me to purchase." Here is the history of Thackeray's money, told by himself plainly enough, but with no intention on his part of narrating⁷³ an incident in his own life to the public. But the drollery⁷⁴ of the circumstances, his own mingled folly⁷⁵ and young ambition, struck him as being worth narration⁷⁶, and the more forcibly as he remembered all the ins and outs of his own reflections at the time,—how he had meant to enchant⁷⁷ the world, and make his fortune. There was literary capital in it of which he could make use after so many years. Then he tells us of this ambition, and of the folly of it; and at the same time puts forward the excuses to be made for it. "I daresay I gave myself airs as editor of that confounded Museum, and proposed to educate the public taste, to diffuse⁷⁸ morality and sound literature throughout the nation, and to pocket a liberal salary in return for my services. I daresay I printed my own sonnets⁷⁹, my own [Pg 10]tragedy, my own verses.... I daresay I wrote satirical articles.... I daresay I made a gaby of myself to the world. Pray, my good friend, hast thou never done likewise? If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt⁸⁰ never be a wise man." Thackeray was quite aware of his early weaknesses, and in the maturity⁸¹ of life knew well that he had not been precociously⁸² wise. He delighted so to tell his friends, and he delighted also to tell the public, not meaning that any but an inner circle should know that he was speaking of himself. But the story now is plain to all who can read.[1]

It was thus that he lost his money; and then, not having prospered very well with his drawing lessons in Paris or elsewhere, he was fain to take up literature as a profession. It is a business which has its allurements⁸⁴. It requires no capital, no special education, no training, and may be taken up at any time without a moment's delay. If a man can command a table, a chair, pen, paper, and ink, he can commence his trade as literary man. It is thus that aspirants⁸⁵ generally do commence it. A man may or may not have another employment to back him, or means of his own; or,—as was the case with Thackeray, when, after his first misadventure, he had to look about him for the means of living,—he may have nothing but his intellect and his friends. But the idea comes to the man that as he has the pen and ink, [Pg 11]and time on his hand, why should he not write and make money?

It is an idea that comes to very many men and women, old as well as young,—to many thousands who at last are crushed by it, of whom the world knows nothing. A man can make the attempt though he has not a coat fit to go out into the street with; or a woman, though she be almost in rags. There is no apprenticeship⁸⁶ wanted. Indeed there is no room for such apprenticeship. It is an art which no one teaches; there is no professor who, in a dozen lessons, even pretends to show the aspirant how to write a book or an article. If you would be a watchmaker, you must learn; or a lawyer, a cook, or even a housemaid. Before you can clean a horse you must go into the stable, and begin at the beginning. Even the cab-driving tiro must sit for awhile on the box, and learn something of the streets, before he can ply⁵ for a fare. But the literary beginner rushes at once at the top rung of his ladder;—as though a youth, having made up his mind to be a clergyman, should demand, without preliminary steps, to be appointed Bishop⁸⁸ of London. That he should be able to read and write is presumed, and that only. So much may be presumed of everyone, and nothing more is wanted.

In truth nothing more is wanted,—except those inner lights as to which, so many men live and die without having learned whether they possess them or not. Practice, industry, study of literature, cultivation⁸⁹ of taste, and the rest, will of course lend their aid, will probably be necessary before high excellence is attained⁹⁰. But the instances are not to seek,—are at the fingers of us all,—in which the first uninstructed effort has succeeded. A boy, almost, or perhaps an old woman, has sat down [Pg 12]and the book has come, and the world has read it, and the booksellers have been civil and have written their cheques. When all trades, all professions, all seats at offices, all employments at which a crust can be earned, are so crowded that a young man knows not where to look for the means of livelihood⁹¹, is there not an attraction in this which to the self-confident must be almost invincible⁹²? The booksellers are courteous⁹³ and write their cheques, but that is not half the whole? Monstrari digito! That is obtained. The happy aspirant is written of in newspapers, or, perhaps, better still, he writes of others. When the barrister of forty-five has hardly got a name beyond Chancery Lane, this glorious young scribe, with the first down on his lips, has printed his novel and been talked about.

The temptation is irresistible⁹⁴, and thousands fall into it. How is a man to know that he is not the lucky one or the gifted one? There is the table and there the pen and ink. Among the unfortunate he who fails altogether and from the first start is not the most unfortunate. A short period of life is wasted, and a sharp pang⁹⁵ is endured. Then the disappointed one is relegated⁹⁶ to the condition of life which he would otherwise have filled a little earlier. He has been wounded, but not killed, or even maimed. But he who has a little success, who succeeds in earning a few halcyon⁹⁷, but, ah! so dangerous guineas, is drawn into a trade from which he will hardly escape till he be driven from it, if he come out alive, by sheer hunger. He hangs on till the guineas become crowns and shillings,—till some sad record of his life, made when he applies for charity, declares that he has worked hard for the last year or two and has earned less than a policeman in the streets or a porter at a railway. It is to that that he is [Pg 13]brought by applying himself to a business which requires only a table and chair, with pen, ink, and paper! It is to that which he is brought by venturing to believe that he has been gifted with powers of imagination, creation, and expression.

The young man who makes the attempt knows that he must run the chance. He is well aware that nine must fail where one will make his running good. So much as that does reach his ears, and recommends itself to his common sense. But why should it not be he as well as another? There is always some lucky one winning the prize. And this prize when it has been won is so well worth the winning! He can endure starvation,—so he tells himself,—as well as another. He will try. But yet he knows that he has but one chance out of ten in his favour, and it is only in his happier moments that he flatters himself that that remains to him. Then there falls upon him,—in the midst of that labour which for its success especially requires that a man's heart shall be light, and that he be always at his best,—doubt and despair. If there be no chance, of what use is his labour?
Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

and amuse himself after that fashion? Thus the very industry which alone could give him a chance is discarded. It is so that the young man feels who, with some slight belief in himself and with many doubts, sits down to commence the literary labour by which he hopes to live.

So it was, no doubt, with Thackeray. Such were his hopes and his fears;—with a resolution of which we can well understand that it should have waned⁹⁸ at times, of earning his bread, if he did not make his fortune, in the [Pg 14]world of literature. One has not to look far for evidence of the condition I have described,—that it was so, Amaryllis and all. How or when he made his very first attempt in London, I have not learned; but he had not probably spent his money without forming "press" acquaintances, and had thus found an aperture⁹⁹ for the thin end of the wedge. He wrote for The Constitutional, of which he was part proprietor¹⁰⁰, beginning his work for that paper as a correspondent from Paris. For a while he was connected with The Times newspaper, though his work there did not I think amount to much. His first regular employment was on Fraser's Magazine, when Mr. Fraser's shop was in Regent Street, when Oliver Yorke was the presumed editor, and among contributors, Carlyle was one of the most notable. I imagine that the battle of life was difficult enough with him even after he had become one of the leading props¹⁰¹ of that magazine. All that he wrote was not taken, and all that was taken was not approved. In 1837-38, the History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond appeared in the magazine. The Great Hoggarty Diamond is now known to all readers of Thackeray's works. It is not my purpose to speak specially⁵⁴ of it here, except to assert that it has been thought to be a great success. When it was being brought out, the author told a friend of his,—and of mine,—that it was not much thought of at Fraser's, and that he had been called upon to shorten it. That is an incident disagreeable in its nature to any literary gentleman, and likely to be specially so when he knows that his provision of bread, certainly of improved bread and butter, is at stake. The man who thus darkens his literary brow with the frown of disapproval¹⁰², has at his disposal all the loaves and all the fishes that are going. If the writer be [Pg 15]successful, there will come a time when he will be above such frowns; but, when that opinion went forth¹⁰³, Thackeray had not yet made his footing good, and the notice to him respecting it must have been very bitter. It was in writing this Hoggarty Diamond that Thackeray first invented the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. Samuel Titmarsh was the writer, whereas Michael Angelo was an intending illustrator. Thackeray's nose had been broken in a school fight, while he was quite a little boy, by another little boy, at the Charter House; and there was probably some association intended to be jocose¹⁰⁴ with the name of the great artist, whose nose was broken by his fellow-student Torrigiano, and who, as it happened, died exactly three centuries before Thackeray.

I can understand all the disquietude of his heart when that warning, as to the too great length of his story, was given to him. He was not a man capable of feeling at any time quite assured in his position, and when that occurred he was very far from assurance. I think that at no time did he doubt the sufficiency of his own mental qualification for the work he had taken in hand; but he doubted all else. He doubted the appreciation of the world; he doubted his fitness for turning his intellect to valuable account; he doubted his physical capacity,—dreading¹⁰⁵ his own lack of industry; he doubted his luck; he doubted the continual absence of some of those misfortunes on which the works of literary men are shipwrecked. Though he was aware of his own power, he always, to the last, was afraid that his own deficiencies should be too strong against him. It was his nature to be idle,—to put off his work,—and then to be angry with himself for putting it off. Ginger¹⁰⁶ was hot in the mouth with him, and all the allurements of the world were strong [Pg 16]upon him. To find on Monday morning an excuse why he should not on Monday do Monday's work was, at the time, an inexpressible relief to him, but had become deep regret,—almost a remorse,—before the Monday was over. To such a one it was not given to believe in himself with that sturdy rock-bound foundation which we see to have belonged to some men from the earliest struggles of their career. To him, then, must have come an inexpressible pang when he was told that his story must be curtailed¹⁰⁷.

Who else would have told such a story of himself to the first acquaintance he chanced to meet? Of Thackeray it might be predicted that he certainly would do so. No little wound of the kind ever came to him but what he disclosed it at once. "They have only bought so many of my new book." "Have you seen the abuse of my last number?" "What am I to turn my hand to? They are getting tired of my novels." "They don't read it," he said to me of Esmond. "So you don't mean to publish my work?" he said once to a publisher in an open company. Other men keep their little troubles to themselves. I have heard even of authors who have declared how all the publishers were running after their books; I have heard some discourse¹⁰⁸ freely of their fourth and fifth editions; I have known an author to boast of his thousands sold in this country, and his tens of thousands in America; but I never heard anyone else declare that no one would read his chef-d'?uvre, and that the world was becoming tired of him. It was he who said, when he was fifty, that a man past fifty should never write a novel.

And yet, as I have said, he was from an early age fully⁵⁶ conscious of his own ability. That he was so is to be [Pg 17]seen in the handling of many of his early works,—in Barry Lyndon, for instance, and the Memoirs¹⁰⁹ of Mr. C. James Yellowplush. The sound is too certain for doubt of that kind. But he had not then, nor did he ever achieve that assurance of public favour which makes a man confident that his work will be successful. During the years of which we are now speaking Thackeray was a literary Bohemian in this sense,—that he never regarded his own status as certain. While performing much of the best of his life's work he was not sure of his market, not certain of his readers, his publishers, or his price; nor was he certain of himself.

It is impossible not to form some contrast between him and Dickens as to this period of his life,—a comparison not as to their literary merits, but literary position. Dickens was one year his junior in age, and at this time, viz. 1837-38, had reached almost the zenith of his reputation. Pickwick had been published, and Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby were being published. All the world was talking about the young author who was assuming his position with a confidence in his own powers which was fully justified¹¹⁰ both by his present and future success. It was manifest that he could make, not only his own fortune, but that of his publishers, and that he was a literary hero bound to be worshipped by all literary grades of men, down to the "devils" of the printing-office. At that time, Thackeray, the older man, was still doubting, still hesitating, still struggling. Everyone then had accepted the name of Charles Dickens. That of William Thackeray was hardly known beyond the circle of those who are careful to make themselves acquainted with such matters. It was then the custom, more generally than it is at present, to [Pg 18]maintain anonymous¹¹¹ writing in magazines. Now, if anything of special merit be brought out, the name of the author, if not published, is known. It was much less so at the period in question; and as the world of readers began to be acquainted with Jeames Yellowplush, Catherine Hayes, and other heroes and heroines, the names of the author had to be inquired for. I remember myself, when I was already well acquainted with the immortal¹¹² Jeames, asking who was the writer. The works of Charles Dickens were at that time as well known to be his, and as widely read in England, as those almost of Shakespeare.

It will be said of course that this came from the earlier popularity of Dickens. That is of course; but why should it have been so? They had begun to make their effort much at the same time; and if there was any advantage in point of position as they commenced, it was with Thackeray. It might be said that the genius of the one was brighter than that of the other, or, at any rate, that it was more precocious⁸³. But after-judgment has, I think, not declared either of the suggestions to be true. I will make no comparison between two such rivals, who were so distinctly different from each, and each of whom, within so very short a period, has come to stand on a pedestal so high,—the two exalted¹¹³ to so equal a vocation¹¹⁴. And if Dickens showed the best of his power early in life, so did Thackeray the best of his intellect. In no display of mental force did he rise above Barry Lyndon. I hardly know how the teller¹¹⁵ of a narrative¹¹⁶ shall hope to mount in simply intellectual faculty above the effort there made. In what then was the difference? Why was Dickens already a great man when Thackeray was still a literary Bohemian?

[Pg 19]

The answer is to be found not in the extent or in the nature of the genius of either man, but in the condition of mind,—which indeed may be read plainly in their works by those who have eyes to see. The one was steadfast¹¹⁷, industrious¹¹⁸, full of purpose, never doubting of himself, always putting his best foot foremost and standing¹¹⁹ firmly on it when he got it there; with no inward trepidation¹²⁰, with no moments in which he was half inclined to think that this race was not for his winning, this goal not to be reached by his struggles. The sympathy of friends was good to him, but he could have done without it. The good opinion which he had of himself was never shaken by adverse¹²¹ criticism; and the criticism on the other side, by which it was exalted, came from the enumeration¹²² of the number of copies sold. He was a firm reliant man, very little prone¹²³ to change, who, when he had discovered the nature of his own talent, knew how to do the very best with it.

It may almost be said that Thackeray was the very opposite of this. Unsteadfast, idle, changeable of purpose, aware of his own intellect but not trusting it, no man ever failed more generally than he to put his best foot foremost. Full as his works are of pathos¹²⁴, full of humour, full of love and charity, tending, as they always do, to truth and honour and manly¹²⁵ worth and womanly modesty¹²⁶, excelling, as they seem to me to do, most other written precepts¹²⁷ that I know, they always seem to lack something that might have been there. There is a touch of vagueness which indicates that his pen was not firm while he was using it. He seems to me to have been dreaming ever of some high flight, and then to have told himself, with a half-broken heart, that it was beyond his power to soar up into those bright regions. I can fancy [Pg 20]as the sheets went from him every day he told himself, in regard to every sheet, that it was a failure. Dickens was quite sure of his sheets.

"I have got to make it shorter!" Then he would put his hands in his pockets, and stretch himself, and straighten the lines of his face, over which a smile would come, as though this intimation from his editor were the best joke in the world; and he would walk away, with his heart bleeding, and every nerve in an agony. There are none of us who want to have much of his work shortened now.

In 1837 Thackeray married Isabella, daughter of Colonel Matthew Shawe, and from this union there came three daughters, Anne, Jane, and Harriet. The name of the eldest¹²⁸, now Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, who has followed so closely in her father's steps, is a household word to the world of novel readers; the second died as a child; the younger lived to marry Leslie Stephen, who is too well known for me to say more than that he wrote, the other day, the little volume on Dr. Johnson in this series; but she, too, has now followed her father. Of Thackeray's married life what need be said shall be contained in a very few words. It was grievously unhappy; but the misery¹²⁹ of it came from God, and was in no wise due to human fault. She became ill, and her mind failed her. There was a period during which he would not believe that her illness was more than illness, and then he clung to her and waited on her with an assiduity of affection which only made his task the more painful to him. At last it became evident that she should live in the companionship of some one with whom her life might be altogether quiet, and she has since been domiciled with a lady with whom she has been happy. Thus she was, [Pg 21]after but a few years of married life, taken away from him, and he became as it were a widower till the end of his days.

At this period, and indeed for some years after his marriage, his chief literary dependence¹³⁰ was on Fraser's Magazine. He wrote also at this time in the New Monthly Magazine. In 1840 he brought out his Paris Sketch Book, as to which he tells us by a notice printed with the first edition, that half of the sketches¹³¹ had already been published in various periodicals. Here he used the name Michael Angelo Titmarsh, as he did also with the Journey from Cornhill to Cairo. Dickens had called himself Boz, and clung to the name with persistency¹³² as long as the public would permit it. Thackeray's affection for assumed names was more intermittent¹³³, though I doubt whether he used his own name altogether till it appeared on the title-page of Vanity Fair. About this time began his connection with Punch, in which much of his best work appeared. Looking back at our old friend as he used to come out from week to week at this time, we can hardly boast that we used to recognise how good the literary pabulum was that was then given for our consumption. We have to admit that the ordinary reader, as the ordinary picture-seer, requires to be guided by a name. We are moved to absolute admiration¹³⁴ by a Raphael or a Hobbema, but hardly till we have learned the name of the painter, or, at any rate, the manner of his painting. I am not sure that all lovers of poetry would recognise a Lycidas coming from some hitherto unknown Milton. Gradually the good picture or the fine poem makes its way into the minds of a slowly discerning public. Punch, no doubt, became very popular, owing, perhaps, more to Leech¹³⁵, its artist, than to any other single person. Gradually the world [Pg 22]of readers began to know that there was a speciality of humour to be found in its pages,—fun and sense, satire¹³⁶ and good humour, compressed together in small literary morsels¹³⁷ as the nature of its columns required. Gradually the name of Thackeray as one of the band of brethren was buzzed about, and gradually became known as that of the chief of the literary brothers. But during the years in which he did much for Punch, say from 1843 to 1853, he was still struggling to make good his footing in literature. They knew him well in the Punch office, and no doubt the amount and regularity¹³⁸ of the cheques from Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, the then and still owners of that happy periodical, made him aware that he had found for himself a satisfactory career. In "a good day for himself, the journal, and the world, Thackeray found Punch." This was said by his old friend Shirley Brooks¹³⁹, who himself lived to be editor of the paper and died in harness, and was said most truly. Punch was more congenial to him, and no doubt more generous, than Fraser. There was still something of the literary Bohemian about him, but not as it had been before. He was still unfixed, looking out for some higher career, not altogether satisfied to be no more than one of an anonymous band of brothers, even though the brothers were the brothers of Punch. We can only imagine what were his thoughts as to himself and that other man, who was then known as the great novelist of the day,—of a rivalry¹⁴¹ with whom he was certainly conscious. Punch was very much to him, but was not quite enough. That must have been very clear to himself as he meditated¹⁴² the beginning of Vanity Fair.

Of the contributions to the periodical, the best known now are The Snob Papers and The Ballads¹⁴⁴ of Policeman X. But they were very numerous. Of Thackeray [Pg 23]as a poet, or maker⁸⁷ of verses, I will say a few words in a chapter which will be devoted¹⁴⁵ to his own so-called ballads. Here it seems only necessary to remark that there was not apparently¹⁴⁶ any time in his career at which he began to think seriously of appearing before the public as a poet. Such was the intention early in their career with many of our best known prose writers, with Milton, and Goldsmith, and Samuel Johnson, with Scott, Macaulay, and more lately with Matthew Arnold; writers of verse and prose who ultimately prevailed some in one direction, and others in the other. Milton and Goldsmith have been known best as poets, Johnson and Macaulay as writers of prose. But with all of them there has been a distinct effort in each art. Thackeray seems to have tumbled into versification by accident; writing it as amateurs do, a little now and again for his own delectation, and to catch the taste of partial friends. The reader feels that Thackeray would not have begun to print his verses unless the opportunity of doing so had been brought in his way by his doings in prose. And yet he had begun to write verses when he was very young;—at Cambridge, as we have seen, when he contributed more to the fame of Timbuctoo than I think even Tennyson has done,—and in his early years at Paris. Here again, though he must have felt the strength of his own mingled humour and pathos, he always struck with an uncertain note till he had gathered strength and confidence by popularity. Good as they generally were, his verses were accidents, written not as a writer writes who claims to be a poet, but as though they might have been the relaxation¹⁴⁷ of a doctor or a barrister.

And so they were. When Thackeray first settled himself in London, to make his living among the magazines and newspapers, I do not imagine that he counted much [Pg 24]on his poetic¹⁴⁸ powers. He describes it all in his own dialogue between the pen and the album.

"Since he," says the pen, speaking of its master, Thackeray:
Since he my faithful service did engage, To follow him through his queer pilgrimage I've drawn and written many a line and page.
Caricatures I scribbled¹⁴⁹ have, and rhymes, And dinner-cards, and picture pantomimes, And many little children's books at times.
I've writ¹ the foolish fancy of his brain; The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain; The idle word that he'd wish back again.
I've helped him to pen many a line for bread.

It was thus he thought of his work. There had been caricatures, and rhymes, and many little children's books; and then the lines written for his bread, which, except that they were written for Punch, were hardly undertaken with a more serious purpose. In all of it there was ample seriousness, had he known it himself. What a tale of the restlessness, of the ambition, of the glory, of the misfortunes of a great country is given in the ballads of Peter the French drummer! Of that brain so full of fancy the pen had lightly written all the fancies. He did not know it when he was doing so, but with that word, fancy, he has described exactly the gift with which his brain was specially endowed. If a writer be accurate, or sonorous¹⁵⁰, or witty, or simply pathetic, he may, I think, gauge¹⁵¹ his own powers. He may do so after experience with something of certainty. But fancy is a gift which the owner of it cannot measure, and the power of which, when he is using it, he cannot himself understand. [Pg 25]There is the same lambent flame flickering¹⁵² over everything he did, even the dinner-cards and the picture pantomimes. He did not in the least know what he put into those things. So it was with his verses. It was only by degrees, when he was told of it by others, that he found that they too were of infinite value to him in his profession.

The Irish Sketch Book came out in 1843, in which he used, but only half used, the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. He dedicates it to Charles Lever, and in signing the dedication gave his own name. "Laying aside," he says, "for a moment the travelling title of Mr. Titmarsh, let me acknowledge these favours in my own name, and subscribe¹⁵³ myself, &c. &c., W. M. Thackeray." So he gradually fell into the declaration of his own identity. In 1844 he made his journey to Turkey and Egypt,—From Cornhill to Grand Cairo, as he called it, still using the old nom de plume¹⁵⁴, but again signing the dedication with his own name. It was now made to the captain of the vessel¹⁵⁵ in which he encountered that famous white squall, in describing which he has shown the wonderful power he had over words.

In 1846 was commenced, in numbers, the novel which first made his name well known to the world. This was Vanity Fair, a work to which it is evident that he devoted all his mind. Up to this time his writings had consisted of short contributions, chiefly of sketches, each intended to stand by itself in the periodical to which it was sent. Barry Lyndon had hitherto been the longest; but that and Catherine Hayes, and the Hoggarty Diamond, though stories continued through various numbers, had not as yet reached the dignity,—or at any rate the length,—of a three-volume novel. But of [Pg 26]late novels had grown to be much longer than those of the old well-known measure. Dickens had stretched his to nearly double the length, and had published them in twenty numbers. The attempt had caught the public taste and had been pre-eminently successful. The nature of the tale as originated by him was altogether unlike that to which the readers of modern novels had been used. No plot, with an arranged catastrophe¹⁵⁶ or déno?ment, was necessary. Some untying¹⁵⁷ of the various knots of the narrative no doubt were expedient¹⁵⁸, but these were of the simplest kind, done with the view of giving an end to that which might otherwise be endless. The adventures of a Pickwick or a Nickleby required very little of a plot, and this mode of telling a story, which might be continued on through any number of pages, as long as the characters were interesting, met with approval. Thackeray, who had never depended much on his plot in the shorter tales which he had hitherto told, determined¹⁵⁹ to adopt the same form in his first great work, but with these changes;—That as the central character with Dickens had always been made beautiful with unnatural¹⁶⁰ virtue,—for who was ever so unselfish as Pickwick, so manly and modest as Nicholas, or so good a boy as Oliver?—so should his centre of interest be in every respect abnormally bad.

As to Thackeray's reason for this,—or rather as to that condition of mind which brought about this result,—I will say something in a final chapter, in which I will endeavour to describe the nature and effect of his work generally. Here it will be necessary only to declare that, such was the choice he now made of a subject in his first attempt to rise out of a world of small literary contributions, into the more assured position of the author of a work of importance. We are aware that the monthly nurses of [Pg 27]periodical literature did not at first smile on the effort. The proprietors¹⁶¹ of magazines did not see their way to undertake Vanity Fair, and the publishers are said to have generally looked shy upon it. At last it was brought out in numbers,—twenty-four numbers instead of twenty, as with those by Dickens,—under the guardian¹⁶² hands of Messrs. Bradbury and Evans. This was completed in 1848, and then it was that, at the age of thirty-seven, Thackeray first achieved for himself a name and reputation through the country. Before this he had been known at Fraser's and at the Punch office. He was known at the Garrick Club, and had become individually popular among literary men in London. He had made many fast friends, and had been, as it were, found out by persons of distinction. But Jones, and Smith, and Robinson, in Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, did not know him as they knew Dickens, Carlyle, Tennyson, and Macaulay,—not as they knew Landseer, or Stansfeld, or Turner; not as they knew Macready, Charles Kean, or Miss Faucit. In that year, 1848, his name became common in the memoirs of the time. On the 5th of June I find him dining with Macready, to meet Sir J. Wilson, Panizzi, Landseer, and others. A few days afterwards Macready dined with him. "Dined with Thackeray, met the Gordons, Kenyons, Procters, Reeve, Villiers, Evans, Stansfeld, and saw Mrs. Sartoris and S. C. Dance, White, H. Goldsmid, in the evening." Again; "Dined with Forster, having called and taken up Brookfield, met Rintoul, Kenyon, Procter, Kinglake, Alfred Tennyson, Thackeray." Macready was very accurate in jotting¹⁶⁴ down the names of those he entertained, who entertained him, or were entertained with him. Vanity Fair was coming out, and Thackeray had become one of the personages in literary society. [Pg 28]In the January number of 1848 the Edinburgh Review had an article on Thackeray's works generally as they were then known. It purports to combine the Irish Sketch Book, the Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, and Vanity Fair as far as it had then gone; but it does in truth deal chiefly with the literary merits of the latter. I will quote a passage from the article, as proving in regard to Thackeray's work an opinion which was well founded, and as telling the story of his life as far as it was then known;

"Full many a valuable truth," says the reviewer, "has been sent undulating through the air by men who have lived and died unknown. At this moment the rising generation are supplied with the best of their mental aliment by writers whose names are a dead letter to the mass; and among the most remarkable¹⁶⁶ of these is Michael Angelo Titmarsh, alias¹⁶⁷ William Makepeace Thackeray, author of the Irish Sketch Book, of A Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, of Jeames's Diary, of The Snob Papers in Punch, of Vanity Fair, etc. etc.

"Mr. Thackeray is now about thirty-seven years of age, of a good family, and originally intended for the bar. He kept seven or eight terms at Cambridge, but left the university without taking a degree, with the view of becoming an artist; and we well remember, ten or twelve years ago, finding him day after day engaged in copying pictures in the Louvre, in order to qualify himself for his intended profession. It may be doubted, however, whether any degree of assiduity would have enabled him to excel in the money-making branches, for his talent was altogether of the Hogarth kind, and was principally remarkable in the pen-and-ink sketches of character and situation, which he dashed off for the [Pg 29]amusement of his friends. At the end of two or three years of desultory¹⁶⁸ application he gave up the notion of becoming a painter, and took to literature. He set up and edited with marked ability a weekly journal, on the plan of The Athen?um and Literary Gazette, but was unable to compete successfully with such long-established rivals. He then became a regular man of letters,—that is, he wrote for respectable magazines and newspapers, until the attention attracted to his contributions in Fraser's Magazine and Punch emboldened¹⁶⁹ him to start on his own account, and risk an independent publication." Then follows a eulogistic¹⁷⁰ and, as I think, a correct criticism on the book as far as it had gone. There are a few remarks perhaps a little less eulogistic as to some of his minor¹⁷² writings, The Snob Papers in particular; and at the end there is a statement with which I think we shall all now agree; "A writer with such a pen and pencil as Mr. Thackeray's is an acquisition of real and high value in our literature."

The reviewer has done his work in a tone friendly to the author, whom he knew,[2]—as indeed it may be said that this little book will be written with the same feeling,—but the public has already recognised the truth of the review generally. There can be no doubt that Thackeray, though he had hitherto been but a contributor of anonymous pieces to periodicals,—to what is generally considered as merely the ephemeral literature of the month,—had already become effective on the tastes and morals of readers. Affectation of finery; the vulgarity which apes good breeding but never approaches it; [Pg 30]dishonest gambling¹⁷⁴, whether with dice¹⁷⁵ or with railway shares; and that low taste for literary excitement which is gratified by mysterious murders and Old Bailey executions had already received condign¹⁷⁶ punishment from Yellowplush, Titmarsh, Fitzboodle, and Ikey Solomon. Under all those names Thackeray had plied¹⁶⁵ his trade as a satirist¹⁷⁷. Though the truths, as the reviewer said, had been merely sent undulating through the air, they had already become effective.

Thackeray had now become a personage,—one of the recognised stars of the literary heaven of the day. It was an honour to know him; and we may well believe that the givers of dinners were proud to have him among their guests. He had opened his oyster,—with his pen, an achievement which he cannot be said to have accomplished¹⁷⁸ until Vanity Fair had come out. In inquiring about him from those who survive him, and knew him well in those days, I always hear the same account. "If I could only tell you the impromptu¹⁷⁹ lines which fell from him!" "If I had only kept the drawings from his pen, which used to be chucked about as though they were worth nothing!" "If I could only remember the drolleries!" Had they been kept, there might now be many volumes of these sketches, as to which the reviewer says that their talent was "altogether of the Hogarth kind." Could there be any kind more valuable? Like Hogarth, he could always make his picture tell his story; though, unlike Hogarth, he had not learned to draw. I have had sent to me for my inspection¹⁸⁰ an album of drawings and letters, which, in the course of twenty years, from 1829 to 1849, were despatched from Thackeray to his old friend Edward Fitzgerald. Looking at the wit displayed in the drawings, I feel [Pg 31]inclined to say that had he persisted he would have been a second Hogarth. There is a series of ballet scenes, in which "Flore et Zephyr¹⁸¹" are the two chief performers, which for expression and drollery exceed anything that I know of the kind. The set in this book are lithographs¹⁸², which were published, but I do not remember to have seen them elsewhere. There are still among us many who knew him well;—Edward Fitzgerald and George Venables, James Spedding and Kinglake, Mrs. Procter,—the widow of Barry Cornwall, who loved him well,—and Monckton Milnes, as he used to be, whose touching¹⁸³ lines written just after Thackeray's death will close this volume, Frederick Pollock and Frank Fladgate, John Blackwood and William Russell,—and they all tell the same story. Though he so rarely talked, as good talkers do, and was averse¹⁸⁴ to sit down to work, there were always falling from his mouth and pen those little pearls. Among the friends who had been kindest and dearest to him in the days of his strugglings he once mentioned three to me,—Matthew Higgins, or Jacob Omnium as he was more popularly called; William Stirling, who became Sir William Maxwell; and Russell Sturgis, who is now the senior partner in the great house of Barings. Alas¹⁸⁵, only the last of these three is left among us! Thackeray was a man of no great power of conversation. I doubt whether he ever shone in what is called general society. He was not a man to be valuable at a dinner-table as a good talker. It was when there were but two or three together that he was happy himself and made others happy; and then it would rather be from some special piece of drollery that the joy of the moment would come, than from the discussion of ordinary topics. After so many years his old friends remember the fag-ends of the doggerel¹⁸⁶ lines which used to drop from him without any [Pg 32]effort on all occasions of jollity. And though he could be very sad,—laden with melancholy, as I think must have been the case with him always,—the feeling of fun would quickly come to him, and the queer rhymes would be poured out as plentifully¹⁸⁷ as the sketches were made. Here is a contribution which I find hanging in the memory of an old friend, the serious nature of whose literary labours would certainly have driven such lines from his mind, had they not at the time caught fast hold of him:
In the romantic little town of Highbury My father kept a circulatin' library; He followed in his youth that man immortal, who Conquered the Frenchmen on the plains of Waterloo. Mamma was an inhabitant of Drogheda, Very good she was to darn and to embroider¹⁸⁸. In the famous island of Jamaica, For thirty years I've been a sugar-baker; And here I sit, the Muses¹⁸⁹' 'appy vot'ry, A cultivatin' every kind of po'try,

There may, perhaps, have been a mistake in a line, but the poem has been handed down with fair correctness over a period of forty years. He was always versifying. He once owed me five pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence, his share of a dinner bill at Richmond. He sent me a cheque for the amount in rhyme, giving the proper financial document on the second half of a sheet of note paper. I gave the poem away as an autograph, and now forget the lines. This was all trifling¹⁹⁰, the reader will say. No doubt. Thackeray was always trifling, and yet always serious. In attempting to understand his character it is necessary for you to bear within your own mind the idea that he was always, within his own bosom¹⁹¹, encountering melancholy with buffoonery, and meanness with satire. The very spirit of burlesque dwelt within him,—a spirit which [Pg 33]does not see the grand the less because of the travesties¹⁹² which it is always engendering¹⁹³.

In his youthful,—all but boyish,—days in London, he delighted to "put himself up" at the Bedford, in Covent Garden. Then in his early married days he lived in Albion Street, and from thence went to Great Coram Street, till his household there was broken up by his wife's illness. He afterwards took lodgings¹⁹⁴ in St. James's Chambers¹⁹⁵, and then a house in Young Street, Kensington. Here he lived from 1847, when he was achieving his great triumph with Vanity Fair, down to 1853, when he removed to a house which he bought in Onslow Square. In Young Street there had come to lodge¹⁹⁶ opposite to him an Irish gentleman, who, on the part of his injured country, felt very angry with Thackeray. The Irish Sketch Book had not been complimentary¹⁹⁷, nor were the descriptions which Thackeray had given generally of Irishmen; and there was extant an absurd idea that in his abominable¹⁹⁸ heroine Catherine Hayes he had alluded¹⁹⁹ to Miss Catherine Hayes the Irish singer. Word was taken to Thackeray that this Irishman intended to come across the street and avenge²⁰⁰ his country on the calumniator's person. Thackeray immediately called upon the gentleman, and it is said that the visit was pleasant to both parties. There certainly was no blood shed.

He had now succeeded,—in 1848,—in making for himself a standing as a man of letters, and an income. What was the extent of his income I have no means of saying; nor is it a subject on which, as I think, inquiry should be made. But he was not satisfied with his position. He felt it to be precarious²⁰², and he was always thinking of what he owed to his two girls. That arbitrium popularis aur? on which he depended for his daily bread was not [Pg 34]regarded by him with the confidence which it deserved. He did not probably know how firm was the hold he had obtained of the public ear. At any rate he was anxious, and endeavoured to secure for himself a permanent income in the public service. He had become by this time acquainted, probably intimate, with the Marquis of Clanricarde, who was then Postmaster-General. In 1848 there fell a vacancy²⁰³ in the situation of Assistant-Secretary at the General Post Office, and Lord Clanricarde either offered it to him or promised to give it to him. The Postmaster-General had the disposal of the place,—but was not altogether free from control in the matter. When he made known his purpose at the Post Office, he was met by an assurance from the officer next under him that the thing could not be done. The services were wanted of a man who had had experience in the Post Office; and, moreover, it was necessary that the feelings of other gentlemen should be consulted. Men who have been serving in an office many years do not like to see even a man of genius put over their heads. In fact, the office would have been up in arms at such an injustice²⁰⁴. Lord Clanricarde, who in a matter of patronage²⁰⁵ was not scrupulous²⁰⁶, was still a good-natured man and amenable²⁰⁷. He attempted to befriend his friend till he found that it was impossible, and then, with the best grace in the world, accepted the official nominee²⁰⁸ that was offered to him.

It may be said that had Thackeray succeeded in that attempt he would surely have ruined himself. No man can be fit for the management and performance of special work who has learned nothing of it before his thirty-seventh year; and no man could have been less so than Thackeray. There are men who, though they be not fit, are disposed to learn their lesson and make themselves as [Pg 35]fit as possible. Such cannot be said to have been the case with this man. For the special duties which he would have been called upon to perform, consisting to a great extent of the maintenance of discipline over a large body of men, training is required, and the service would have suffered for awhile under any untried elderly tiro. Another man might have put himself into harness. Thackeray never would have done so. The details of his work after the first month would have been inexpressibly wearisome to him. To have gone into the city, and to have remained there every day from eleven till five, would have been all but impossible to him. He would not have done it. And then he would have been tormented²⁰⁹ by the feeling that he was taking the pay and not doing the work. There is a belief current, not confined to a few, that a man may be a Government Secretary with a generous salary, and have nothing to do. The idea is something that remains to us from the old days of sinecures²¹⁰. If there be now remaining places so pleasant, or gentlemen so happy, I do not know them. Thackeray's notion of his future duties was probably very vague. He would have repudiated²¹² the notion that he was looking for a sinecure²¹¹, but no doubt considered that the duties would be easy and light. It is not too much to assert, that he who could drop his pearls as I have said above, throwing them wide cast without an effort, would have found his work as Assistant-Secretary at the General Post Office to be altogether too much for him. And then it was no doubt his intention to join literature with the Civil Service. He had been taught to regard the Civil Service as easy, and had counted upon himself as able to add it to his novels, and his work with his Punch brethren, and to his contributions generally to the literature of the day. He might have done so, could [Pg 36]he have risen at five, and have sat at his private desk for three hours before he began his official routine at the public one. A capability²¹³ for grinding, an aptitude²¹⁴ for continuous task work, a disposition²¹⁵ to sit in one's chair as though fixed¹⁴⁰ to it by cobbler's wax, will enable a man in the prime of life to go through the tedium²¹⁶ of a second day's work every day; but of all men Thackeray was the last to bear the wearisome perseverance²¹⁷ of such a life. Some more or less continuous attendance at his office he must have given, and with it would have gone Punch and the novels, the ballads, the burlesques²¹⁸, the essays, the lectures, and the monthly papers full of mingled satire and tenderness, which have left to us that Thackeray which we could so ill afford to lose out of the literature of the nineteenth century. And there would have remained to the Civil Service the memory of a disgraceful job.

He did not, however, give up the idea of the Civil Service. In a letter to his American friend, Mr. Reed, dated 8th November, 1854, he says; "The secretaryship of our Legation at Washington was vacant the other day, and I instantly asked for it; but in the very kindest letter Lord Clarendon showed how the petition was impossible. First, the place was given away. Next, it would not be fair to appoint out of the service. But the first was an excellent reason;—not a doubt of it." The validity of the second was probably not so apparent to him as it is to one who has himself waited long for promotion²¹⁹. "So if ever I come," he continues, "as I hope and trust to do this time next year, it must be in my own coat, and not the Queen's." Certainly in his own coat, and not in the Queen's, must Thackeray do anything by which he could mend his fortune or make his reputation. There never was a man less fit for the Queen's coat.

[Pg 37]

Nevertheless he held strong ideas that much was due by the Queen's ministers to men of letters, and no doubt had his feelings of slighted merit, because no part of the debt due was paid to him. In 1850 he wrote a letter to The Morning Chronicle, which has since been republished, in which he alludes²²⁰ to certain opinions which had been put forth in The Examiner. "I don't see," he says, "why men of letters should not very cheerfully coincide with Mr. Examiner in accepting all the honours, places, and prizes which they can get. The amount of such as will be awarded to them will not, we may be pretty sure, impoverish²²¹ the country much; and if it is the custom of the State to reward by money, or titles of honour, or stars and garters of any sort, individuals who do the country service,—and if individuals are gratified at having 'Sir' or 'My lord' appended to their names, or stars and ribbons hooked on to their coats and waistcoats, as men most undoubtedly²²² are, and as their wives, families, and relations are,—there can be no reason why men of letters should not have the chance, as well as men of the robe or the sword; or why, if honour and money are good for one profession, they should not be good for another. No man in other callings thinks himself degraded by receiving a reward from his Government; nor, surely, need the literary man be more squeamish about pensions, and ribbons, and titles, than the ambassador, or general, or judge. Every European state but ours rewards its men of letters. The American Government gives them their full share of its small patronage; and if Americans, why not Englishmen?"

In this a great subject is discussed which would be too long for these pages; but I think that there now exists a feeling that literature can herself, for herself, produce a rank as effective as any that a Queen's minister [Pg 38]can bestow²²³. Surely it would be a repainting of the lily, an adding a flavour to the rose, a gilding²²⁴ of refined gold to create to-morrow a Lord Viscount Tennyson, a Baron²²⁵ Carlyle, or a Right Honourable²²⁶ Sir Robert Browning. And as for pay and pension, the less the better of it for any profession, unless so far as it may be payment made for work done. Then the higher the payment the better, in literature as in all other trades. It may be doubted even whether a special rank of its own be good for literature, such as that which is achieved by the happy possessors of the forty chairs of the Academy in France. Even though they had an angel to make the choice,—which they have not,—that angel would do more harm to the excluded than good to the selected.

Pendennis, Esmond, and The Newcomes followed Vanity Fair,—not very quickly indeed, always at an interval of two years,—in 1850, 1852, and 1854. As I purpose to devote a separate short chapter, or part of a chapter, to each of these, I need say nothing here of their special merits or demerits. Esmond was brought out as a whole. The others appeared in numbers. "He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." It is a mode of pronunciation in literature by no means very articulate, but easy of production and lucrative²²⁷. But though easy it is seductive, and leads to idleness. An author by means of it can raise money and reputation on his book before he has written it, and when the pang of parturition²²⁸ is over in regard to one part, he feels himself entitled to a period of ease because the amount required for the next division will occupy him only half the month. This to Thackeray was so alluring²²⁹ that the entirety of the final half was not always given to the task. His self-reproaches and bemoanings when sometimes the day for reappearing would come [Pg 39]terribly nigh, while yet the necessary amount of copy was far from being ready, were often very ludicrous and very sad;—ludicrous because he never told of his distress²³⁰ without adding to it something of ridicule²³¹ which was irresistible, and sad because those who loved him best were aware that physical suffering had already fallen upon him, and that he was deterred²³² by illness from the exercise of continuous energy. I myself did not know him till after the time now in question. My acquaintance with him was quite late in his life. But he has told me something of it, and I have heard from those who lived with him how continual were his sufferings. In 1854, he says in one of his letters to Mr. Reed,—the only private letters of his which I know to have been published; "I am to-day just out of bed after another, about the dozenth, severe fit of spasms²³³ which I have had this year. My book would have been written but for them." His work was always going on, but though not fuller of matter,—that would have been almost impossible,—would have been better in manner had he been delayed neither by suffering nor by that palsying of the energies which suffering produces.

This ought to have been the happiest period of his life, and should have been very happy. He had become fairly easy in his circumstances. He had succeeded in his work, and had made for himself a great name. He was fond of popularity, and especially anxious to be loved by a small circle of friends. These good things he had thoroughly achieved. Immediately after the publication of Vanity Fair he stood high among the literary heroes of his country, and had endeared himself especially to a special knot of friends. His face and figure, his six feet four in height, with his flowing hair, already nearly gray, [Pg 40]and his broken nose, his broad forehead and ample chest, encountered everywhere either love or respect; and his daughters to him were all the world,—the bairns of whom he says, at the end of the White Squall ballad¹⁴³;
I thought, as day was breaking, My little girls were waking, And smiling, and making A prayer at home for me.

Nothing could have been more tender or endearing than his relations with his children. But still there was a skeleton in his cupboard,—or rather two skeletons. His home had been broken up by his wife's malady²³⁴, and his own health was shattered. When he was writing Pendennis, in 1849, he had a severe fever, and then those spasms came, of which four or five years afterwards he wrote to Mr. Reed. His home, as a home should be, was never restored to him,—or his health. Just at that period of life at which a man generally makes a happy exchange in taking his wife's drawing-room in lieu of the smoking-room of his club, and assumes those domestic ways of living which are becoming and pleasant for matured years, that drawing-room and those domestic ways were closed against him. The children were then no more than babies, as far as society was concerned,—things to kiss and play with, and make a home happy if they could only have had their mother with them. I have no doubt there were those who thought that Thackeray was very jolly under his adversity. Jolly he was. It was the manner of the man to be so,—if that continual playfulness which was natural to him, lying over a melancholy which was as continual, be compatible with jollity. He laughed, and ate, and drank, and threw his pearls about with miraculous²³⁵ profusion²³⁶. But I fancy that he was far [Pg 41]from happy. I remember once, when I was young, receiving advice as to the manner in which I had better spend my evenings; I was told that I ought to go home, drink tea, and read good books. It was excellent advice, but I found that the reading of good books in solitude²³⁷ was not an occupation congenial to me. It was so, I take it, with Thackeray. He did not like his lonely drawing-room, and went back to his life among the clubs by no means with contentment.

In 1853, Thackeray having then his own two girls to provide for, added a third to his family, and adopted Amy Crowe, the daughter of an old friend, and sister of the well-known artist now among us. How it came to pass that she wanted a home, or that this special home suited her, it would be unnecessary here to tell even if I knew. But that he did give a home to this young lady, making her in all respects the same as another daughter, should be told of him. He was a man who liked to broaden his back for the support of others, and to make himself easy under such burdens. In 1862, she married a Thackeray cousin, a young officer with the Victoria Cross, Edward Thackeray, and went out to India,—where she died.

In 1854, the year in which The Newcomes came out, Thackeray had broken his close alliance with Punch. In December of that year there appeared from his pen an article in The Quarterly on John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character. It is a rambling²³⁸ discourse on picture-illustration in general, full of interest, but hardly good as a criticism,—a portion of literary work for which he was not specially fitted. In it he tells us how Richard Doyle, the artist, had given up his work for Punch, not having been able, as a Roman Catholic, to endure the skits²³⁹ which, at [Pg 42]that time, were appearing in one number after another against what was then called Papal aggression²⁴⁰. The reviewer,—Thackeray himself,—then tells us of the secession of himself from the board of brethren. "Another member of Mr. Punch's cabinet, the biographer of Jeames, the author of The Snob Papers, resigned his functions, on account of Mr. Punch's assaults upon the present Emperor of the French nation, whose anger Jeames thought it was unpatriotic to arouse." How hard it must be for Cabinets to agree! This man or that is sure to have some pet conviction of his own, and the better the man the stronger the conviction! Then the reviewer went on in favour of the artist of whom he was specially speaking, making a comparison which must at the time have been odious²⁴¹ enough to some of the brethren. "There can be no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's Cabinet John Leech is the right-hand man. Fancy a number of Punch without Leech's pictures! What would you give for it?" Then he breaks out into strong admiration of that one friend,—perhaps with a little disregard as to the feelings of other friends.[3] This Critical Review, if it may properly be so called,—at any rate it is so named as now published,—is to be found in our author's collected works, in the same volume with Catherine. It is there preceded by another, from The Westminster Review, written fourteen years earlier, on [Pg 43]The Genius of Cruikshank. This contains a descriptive catalogue of Cruikshank's works up to that period, and is interesting from the piquant²⁴² style in which it is written. I fancy that these two are the only efforts of the kind which he made,—and in both he dealt with the two great caricaturists of his time, he himself being, in the imaginative part of a caricaturist's work, equal in power to either of them.

We now come to a phase of Thackeray's life in which he achieved a remarkable success, attributable rather to his fame as a writer than to any particular excellence in the art which he then exercised. He took upon himself the functions of a lecturer, being moved to do so by a hope that he might thus provide a sum of money for the future sustenance²⁴³ of his children. No doubt he had been advised to this course, though I do not know from whom specially the advice may have come. Dickens had already considered the subject, but had not yet consented to read in public for money on his own account. John Forster, writing of the year 1846, says of Dickens and the then only thought-of exercise of a new profession; "I continued to oppose, for reasons to be stated in their place, that which he had set his heart upon too strongly to abandon, and which I still can wish he had preferred to surrender with all that seemed to be its enormous gain." And again he says, speaking of a proposition which had been made to Dickens from the town of Bradford; "At first this was entertained, but was abandoned, with some reluctance²⁴⁴, upon the argument that to become publicly a reader must alter, without improving, his position publicly as a writer, and that it was a change to be justified only when the higher calling should have failed of the old success." The meaning of this was that the money to be made [Pg 44]would be sweet, but that the descent to a profession which was considered to be lower than that of literature itself would carry with it something that was bitter. It was as though one who had sat on the woolsack as Lord Chancellor should raise the question whether for the sake of the income attached to it, he might, without disgrace, occupy a seat on a lower bench; as though an architect should consider with himself the propriety²⁴⁵ of making his fortune as a contractor²⁴⁶; or the head of a college lower his dignity, while he increased his finances, by taking pupils. When such discussions arise, money generally carries the day,—and should do so. When convinced that money may be earned without disgrace, we ought to allow money to carry the day. When we talk of sordid²⁴⁷ gain and filthy²⁴⁸ lucre²⁴⁹, we are generally hypocrites. If gains be sordid and lucre filthy, where is the priest, the lawyer, the doctor, or the man of literature, who does not wish for dirty hands? An income, and the power of putting by something for old age, something for those who are to come after, is the wholesome²⁵⁰ and acknowledged desire of all professional men. Thackeray having children, and being gifted with no power of making his money go very far, was anxious enough on the subject. We may say now, that had he confined himself to his pen, he would not have wanted while he lived, but would have left but little behind him. That he was anxious we have seen, by his attempts to subsidise his literary gains by a Government office. I cannot but think that had he undertaken public duties for which he was ill qualified²⁵¹, and received a salary which he could hardly have earned, he would have done less for his fame than by reading to the public. Whether he did that well or ill, he did it well enough for the money. The people who heard him, and [Pg 45]who paid for their seats, were satisfied with their bargain,—as they were also in the case of Dickens; and I venture to say that in becoming publicly a reader, neither did Dickens or Thackeray "alter his position as a writer," and "that it was a change to be justified," though the success of the old calling had in no degree waned. What Thackeray did enabled him to leave a comfortable income for his children, and one earned honestly, with the full approval of the world around him.

Having saturated²⁵² his mind with the literature of Queen Anne's time,—not probably in the first instance as a preparation for Esmond, but in such a way as to induce him to create an Esmond,—he took the authors whom he knew so well as the subject for his first series of lectures. He wrote The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century in 1851, while he must have been at work on Esmond, and first delivered the course at Willis's Rooms in that year. He afterwards went with these through many of our provincial²⁵³ towns, and then carried them to the United States, where he delivered them to large audiences in the winter of 1852 and 1853. Some few words as to the merits of the composition I will endeavour to say in another place. I myself never heard him lecture, and can therefore give no opinion of the performance. That which I have heard from others has been very various. It is, I think, certain that he had none of those wonderful gifts of elocution which made it a pleasure to listen to Dickens, whatever he read or whatever he said; nor had he that power of application by using which his rival taught himself with accuracy the exact effect to be given to every word. The rendering²⁵⁴ of a piece by Dickens was composed as an oratorio²⁵⁵ is composed, and was then studied by heart as music is studied. [Pg 46]And the piece was all given by memory, without any looking at the notes or words. There was nothing of this with Thackeray. But the thing read was in itself of great interest to educated people. The words were given clearly, with sufficient intonation²⁵⁶ for easy understanding, so that they who were willing to hear something from him felt on hearing that they had received full value for their money. At any rate, the lectures were successful. The money was made,—and was kept.

He came from his first trip to America to his new house in Onslow Square, and then published The Newcomes. This, too, was one of his great works, as to which I shall have to speak hereafter. Then, having enjoyed his success in the first attempt to lecture, he prepared a second series. He never essayed the kind of reading which with Dickens became so wonderfully popular. Dickens recited portions from his well-known works. Thackeray wrote his lectures expressly for the purpose. They have since been added to his other literature, but they were prepared as lectures. The second series were The Four Georges. In a lucrative point of view they were even more successful than the first, the sum of money realised in the United States having been considerable. In England they were less popular, even if better attended, the subject chosen having been distasteful to many. There arose the question whether too much freedom had not been taken with an office which, though it be no longer considered to be founded on divine right, is still as sacred as can be anything that is human. If there is to remain among us a sovereign, that sovereign, even though divested²⁵⁷ of political power, should be endowed with all that personal respect can give. If we wish ourselves to be high, we should treat [Pg 47]that which is over us as high. And this should not depend altogether on personal character, though we know,—as we have reason to know,—how much may be added to the firmness of the feeling by personal merit. The respect of which we speak should, in the strongest degree, be a possession of the immediate²⁰¹ occupant, and will naturally become dim,—or perhaps be exaggerated,—in regard to the past, as history or fable²⁵⁸ may tell of them. No one need hesitate to speak his mind of King John, let him be ever so strong a stickler²⁵⁹ for the privileges of majesty²⁶⁰. But there are degrees of distance, and the throne of which we wish to preserve the dignity seems to be assailed²⁶¹ when unmeasured evil is said of one who has sat there within our own memory. There would seem to each of us to be a personal affront were a departed relative delineated with all those faults by which we must own that even our near relatives have been made imperfect. It is a general conviction as to this which so frequently turns the biography of those recently dead into mere¹⁷³ eulogy. The fictitious²⁶² charity which is enjoined²⁶³ by the de mortuis nil²⁶⁴ nisi bonum banishes²⁶⁵ truth. The feeling of which I speak almost leads me at this moment to put down my pen. And, if so much be due to all subjects, is less due to a sovereign?

Considerations such as these diminished, I think, the popularity of Thackeray's second series of lectures; or, rather, not their popularity, but the estimation in which they were held. On this head he defended himself more than once very gallantly²⁶⁶, and had a great deal to say on his side of the question. "Suppose, for example, in America,—in Philadelphia or in New York,—that I had spoken about George IV. in terms of praise and affected reverence²⁶⁷, do you believe they would have hailed his name with cheers, or have heard it with anything of [Pg 48]respect?" And again; "We degrade our own honour and the sovereign's by unduly²⁶⁸ and unjustly praising him; and the mere slaverer and flatterer is one who comes forward, as it were, with flash notes, and pays with false coin his tribute to C?sar. I don't disguise that I feel somehow on my trial here for loyalty²⁶⁹,—for honest English feeling." This was said by Thackeray at a dinner at Edinburgh, in 1857, and shows how the matter rested on his mind. Thackeray's loyalty was no doubt true enough, but was mixed with but little of reverence. He was one who revered²⁷⁰ modesty and innocence²⁷¹ rather than power, against which he had in the bottom of his heart something of republican tendency. His leaning was no doubt of the more manly kind. But in what he said at Edinburgh he hardly hit the nail on the head. No one had suggested that he should have said good things of a king which he did not believe to be true. The question was whether it may not be well sometimes for us to hold our tongues. An American literary man, here in England, would not lecture on the morals of Hamilton, on the manners of General Jackson, on the general amenities²⁷² of President Johnson.

In 1857 Thackeray stood for Oxford²⁷³, in the liberal interest, in opposition²⁷⁴ to Mr. Cardwell. He had been induced to do this by his old friend Charles Neate, who himself twice sat for Oxford, and died now not many months since. He polled 1,017 votes, against 1,070 by Mr. Cardwell; and was thus again saved by his good fortune from attempting to fill a situation in which he would not have shone. There are, no doubt, many to whom a seat in Parliament comes almost as the birthright of a well-born and well-to-do English gentleman. They go there with no more idea of shining than they do when [Pg 49]they are elected to a first-class club;—hardly with more idea of being useful. It is the thing to do, and the House of Commons is the place where a man ought to be—for a certain number of hours. Such men neither succeed nor fail, for nothing is expected of them. From such a one as Thackeray something would have been expected, which would not have been forthcoming. He was too desultory for regular work,—full of thought, but too vague for practical questions. He could not have endured to sit for two or three hours at a time with his hat over his eyes, pretending to listen, as is the duty of a good legislator. He was a man intolerant of tedium, and in the best of his time impatient of slow work. Nor, though his liberal feelings were very strong, were his political convictions definite or accurate. He was a man who mentally drank in much, feeding his fancy hourly with what he saw, what he heard, what he read, and then pouring it all out with an immense power of amplification²⁷⁵. But it would have been impossible for him to study and bring home to himself the various points of a complicated bill with a hundred and fifty clauses. In becoming a man of letters, and taking that branch of letters which fell to him, he obtained the special place that was fitted for him. He was a round peg²⁷⁶ in a round hole. There was no other hole which he would have fitted nearly so well. But he had his moment of political ambition, like others,—and paid a thousand pounds for his attempt.

In 1857 the first number of The Virginians appeared, and the last,—the twenty-fourth,—in October, 1859. This novel, as all my readers are aware, is a continuance of Esmond, and will be spoken of in its proper place. He was then forty-eight years old, very gray, with much of [Pg 50]age upon him, which had come from suffering,—age shown by dislike of activity and by an old man's way of thinking about many things,—speaking as though the world were all behind him instead of before; but still with a stalwart outward bearing, very erect²⁷⁷ in his gait, and a countenance²⁷⁸ peculiarly expressive²⁷⁹ and capable of much dignity. I speak of his personal appearance at this time, because it was then only that I became acquainted with him. In 1859 he undertook the last great work of his life, the editorship of The Cornhill Magazine, a periodical set on foot by Mr. George Smith, of the house of Smith and Elder, with an amount of energy greater than has generally been bestowed²⁸⁰ upon such enterprises. It will be well remembered still how much The Cornhill was talked about and thought of before it first appeared, and how much of that thinking and talking was due to the fact that Mr. Thackeray was to edit it. Macmillan's, I think, was the first of the shilling magazines, having preceded The Cornhill by a month, and it would ill become me, who have been a humble²⁸¹ servant to each of them, to give to either any preference. But it must be acknowledged that a great deal was expected from The Cornhill, and I think it will be confessed that it was the general opinion that a great deal was given by it. Thackeray had become big enough to give a special éclat to any literary exploit to which he attached himself. Since the days of The Constitutional he had fought his way up the ladder and knew how to take his stand there with an assurance of success. When it became known to the world of readers that a new magazine was to appear under Thackeray's editorship, the world of readers was quite sure that there would be a large sale. Of the first number over one hundred and ten [Pg 51]thousand were sold, and of the second and third over one hundred thousand. It is in the nature of such things that the sale should fall off when the novelty is over. People believe that a new delight has come, a new joy for ever, and then find that the joy is not quite so perfect or enduring as they had expected. But the commencement of such enterprises may be taken as a measure of what will follow. The magazine, either by Thackeray's name or by its intrinsic merits,—probably by both,—achieved a great success. My acquaintance with him grew from my having been one of his staff from the first.

About two months before the opening day I wrote to him suggesting that he should accept from me a series of four short stories on which I was engaged. I got back a long letter in which he said nothing about my short stories, but asking whether I could go to work at once and let him have a long novel, so that it might begin with the first number. At the same time I heard from the publisher, who suggested some interesting little details as to honorarium²⁸². The little details were very interesting, but absolutely no time was allowed to me. It was required that the first portion of my book should be in the printer's hands within a month. Now it was my theory,—and ever since this occurrence has been my practice,—to see the end of my own work before the public should see the commencement.[4] If I did this thing I must not only abandon my theory, but instantly contrive²⁸³ a story, or [Pg 52]begin to write it before it was contrived²⁸⁴. That was what I did, urged by the interesting nature of the details. A novelist cannot always at the spur of the moment make his plot and create his characters who shall, with an arranged sequence of events, live with a certain degree of eventful decorum, through that portion of their lives which is to be portrayed. I hesitated, but allowed myself to be allured²⁸⁵ to what I felt to be wrong, much dreading the event. How seldom is it that theories stand the wear and tear of practice! I will not say that the story which came was good, but it was received with greater favour than any I had written before or have written since. I think that almost anything would have been then accepted coming under Thackeray's editorship.

I was astonished that work should be required in such haste, knowing that much preparation had been made, and that the service of almost any English novelist might have been obtained if asked for in due time. It was my readiness that was needed, rather than any other gift! The riddle²⁸⁶ was read to me after a time. Thackeray had himself intended to begin with one of his own great novels, but had put it off till it was too late. Lovel the Widower was commenced at the same time with my own story, but Lovel the Widower was not substantial enough to appear as the principal joint²⁸⁷ at the banquet. Though your guests will undoubtedly dine off the little delicacies²⁸⁸ you provide for them, there must be a heavy saddle of mutton among the viands²⁸⁹ prepared. I was the saddle of mutton, Thackeray having omitted to get his joint down to the fire in time enough. My fitness lay in my capacity for quick roasting.

It may be interesting to give a list of the contributors to the first number. My novel called Framley Parsonage [Pg 53]came first. At this banquet the saddle of mutton was served before the delicacies. Then there was a paper by Sir John Bowring on The Chinese and Outer Barbarians²⁹⁰. The commencing number of Lovel the Widower followed. George Lewes came next with his first chapters of Studies in Animal Life. Then there was Father Prout's Inauguration²⁹¹ Ode, dedicated²⁹² to the author of Vanity Fair,—which should have led the way. I need hardly say that Father Prout was the Rev. F. Mahony. Then followed Our Volunteers, by Sir John Burgoyne; A Man of Letters of the Last Generation, by Thornton Hunt; The Search for Sir John Franklin, from a private journal of an officer of the Fox, now Sir Allen Young; and The First Morning of 1860, by Mrs. Archer²⁹³ Clive. The number was concluded by the first of those Roundabout Papers by Thackeray himself, which became so delightful²⁹⁴ a portion of the literature of The Cornhill Magazine.

It would be out of my power, and hardly interesting, to give an entire list of those who wrote for The Cornhill under Thackeray's editorial direction. But I may name a few, to show how strong was the support which he received. Those who contributed to the first number I have named. Among those who followed were Alfred Tennyson, Jacob Omnium, Lord Houghton, William Russell, Mrs. Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Browning, Robert Bell, George Augustus Sala, Mrs. Gaskell, James Hinton, Mary Howitt, John Kaye, Charles Lever, Frederick Locker²⁹⁵, Laurence Oliphant, John Ruskin, Fitzjames Stephen, T. A. Trollope, Henry Thompson, Herman Merivale, Adelaide Proctor, Matthew Arnold, the present Lord Lytton, and Miss Thackeray, now Mrs. Ritchie. Thackeray continued the editorship for two years and four months, namely, up to April, 1862; but, as all readers will remember, he continued to write for it till he [Pg 54]died, the day before Christmas Day, in 1863. His last contribution was, I think, a paper written for and published in the November number, called, "Strange to say on Club Paper," in which he vindicated²⁹⁶ Lord Clyde from the accusation²⁹⁷ of having taken the club stationery²⁹⁸ home with him. It was not a great subject, for no one could or did believe that the Field-Marshal had been guilty of any meanness; but the handling of it has made it interesting, and his indignation has made it beautiful.

The magazine was a great success, but justice compels me to say that Thackeray was not a good editor. As he would have been an indifferent civil servant, an indifferent member of Parliament, so was he perfunctory as an editor. It has sometimes been thought well to select a popular literary man as an editor; first, because his name will attract, and then with an idea that he who can write well himself will be a competent judge of the writings of others. The first may sell a magazine, but will hardly make it good; and the second will not avail much, unless the editor so situated²⁹⁹ be patient enough to read what is sent to him. Of a magazine editor it is required that he should be patient, scrupulous, judicious³⁰⁰, but above all things hard-hearted. I think it may be doubted whether Thackeray did bring himself to read the basketfuls of manuscripts with which he was deluged³⁰¹, but he probably did, sooner or later, read the touching little private notes by which they were accompanied,—the heartrending appeals, in which he was told that if this or the other little article could be accepted and paid for, a starving family might be saved from starvation for a month. He tells us how he felt on receiving such letters in one of his Roundabout Papers, which he calls "Thorns in the cushion." "How am I to know," he says—"though to be sure I [Pg 55]begin to know now,—as I take the letters off the tray, which of those envelopes contains a real bona fide letter, and which a thorn? One of the best invitations this year I mistook for a thorn letter, and kept it without opening." Then he gives the sample of a thorn letter. It is from a governess with a poem, and with a prayer for insertion and payment. "We have known better days, sir. I have a sick and widowed mother to maintain, and little brothers and sisters who look to me." He could not stand this, and the money would be sent, out of his own pocket, though the poem might be—postponed, till happily it should be lost.

From such material a good editor could not be made. Nor, in truth, do I think that he did much of the editorial work. I had once made an arrangement, not with Thackeray, but with the proprietors, as to some little story. The story was sent back to me by Thackeray—rejected. Virginibus puerisque! That was the gist¹⁷¹ of his objection. There was a project in a gentleman's mind,—as told in my story,—to run away with a married woman! Thackeray's letter was very kind, very regretful,—full of apology for such treatment to such a contributor. But—Virginibus puerisque! I was quite sure that Thackeray had not taken the trouble to read the story himself. Some moral deputy had read it, and disapproving³⁰², no doubt properly, of the little project to which I have alluded, had incited³⁰³ the editor to use his authority. That Thackeray had suffered when he wrote it was easy to see, fearing that he was giving pain to one he would fain have pleased. I wrote him a long letter in return, as full of drollery as I knew how to make it. In four or five days there came a reply in the same spirit,—boiling over with fun. He had kept my letter by him, not [Pg 56]daring to open it,—as he says that he did with that eligible invitation. At last he had given it to one of his girls to examine,—to see whether the thorn would be too sharp, whether I had turned upon him with reproaches. A man so susceptible³⁰⁴, so prone to work by fits and starts, so unmethodical, could not have been a good editor.

In 1862 he went into the new house which he had built for himself at Palace Green. I remember well, while this was still being built, how his friends used to discuss his imprudence in building it. Though he had done well with himself, and had made and was making a large income, was he entitled to live in a house the rent of which could not be counted at less than from five hundred to six hundred pounds a year? Before he had been there two years, he solved the question by dying,—when the house was sold for two thousand pounds more than it had cost. He himself, in speaking of his project, was wont to declare that he was laying out his money in the best way he could for the interest of his children;—and it turned out that he was right.

In 1863 he died in the house which he had built, and at the period of his death was writing a new novel in numbers, called Denis Duval. In The Cornhill, The Adventures of Philip had appeared. This new enterprise was destined³⁰⁵ for commencement on 1st January, 1864, and, though the writer was gone, it kept its promise, as far as it went. Three numbers, and what might probably have been intended for half of a fourth, appeared. It may be seen, therefore, that he by no means held to my theory, that the author should see the end of his work before the public sees the commencement. But neither did Dickens or Mrs. Gaskell, both of whom died with stories not completed, which, when they died, were in the [Pg 57]course of publication. All the evidence goes against the necessity of such precaution. Nevertheless, were I giving advice to a tiro in novel writing, I should recommend it.

With the last chapter of Denis Duval was published in the magazine a set of notes on the book, taken for the most part from Thackeray's own papers, and showing how much collateral³⁰⁶ work he had given to the fabrication of his novel. No doubt in preparing other tales, especially Esmond, a very large amount of such collateral labour was found necessary. He was a man who did very much of such work, delighting to deal in little historical incidents. They will be found in almost everything that he did, and I do not know that he was ever accused of gross mistakes. But I doubt whether on that account he should be called a laborious³⁰⁷ man. He could go down to Winchelsea, when writing about the little town, to see in which way the streets lay, and to provide himself with what we call local colouring. He could jot¹⁶³ down the suggestions, as they came to his mind, of his future story. There was an irregularity in such work which was to his taste. His very notes would be delightful to read, partaking of the nature of pearls when prepared only for his own use. But he could not bring himself to sit at his desk and do an allotted³⁰⁸ task day after day. He accomplished what must be considered as quite a sufficient life's work. He had about twenty-five years for the purpose, and that which he has left is an ample produce for the time. Nevertheless he was a man of fits and starts, who, not having been in his early years drilled to method, never achieved it in his career.

He died on the day before Christmas Day, as has been said above, very suddenly, in his bed, early in the morning, in the fifty-third year of his life. To those who [Pg 58]saw him about in the world there seemed to be no reason why he should not continue his career for the next twenty years. But those who knew him were so well aware of his constant sufferings, that, though they expected no sudden catastrophe, they were hardly surprised when it came. His death was probably caused by those spasms of which he had complained ten years before, in his letter to Mr. Reed. On the last day but one of the year, a crowd of sorrowing friends stood over his grave as he was laid to rest in Kensal Green; and, as quickly afterwards as it could be executed, a bust³⁰⁹ to his memory was put up in Westminster Abbey. It is a fine work of art, by Marochetti; but, as a likeness³¹⁰, is, I think, less effective than that which was modelled, and then given to the Garrick Club, by Durham, and has lately been put into marble, and now stands in the upper vestibule of the club. Neither of them, in my opinion, give so accurate an idea of the man as a statuette in bronze, by Boehm, of which two or three copies were made. One of them is in my possession. It has been alleged³¹¹, in reference to this, that there is something of a caricature in the lengthiness³¹² of the figure, in the two hands thrust into the trousers pockets, and in the protrusion³¹³ of the chin. But this feeling has originated in the general idea that any face, or any figure, not made by the artist more beautiful or more graceful than the original is an injustice. The face must be smoother, the pose of the body must be more dignified³¹⁴, the proportions more perfect, than in the person represented, or satisfaction is not felt. Mr. Boehm has certainly not flattered, but, as far as my eye can judge, he has given the figure of the man exactly as he used to stand before us. I have a portrait of him in crayon, by Samuel Lawrence, as like, but hardly as natural.

[Pg 59]

A little before his death Thackeray told me that he had then succeeded in replacing the fortune which he had lost as a young man. Ho had, in fact, done better, for he left an income of seven hundred and fifty pounds behind him.

It has been said of Thackeray that he was a cynic. This has been said so generally, that the charge against him has become proverbial. This, stated barely, leaves one of two impressions on the mind, or perhaps the two together,—that this cynicism was natural to his character and came out in his life, or that it is the characteristic of his writings. Of the nature of his writings generally, I will speak in the last chapter of this little book. As to his personal character as a cynic, I must find room to quote the following first stanzas³¹⁵ of the little poem which appeared to his memory in Punch, from the pen of Shirley Brooks;
He was a cynic! By his life all wrought³¹⁶ Of generous acts, mild words, and gentle ways; His heart wide open to all kindly³¹⁷ thought, His hand so quick to give, his tongue to praise!
He was a cynic! You might read it writ In that broad brow, crowned with its silver hair; In those blue eyes, with childlike candour lit, In that sweet smile his lips were wont to wear!
He was a cynic! By the love that clung About him from his children, friends, and kin²²; By the sharp pain light pen and gossip tongue Wrought in him, chafing³¹⁸ the soft heart within!

The spirit and nature of the man have been caught here with absolute truth. A public man should of course be judged from his public work. If he wrote as a cynic,—a point which I will not discuss here,—it may be [Pg 60]fair that he who is to be known as a writer should be so called. But, as a man, I protest that it would be hard to find an individual farther removed from the character. Over and outside his fancy, which was the gift which made him so remarkable,—a certain feminine softness was the most remarkable trait about him. To give some immediate pleasure was the great delight of his life,—a sovereign to a schoolboy, gloves to a girl, a dinner to a man, a compliment to a woman. His charity was overflowing³¹⁹. His generosity³²⁰ excessive. I heard once a story of woe³²¹ from a man who was the dear friend of both of us. The gentleman wanted a large sum of money instantly,—something under two thousand pounds,—had no natural friends who could provide it, but must go utterly³²² to the wall without it. Pondering over this sad condition of things just revealed to me, I met Thackeray between the two mounted heroes at the Horse Guards, and told him the story. "Do you mean to say that I am to find two thousand pounds?" he said, angrily, with some expletives. I explained that I had not even suggested the doing of anything,—only that we might discuss the matter. Then there came over his face a peculiar⁴⁶ smile, and a wink³²³ in his eye, and he whispered his suggestion, as though half ashamed of his meanness. "I'll go half," he said, "if anybody will do the rest." And he did go half, at a day or two's notice, though the gentleman was no more than simply a friend. I am glad to be able to add that the money was quickly repaid. I could tell various stories of the same kind, only that I lack space, and that they, if simply added one to the other, would lack interest.

He was no cynic, but he was a satirist, and could now and then be a satirist in conversation, hitting very hard when he did hit. When he was in America he met [Pg 61]at dinner a literary gentleman of high character, middle-aged³²⁴, and most dignified deportment. The gentleman was one whose character and acquirements stood very high,—deservedly so,—but who, in society, had that air of wrapping his toga around him, which adds, or is supposed to add, many cubits to a man's height. But he had a broken nose. At dinner he talked much of the tender passion, and did so in a manner which stirred up Thackeray's feeling of the ridiculous. "What has the world come to," said Thackeray out loud to the table, "when two broken-nosed old fogies like you and me sit talking about love to each other!" The gentleman was astounded³²⁵, and could only sit wrapping his toga in silent dismay for the rest of the evening. Thackeray then, as at other similar times, had no idea of giving pain, but when he saw a foible he put his foot upon it, and tried to stamp it out.

Such is my idea of the man whom many call a cynic, but whom I regard as one of the most soft-hearted of human beings, sweet as Charity itself, who went about the world dropping pearls, doing good, and never wilfully³²⁶ inflicting³²⁷ a wound.
FOOTNOTES:

[1] The report that he had lost all his money and was going to live by painting in Paris, was still prevalent in London in 1836. Macready, on the 27th April of that year, says in his Diary; "At Garrick Club, where I dined and saw the papers. Met Thackeray, who has spent all his fortune, and is now about to settle in Paris, I believe as an artist." But at this time he was, in truth, turning to literature as a profession.

[2] The article was written by Abraham Hayward, who is still with us, and was no doubt instigated³²⁸ by a desire to assist Thackeray in his struggle upwards³²⁹, in which it succeeded.

[3] For a week there existed at the Punch office a grudge³³⁰ against Thackeray in reference to this awkward question: "What would you give for your Punch without John Leech?" Then he asked the confraternity to dinner,—more Thackerayano,—and the confraternity came. Who can doubt but they were very jolly over the little blunder? For years afterwards Thackeray was a guest at the well-known Punch dinner, though he was no longer one of the contributors.

[4] I had begun an Irish story and half finished it, which would reach just the required length. Would that do, I asked. I was civilly told that my Irish story would no doubt be charming, but was not quite the thing that was wanted. Could I not begin a new one,—English,—and if possible about clergymen? The details were so interesting that had a couple of archbishops been demanded, I should have produced them.

1 writ   

n.命令状，书面命令

参考例句：

• This is a copy of a writ I received this morning.这是今早我收到的书面命令副本。
• You shouldn't treat the newspapers as if they were Holy Writ. 你不应该把报上说的话奉若神明。

2 conversant   

adj.亲近的，有交情的，熟悉的

参考例句：

• Mr.Taylor is thoroughly conversant with modern music.泰勒先生对现代音乐很精通。
• We become the most conversant stranger in the world.我们变成了世界上最熟悉的陌生人。

3 anecdotes   

n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• amusing anecdotes about his brief career as an actor 关于他短暂演员生涯的趣闻逸事
• He related several anecdotes about his first years as a congressman. 他讲述自己初任议员那几年的几则轶事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 memoir   

n.[pl.]回忆录，自传；记事录

参考例句：

• He has just published a memoir in honour of his captain.他刚刚出了一本传记来纪念他的队长。
• In her memoir,the actress wrote about the bittersweet memories of her first love.在那个女演员的自传中，她写到了自己苦乐掺半的初恋。

5 ply   

v.(搬运工等)等候顾客，弯曲

参考例句：

• Taxis licensed to ply for hire at the railway station.许可计程车在火车站候客。
• Ferryboats ply across the English Channel.渡船定期往返于英吉利海峡。

6 purport   

n.意义，要旨，大要；v.意味著，做为...要旨，要领是...

参考例句：

• Many theories purport to explain growth in terms of a single cause.许多理论都标榜以单一的原因解释生长。
• Her letter may purport her forthcoming arrival.她的来信可能意味着她快要到了。

7 purports   

v.声称是…，（装得）像是…的样子( purport的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• She purports to represent the whole group. 她自称代表整个团体。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The document purports to be official but is really private. 那份文件据称是官方的，但实际上是私人的。 来自辞典例句

8 fulsome   

adj.可恶的，虚伪的，过分恭维的

参考例句：

• They tried to please him with fulsome compliments and extravagant gifts.他们想用溢美之词和奢华的礼品来取悦他。
• Newspapers have been fulsome in their praise of the former president.报纸上对前总统都是些溢美之词。

9 eulogy   

n.颂词；颂扬

参考例句：

• He needs no eulogy from me or from any other man. 他不需要我或者任何一个人来称颂。
• Mr.Garth gave a long eulogy about their achievements in the research.加思先生对他们的研究成果大大地颂扬了一番。

10 inquiry   

n.打听，询问，调查，查问

参考例句：

• Many parents have been pressing for an inquiry into the problem.许多家长迫切要求调查这个问题。
• The field of inquiry has narrowed down to five persons.调查的范围已经缩小到只剩5个人了。

11 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

• The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
• He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。

12 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

13 limned   

v.画( limn的过去式和过去分词 )；勾画；描写；描述

参考例句：

• The report limned a desperate situation. 那报道描述出一个严重的情况。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• He was as crisp as a new dollar bill-as clean, sharp, firmly limned. 他就象一张崭新的钞票一样利落--一样干净，鲜明，一丝不苟。 来自辞典例句

14 wont   

adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯

参考例句：

• He was wont to say that children are lazy.他常常说小孩子们懒惰。
• It is his wont to get up early.早起是他的习惯。

15 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

16 prospered   

成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The organization certainly prospered under his stewardship. 不可否认，这个组织在他的管理下兴旺了起来。
• Mr. Black prospered from his wise investments. 布莱克先生由于巧妙的投资赚了不少钱。

17 mingled   

混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系]

参考例句：

• The sounds of laughter and singing mingled in the evening air. 笑声和歌声交织在夜空中。
• The man and the woman mingled as everyone started to relax. 当大家开始放松的时候，这一男一女就开始交往了。

18 aspirant   

n.热望者；adj.渴望的

参考例句：

• Any aspirant to the presidency here must be seriously rich.要想当这儿的主席一定要家财万贯。
• He is among the few aspirants with administrative experience.他是为数不多的几个志向远大而且有管理经验的人之一。

19 melancholy   

n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的

参考例句：

• All at once he fell into a state of profound melancholy.他立即陷入无尽的忧思之中。
• He felt melancholy after he failed the exam.这次考试没通过，他感到很郁闷。

20 intercourse   

n.性交；交流，交往，交际

参考例句：

• The magazine becomes a cultural medium of intercourse between the two peoples.该杂志成为两民族间文化交流的媒介。
• There was close intercourse between them.他们过往很密。

21 rev   

v.发动机旋转，加快速度

参考例句：

• It's his job to rev up the audience before the show starts.他要负责在表演开始前鼓动观众的热情。
• Don't rev the engine so hard.别让发动机转得太快。

22 kin   

n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的

参考例句：

• He comes of good kin.他出身好。
• She has gone to live with her husband's kin.她住到丈夫的亲戚家里去了。

23 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

24 bias   

n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见

参考例句：

• They are accusing the teacher of political bias in his marking.他们在指控那名教师打分数有政治偏见。
• He had a bias toward the plan.他对这项计划有偏见。

25 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

26 deference   

n.尊重，顺从；敬意

参考例句：

• Do you treat your parents and teachers with deference?你对父母师长尊敬吗？
• The major defect of their work was deference to authority.他们的主要缺陷是趋从权威。

27 discrepancy   

n.不同；不符；差异；矛盾

参考例句：

• The discrepancy in their ages seemed not to matter.他们之间年龄的差异似乎没有多大关系。
• There was a discrepancy in the two reports of the accident.关于那次事故的两则报道有不一致之处。

28 austere   

adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的

参考例句：

• His way of life is rather austere.他的生活方式相当简朴。
• The room was furnished in austere style.这间屋子的陈设都很简单朴素。

29 intervals   

n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息

参考例句：

• The forecast said there would be sunny intervals and showers. 预报间晴，有阵雨。
• Meetings take place at fortnightly intervals. 每两周开一次会。

30 interval   

n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息

参考例句：

• The interval between the two trees measures 40 feet.这两棵树的间隔是40英尺。
• There was a long interval before he anwsered the telephone.隔了好久他才回了电话。

31 attain   

vt.达到，获得，完成

参考例句：

• I used the scientific method to attain this end. 我用科学的方法来达到这一目的。
• His painstaking to attain his goal in life is praiseworthy. 他为实现人生目标所下的苦功是值得称赞的。

32 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

33 parodies   

n.拙劣的模仿( parody的名词复数 )；恶搞；滑稽的模仿诗文；表面上模仿得笨拙但充满了机智用来嘲弄别人作品的作品v.滑稽地模仿，拙劣地模仿( parody的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Later, however, they delight in parodies of nursery rhymes. 可要不了多久，他们便乐于对它进行窜改。 来自英汉非文学 - 民俗
• Most parodies are little more than literary teases. 大多数讽刺的模仿诗文只能算上是文学上的揶揄。 来自辞典例句

34 parody   

n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文

参考例句：

• The parody was just a form of teasing.那个拙劣的模仿只是一种揶揄。
• North Korea looks like a grotesque parody of Mao's centrally controlled China,precisely the sort of system that Beijing has left behind.朝鲜看上去像是毛时代中央集权的中国的怪诞模仿，其体制恰恰是北京方面已经抛弃的。

35 witty   

adj.机智的，风趣的

参考例句：

• Her witty remarks added a little salt to the conversation.她的妙语使谈话增添了一些风趣。
• He scored a bull's-eye in their argument with that witty retort.在他们的辩论中他那一句机智的反驳击中了要害。

36 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

37 slaughter   

n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀

参考例句：

• I couldn't stand to watch them slaughter the cattle.我不忍看他们宰牛。
• Wholesale slaughter was carried out in the name of progress.大规模的屠杀在维护进步的名义下进行。

38 softened   

（使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰

参考例句：

• His smile softened slightly. 他的微笑稍柔和了些。
• The ice cream softened and began to melt. 冰淇淋开始变软并开始融化。

39 snob   

n.势利小人，自以为高雅、有学问的人

参考例句：

• Going to a private school had made her a snob.上私立学校后，她变得很势利。
• If you think that way, you are a snob already.如果你那样想的话，你已经是势利小人了。

40 burlesque   

v.嘲弄，戏仿；n.嘲弄，取笑，滑稽模仿

参考例句：

• Our comic play was a burlesque of a Shakespearean tragedy.我们的喜剧是对莎士比亚一出悲剧的讽刺性模仿。
• He shouldn't burlesque the elder.他不应模仿那长者。

41 chancellor   

n.(英)大臣；法官；(德、奥)总理；大学校长

参考例句：

• They submitted their reports to the Chancellor yesterday.他们昨天向财政大臣递交了报告。
• He was regarded as the most successful Chancellor of modern times.他被认为是现代最成功的财政大臣。

42 mighty   

adj.强有力的；巨大的

参考例句：

• A mighty force was about to break loose.一股巨大的力量即将迸发而出。
• The mighty iceberg came into view.巨大的冰山出现在眼前。

43 prostrate   

v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的

参考例句：

• She was prostrate on the floor.她俯卧在地板上。
• The Yankees had the South prostrate and they intended to keep It'so.北方佬已经使南方屈服了,他们还打算继续下去。

44 barter   

n.物物交换，以货易货，实物交易

参考例句：

• Chickens,goats and rabbits were offered for barter at the bazaar.在集市上，鸡、山羊和兔子被摆出来作物物交换之用。
• They have arranged food imports on a barter basis.他们以易货贸易的方式安排食品进口。

45 excellence   

n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德

参考例句：

• His art has reached a high degree of excellence.他的艺术已达到炉火纯青的地步。
• My performance is far below excellence.我的表演离优秀还差得远呢。

46 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

47 snobbishness   

势利； 势利眼

参考例句：

• We disdain a man for his snobbishness. 我们鄙夷势利小人。
• Maybe you have social faults such as snobbishness, talkativeness, and, etc. which drive away new acquaintances. 也许你有社交方面的缺点，诸如势利、饶舌、出语粗俗等，使你的新相识退避三舍。

48 appreciation   

n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨

参考例句：

• I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to you all.我想对你们所有人表达我的感激和谢意。
• I'll be sending them a donation in appreciation of their help.我将送给他们一笔捐款以感谢他们的帮助。

49 morbid   

adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的

参考例句：

• Some people have a morbid fascination with crime.一些人对犯罪有一种病态的痴迷。
• It's morbid to dwell on cemeteries and such like.不厌其烦地谈论墓地以及诸如此类的事是一种病态。

50 participation   

n.参与，参加，分享

参考例句：

• Some of the magic tricks called for audience participation.有些魔术要求有观众的参与。
• The scheme aims to encourage increased participation in sporting activities.这个方案旨在鼓励大众更多地参与体育活动。

51 professed   

公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的

参考例句：

• These, at least, were their professed reasons for pulling out of the deal. 至少这些是他们自称退出这宗交易的理由。
• Her manner professed a gaiety that she did not feel. 她的神态显出一种她并未实际感受到的快乐。

52 dedication   

n.奉献，献身，致力，题献，献辞

参考例句：

• We admire her courage,compassion and dedication.我们钦佩她的勇气、爱心和奉献精神。
• Her dedication to her work was admirable.她对工作的奉献精神可钦可佩。

53 virtue   

n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力

参考例句：

• He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
• You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。

54 specially   

adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地

参考例句：

• They are specially packaged so that they stack easily.它们经过特别包装以便于堆放。
• The machine was designed specially for demolishing old buildings.这种机器是专为拆毁旧楼房而设计的。

55 thoroughly   

adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地

参考例句：

• The soil must be thoroughly turned over before planting.一定要先把土地深翻一遍再下种。
• The soldiers have been thoroughly instructed in the care of their weapons.士兵们都系统地接受过保护武器的训练。

56 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

57 illustrate   

v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图

参考例句：

• The company's bank statements illustrate its success.这家公司的银行报表说明了它的成功。
• This diagram will illustrate what I mean.这个图表可说明我的意思。

58 sketched   

v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• The historical article sketched the major events of the decade. 这篇有关历史的文章概述了这十年中的重大事件。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He sketched the situation in a few vivid words. 他用几句生动的语言简述了局势。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

59 sketch   

n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述

参考例句：

• My sister often goes into the country to sketch. 我姐姐常到乡间去写生。
• I will send you a slight sketch of the house.我将给你寄去房屋的草图。

60 affront   

n./v.侮辱，触怒

参考例句：

• Your behaviour is an affront to public decency.你的行为有伤风化。
• This remark caused affront to many people.这句话得罪了不少人。

61 despatch   

n./v.(dispatch)派遣；发送；n.急件；新闻报道

参考例句：

• The despatch of the task force is purely a contingency measure.派出特遣部队纯粹是应急之举。
• He rushed the despatch through to headquarters.他把急件赶送到总部。

62 graceful   

adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的

参考例句：

• His movements on the parallel bars were very graceful.他的双杠动作可帅了!
• The ballet dancer is so graceful.芭蕾舞演员的姿态是如此的优美。

63 obedience   

n.服从，顺从

参考例句：

• Society has a right to expect obedience of the law.社会有权要求人人遵守法律。
• Soldiers act in obedience to the orders of their superior officers.士兵们遵照上级军官的命令行动。

64 portrayed   

v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画

参考例句：

• Throughout the trial, he portrayed himself as the victim. 在审讯过程中，他始终把自己说成是受害者。
• The author portrayed his father as a vicious drunkard. 作者把他父亲描绘成一个可恶的酒鬼。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

65 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

66 tempting   

a.诱人的, 吸引人的

参考例句：

• It is tempting to idealize the past. 人都爱把过去的日子说得那么美好。
• It was a tempting offer. 这是个诱人的提议。

67 widower   

n.鳏夫

参考例句：

• George was a widower with six young children.乔治是个带著六个小孩子的鳏夫。
• Having been a widower for many years,he finally decided to marry again.丧偶多年后，他终于决定二婚了。

68 primrose   

n.樱草，最佳部分，

参考例句：

• She is in the primrose of her life.她正处在她一生的最盛期。
• The primrose is set off by its nest of green.一窝绿叶衬托着一朵樱草花。

69 sleek   

adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢

参考例句：

• Women preferred sleek,shiny hair with little decoration.女士们更喜欢略加修饰的光滑闪亮型秀发。
• The horse's coat was sleek and glossy.这匹马全身润泽有光。

70 exterior   

adj.外部的，外在的；表面的

参考例句：

• The seed has a hard exterior covering.这种子外壳很硬。
• We are painting the exterior wall of the house.我们正在给房子的外墙涂漆。

71 eligible   

adj.有条件被选中的；(尤指婚姻等)合适(意)的

参考例句：

• He is an eligible young man.他是一个合格的年轻人。
• Helen married an eligible bachelor.海伦嫁给了一个中意的单身汉。

72 wheedling   

v.骗取（某物），哄骗（某人干某事）( wheedle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He wheedled his way into the building, ie got into it by wheedling. 他靠花言巧语混进了那所楼房。 来自辞典例句
• An honorable32 weepie uses none of these33) wheedling34) devices. 一部体面的伤感电影用不着这些花招。 来自互联网

73 narrating   

v.故事( narrate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• She entertained them by narrating her adventures in Africa. 她讲述她在非洲的历险来使他们开心。
• [Mike Narrating] Worm and I fall into our old rhythm like Clyde Frazier and Pearl Monroe. [迈克叙述] 虫子和我配合得象以前一样默契我们两好象是克莱德。弗瑞泽和佩尔。门罗。 来自电影对白

74 drollery   

n.开玩笑，说笑话；滑稽可笑的图画（或故事、小戏等）

参考例句：

• We all enjoyed his drollery. 我们都欣赏他的幽默。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• "It is a bit of quiet, unassuming drollery which warms like good wine. "这是一段既不哗众取宠又不矫揉造作的滑稽表演，像美酒一样温馨。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

75 folly   

n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话

参考例句：

• Learn wisdom by the folly of others.从别人的愚蠢行动中学到智慧。
• Events proved the folly of such calculations.事情的进展证明了这种估计是愚蠢的。

76 narration   

n.讲述，叙述；故事；记叙体

参考例句：

• The richness of his novel comes from his narration of it.他小说的丰富多采得益于他的叙述。
• Narration should become a basic approach to preschool education.叙事应是幼儿教育的基本途径。

77 enchant   

vt.使陶醉，使入迷；使着魔，用妖术迷惑

参考例句：

• The spectacle of the aurora may appear to dazzle and enchant the observer's eyes.极光的壮丽景色的出现,会使观察者为之眩目和迷惑。
• Her paintings possess the power to enchant one if one is fortunate enough to see her work and hear her music.如果你有幸能欣赏她的作品，“聆听”她的音乐，她的作品将深深地迷住你。

78 diffuse   

v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的

参考例句：

• Direct light is better for reading than diffuse light.直射光比漫射光更有利于阅读。
• His talk was so diffuse that I missed his point.他的谈话漫无边际，我抓不住他的要点。

79 sonnets   

n.十四行诗( sonnet的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Keats' reputation as a great poet rests largely upon the odes and the later sonnets. 作为一个伟大的诗人，济慈的声誉大部分建立在他写的长诗和后期的十四行诗上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He referred to the manuscript circulation of the sonnets. 他谈到了十四行诗手稿的流行情况。 来自辞典例句

80 wilt   

v.(使)植物凋谢或枯萎；(指人)疲倦，衰弱

参考例句：

• Golden roses do not wilt and will never need to be watered.金色的玫瑰不枯萎绝也不需要浇水。
• Several sleepless nights made him wilt.数个不眠之夜使他憔悴。

81 maturity   

n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期

参考例句：

• These plants ought to reach maturity after five years.这些植物五年后就该长成了。
• This is the period at which the body attains maturity.这是身体发育成熟的时期。

82 precociously   

Precociously

参考例句：

• Her child behaves precociously. 她孩子显得有点早熟。 来自互联网
• It'seems generally true, too, that the aptitude for abstract thinking is developing precociously. 通常，似乎抽象思考的能力也过早地发展起来了。 来自互联网

83 precocious   

adj.早熟的；较早显出的

参考例句：

• They become precocious experts in tragedy.他们成了一批思想早熟、善写悲剧的能手。
• Margaret was always a precocious child.玛格丽特一直是个早熟的孩子。

84 allurements   

n.诱惑( allurement的名词复数 )；吸引；诱惑物；有诱惑力的事物

参考例句：

• The big cities are full of allurements on which to spend money. 大城市充满形形色色诱人花钱的事物。 来自《简明英汉词典》

85 aspirants   

n.有志向或渴望获得…的人( aspirant的名词复数 )v.渴望的，有抱负的，追求名誉或地位的( aspirant的第三人称单数 )；有志向或渴望获得…的人

参考例句：

• aspirants to the title of world champion 有志夺取世界冠军的人
• The examination was so rigid that nearly all aspirants were ruled out. 考试很严，几乎所有的考生都被淘汰了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

86 apprenticeship   

n.学徒身份；学徒期

参考例句：

• She was in the second year of her apprenticeship as a carpenter. 她当木工学徒已是第二年了。
• He served his apprenticeship with Bob. 他跟鲍勃当学徒。

87 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

88 bishop   

n.主教，（国际象棋）象

参考例句：

• He was a bishop who was held in reverence by all.他是一位被大家都尊敬的主教。
• Two years after his death the bishop was canonised.主教逝世两年后被正式封为圣者。

89 cultivation   

n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成

参考例句：

• The cultivation in good taste is our main objective.培养高雅情趣是我们的主要目标。
• The land is not fertile enough to repay cultivation.这块土地不够肥沃，不值得耕种。

90 attained   

（通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况）

参考例句：

• She has attained the degree of Master of Arts. 她已获得文学硕士学位。
• Lu Hsun attained a high position in the republic of letters. 鲁迅在文坛上获得崇高的地位。

91 livelihood   

n.生计，谋生之道

参考例句：

• Appropriate arrangements will be made for their work and livelihood.他们的工作和生活会得到妥善安排。
• My father gained a bare livelihood of family by his own hands.父亲靠自己的双手勉强维持家计。

92 invincible   

adj.不可征服的，难以制服的

参考例句：

• This football team was once reputed to be invincible.这支足球队曾被誉为无敌的劲旅。
• The workers are invincible as long as they hold together.只要工人团结一致，他们就是不可战胜的。

93 courteous   

adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的

参考例句：

• Although she often disagreed with me,she was always courteous.尽管她常常和我意见不一，但她总是很谦恭有礼。
• He was a kind and courteous man.他为人友善，而且彬彬有礼。

94 irresistible   

adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的

参考例句：

• The wheel of history rolls forward with an irresistible force.历史车轮滚滚向前，势不可挡。
• She saw an irresistible skirt in the store window.她看见商店的橱窗里有一条叫人着迷的裙子。

95 pang   

n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷

参考例句：

• She experienced a sharp pang of disappointment.她经历了失望的巨大痛苦。
• She was beginning to know the pang of disappointed love.她开始尝到了失恋的痛苦。

96 relegated   

v.使降级( relegate的过去式和过去分词 )；使降职；转移；把…归类

参考例句：

• She was then relegated to the role of assistant. 随后她被降级做助手了。
• I think that should be relegated to the garbage can of history. 我认为应该把它扔进历史的垃圾箱。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

97 halcyon   

n.平静的，愉快的

参考例句：

• He yearned for the halcyon day sof his childhood.他怀念儿时宁静幸福的日子。
• He saw visions of a halcyon future.他看到了将来的太平日子的幻境。

98 waned   

v.衰落( wane的过去式和过去分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡

参考例句：

• However,my enthusiasm waned.The time I spent at exercises gradually diminished. 然而，我的热情减退了。我在做操上花的时间逐渐减少了。 来自《用法词典》
• The bicycle craze has waned. 自行车热已冷下去了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

99 aperture   

n.孔，隙，窄的缺口

参考例句：

• The only light came through a narrow aperture.仅有的光亮来自一个小孔。
• We saw light through a small aperture in the wall.我们透过墙上的小孔看到了亮光。

100 proprietor   

n.所有人；业主；经营者

参考例句：

• The proprietor was an old acquaintance of his.业主是他的一位旧相识。
• The proprietor of the corner grocery was a strange thing in my life.拐角杂货店店主是我生活中的一个怪物。

101 props   

小道具； 支柱( prop的名词复数 )； 支持者； 道具； （橄榄球中的）支柱前锋

参考例句：

• Rescuers used props to stop the roof of the tunnel collapsing. 救援人员用支柱防止隧道顶塌陷。
• The government props up the prices of farm products to support farmers' incomes. 政府保持农产品价格不变以保障农民们的收入。

102 disapproval   

n.反对，不赞成

参考例句：

• The teacher made an outward show of disapproval.老师表面上表示不同意。
• They shouted their disapproval.他们喊叫表示反对。

103 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

104 jocose   

adj.开玩笑的，滑稽的

参考例句：

• Dr. Daniel was a gleg man of a jocose nature.丹尼尔大夫是一位天生诙谐而反应机敏的人。
• His comic dialogues are jocose and jocular,thought-provoking.他的小品诙谐，逗乐，发人深省。

105 dreading   

v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• She was dreading having to broach the subject of money to her father. 她正在为不得不向父亲提出钱的事犯愁。
• This was the moment he had been dreading. 这是他一直最担心的时刻。

106 ginger   

n.姜，精力，淡赤黄色；adj.淡赤黄色的；vt.使活泼，使有生气

参考例句：

• There is no ginger in the young man.这个年轻人没有精神。
• Ginger shall be hot in the mouth.生姜吃到嘴里总是辣的。

107 curtailed   

v.截断，缩短( curtail的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Spending on books has been severely curtailed. 购书开支已被大大削减。
• Their public health programme had to be severely curtailed. 他们的公共卫生计划不得不大大收缩。 来自《简明英汉词典》

108 discourse   

n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述

参考例句：

• We'll discourse on the subject tonight.我们今晚要谈论这个问题。
• He fell into discourse with the customers who were drinking at the counter.他和站在柜台旁的酒客谈了起来。

109 memoirs   

n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数)

参考例句：

• Her memoirs were ghostwritten. 她的回忆录是由别人代写的。
• I watched a trailer for the screenplay of his memoirs. 我看过以他的回忆录改编成电影的预告片。 来自《简明英汉词典》

110 justified   

a.正当的，有理的

参考例句：

• She felt fully justified in asking for her money back. 她认为有充分的理由要求退款。
• The prisoner has certainly justified his claims by his actions. 那个囚犯确实已用自己的行动表明他的要求是正当的。

111 anonymous   

adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的

参考例句：

• Sending anonymous letters is a cowardly act.寄匿名信是懦夫的行为。
• The author wishes to remain anonymous.作者希望姓名不公开。

112 immortal   

adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的

参考例句：

• The wild cocoa tree is effectively immortal.野生可可树实际上是不会死的。
• The heroes of the people are immortal!人民英雄永垂不朽！

113 exalted   

adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的

参考例句：

• Their loveliness and holiness in accordance with their exalted station.他们的美丽和圣洁也与他们的崇高地位相称。
• He received respect because he was a person of exalted rank.他因为是个地位崇高的人而受到尊敬。

114 vocation   

n.职业，行业

参考例句：

• She struggled for years to find her true vocation.她多年来苦苦寻找真正适合自己的职业。
• She felt it was her vocation to minister to the sick.她觉得照料病人是她的天职。

115 teller   

n.银行出纳员；(选举)计票员

参考例句：

• The bank started her as a teller.银行起用她当出纳员。
• The teller tried to remain aloof and calm.出纳员力图保持冷漠和镇静。

116 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

117 steadfast   

adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的

参考例句：

• Her steadfast belief never left her for one moment.她坚定的信仰从未动摇过。
• He succeeded in his studies by dint of steadfast application.由于坚持不懈的努力他获得了学业上的成功。

118 industrious   

adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的

参考例句：

• If the tiller is industrious,the farmland is productive.人勤地不懒。
• She was an industrious and willing worker.她是个勤劳肯干的员工。

119 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

120 trepidation   

n.惊恐，惶恐

参考例句：

• The men set off in fear and trepidation.这群人惊慌失措地出发了。
• The threat of an epidemic caused great alarm and trepidation.流行病猖獗因而人心惶惶。

121 adverse   

adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的

参考例句：

• He is adverse to going abroad.他反对出国。
• The improper use of medicine could lead to severe adverse reactions.用药不当会产生严重的不良反应。

122 enumeration   

n.计数，列举；细目；详表；点查

参考例句：

• Predictive Categoriesinclude six categories of prediction, namely Enumeration, Advance Labeling, Reporting,Recapitulation, Hypotheticality, and Question. 其中预设种类又包括列举(Enumeration)、提前标示(Advance Labeling)、转述(Reporting)、回顾(Recapitulation)、假设(Hypotheticality)和提问(Question)。 来自互联网
• Here we describe a systematic procedure which is basically "enumeration" in nature. 这里介绍一个本质上是属于“枚举法”的系统程序。 来自辞典例句

123 prone   

adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的

参考例句：

• Some people are prone to jump to hasty conclusions.有些人往往作出轻率的结论。
• He is prone to lose his temper when people disagree with him.人家一不同意他的意见,他就发脾气。

124 pathos   

n.哀婉，悲怆

参考例句：

• The pathos of the situation brought tears to our eyes.情况令人怜悯，看得我们不禁流泪。
• There is abundant pathos in her words.她的话里富有动人哀怜的力量。

125 manly   

adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地

参考例句：

• The boy walked with a confident manly stride.这男孩以自信的男人步伐行走。
• He set himself manly tasks and expected others to follow his example.他给自己定下了男子汉的任务，并希望别人效之。

126 modesty   

n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素

参考例句：

• Industry and modesty are the chief factors of his success.勤奋和谦虚是他成功的主要因素。
• As conceit makes one lag behind,so modesty helps one make progress.骄傲使人落后，谦虚使人进步。

127 precepts   

n.规诫，戒律，箴言( precept的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They accept the Prophet's precepts but reject some of his strictures. 他们接受先知的教训，但拒绝他的种种约束。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The legal philosopher's concern is to ascertain the true nature of all the precepts and norms. 法哲学家的兴趣在于探寻所有规范和准则的性质。 来自辞典例句

128 eldest   

adj.最年长的，最年老的

参考例句：

• The King's eldest son is the heir to the throne.国王的长子是王位的继承人。
• The castle and the land are entailed on the eldest son.城堡和土地限定由长子继承。

129 misery   

n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦

参考例句：

• Business depression usually causes misery among the working class.商业不景气常使工薪阶层受苦。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。

130 dependence   

n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属

参考例句：

• Doctors keep trying to break her dependence of the drug.医生们尽力使她戒除毒瘾。
• He was freed from financial dependence on his parents.他在经济上摆脱了对父母的依赖。

131 sketches   

n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概

参考例句：

• The artist is making sketches for his next painting. 画家正为他的下一幅作品画素描。
• You have to admit that these sketches are true to life. 你得承认这些素描很逼真。 来自《简明英汉词典》

132 persistency   

n. 坚持(余辉, 时间常数)

参考例句：

• I was nettled by her persistency. 我被她的固执惹恼了。
• We should stick to and develop the heritage of persistency. 我们应坚持和发扬坚忍不拔的传统。

133 intermittent   

adj.间歇的，断断续续的

参考例句：

• Did you hear the intermittent sound outside?你听见外面时断时续的声音了吗？
• In the daytime intermittent rains freshened all the earth.白天里，时断时续地下着雨，使整个大地都生气勃勃了。

134 admiration   

n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕

参考例句：

• He was lost in admiration of the beauty of the scene.他对风景之美赞不绝口。
• We have a great admiration for the gold medalists.我们对金牌获得者极为敬佩。

135 leech   

n.水蛭，吸血鬼，榨取他人利益的人；vt.以水蛭吸血；vi.依附于别人

参考例句：

• A leech is a small blood-sucking worm and usually lives in water.水蛭是一种小型吸血虫，通常生活在水中。
• One-side love like a greedy leech absorbed my time and my mirth.单相思如同一只贪婪的水蛭，吸走了我的时间和欢笑。

136 satire   

n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品

参考例句：

• The movie is a clever satire on the advertising industry.那部影片是关于广告业的一部巧妙的讽刺作品。
• Satire is often a form of protest against injustice.讽刺往往是一种对不公正的抗议形式。

137 morsels   

n.一口( morsel的名词复数 )；（尤指食物）小块，碎屑

参考例句：

• They are the most delicate morsels. 这些确是最好吃的部分。 来自辞典例句
• Foxes will scratch up grass to find tasty bug and beetle morsels. 狐狸会挖草地，寻找美味的虫子和甲壳虫。 来自互联网

138 regularity   

n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐

参考例句：

• The idea is to maintain the regularity of the heartbeat.问题就是要维持心跳的规律性。
• He exercised with a regularity that amazed us.他锻炼的规律程度令我们非常惊讶。

139 brooks   

n.小溪( brook的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Brooks gave the business when Haas caught him with his watch. 哈斯抓到偷他的手表的布鲁克斯时，狠狠地揍了他一顿。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Ade and Brooks exchanged blows yesterday and they were severely punished today. 艾德和布鲁克斯昨天打起来了，今天他们受到严厉的惩罚。 来自《简明英汉词典》

140 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

141 rivalry   

n.竞争，竞赛，对抗

参考例句：

• The quarrel originated in rivalry between the two families.这次争吵是两家不和引起的。
• He had a lot of rivalry with his brothers and sisters.他和兄弟姐妹间经常较劲。

142 meditated   

深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑

参考例句：

• He meditated for two days before giving his answer. 他在作出答复之前考虑了两天。
• She meditated for 2 days before giving her answer. 她考虑了两天才答复。

143 ballad   

n.歌谣，民谣，流行爱情歌曲

参考例句：

• This poem has the distinctive flavour of a ballad.这首诗有民歌风味。
• This is a romantic ballad that is pure corn.这是一首极为伤感的浪漫小曲。

144 ballads   

民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴

参考例句：

• She belted out ballads and hillbilly songs one after another all evening. 她整晚一个接一个地大唱民谣和乡村小调。
• She taught him to read and even to sing two or three little ballads,accompanying him on her old piano. 她教他读书，还教他唱两三首民谣，弹着她的旧钢琴为他伴奏。

145 devoted   

adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的

参考例句：

• He devoted his life to the educational cause of the motherland.他为祖国的教育事业贡献了一生。
• We devoted a lengthy and full discussion to this topic.我们对这个题目进行了长时间的充分讨论。

146 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

147 relaxation   

n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐

参考例句：

• The minister has consistently opposed any relaxation in the law.部长一向反对法律上的任何放宽。
• She listens to classical music for relaxation.她听古典音乐放松。

148 poetic   

adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的

参考例句：

• His poetic idiom is stamped with expressions describing group feeling and thought.他的诗中的措辞往往带有描写群体感情和思想的印记。
• His poetic novels have gone through three different historical stages.他的诗情小说创作经历了三个不同的历史阶段。

149 scribbled   

v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下

参考例句：

• She scribbled his phone number on a scrap of paper. 她把他的电话号码匆匆写在一张小纸片上。
• He scribbled a note to his sister before leaving. 临行前，他给妹妹草草写了一封短信。

150 sonorous   

adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇

参考例句：

• The sonorous voice of the speaker echoed round the room.那位演讲人洪亮的声音在室内回荡。
• He has a deep sonorous voice.他的声音深沉而洪亮。

151 gauge   

v.精确计量；估计；n.标准度量；计量器

参考例句：

• Can you gauge what her reaction is likely to be?你能揣测她的反应可能是什么吗？
• It's difficult to gauge one's character.要判断一个人的品格是很困难的。

152 flickering   

adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的

参考例句：

• The crisp autumn wind is flickering away. 清爽的秋风正在吹拂。
• The lights keep flickering. 灯光忽明忽暗。

153 subscribe   

vi.(to)订阅，订购；同意；vt.捐助，赞助

参考例句：

• I heartily subscribe to that sentiment.我十分赞同那个观点。
• The magazine is trying to get more readers to subscribe.该杂志正大力发展新订户。

154 plume   

n.羽毛；v.整理羽毛，骚首弄姿，用羽毛装饰

参考例句：

• Her hat was adorned with a plume.她帽子上饰着羽毛。
• He does not plume himself on these achievements.他并不因这些成就而自夸。

155 vessel   

n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管

参考例句：

• The vessel is fully loaded with cargo for Shanghai.这艘船满载货物驶往上海。
• You should put the water into a vessel.你应该把水装入容器中。

156 catastrophe   

n.大灾难，大祸

参考例句：

• I owe it to you that I survived the catastrophe.亏得你我才大难不死。
• This is a catastrophe beyond human control.这是一场人类无法控制的灾难。

157 untying   

untie的现在分词

参考例句：

• The tying of bow ties is an art; the untying is easy. 打领带是一种艺术，解领带则很容易。
• As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" 33他们解驴驹的时候，主人问他们说，解驴驹作什么？

158 expedient   

adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计

参考例句：

• The government found it expedient to relax censorship a little.政府发现略微放宽审查是可取的。
• Every kind of expedient was devised by our friends.我们的朋友想出了各种各样的应急办法。

159 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

160 unnatural   

adj.不自然的；反常的

参考例句：

• Did her behaviour seem unnatural in any way?她有任何反常表现吗？
• She has an unnatural smile on her face.她脸上挂着做作的微笑。

161 proprietors   

n.所有人，业主( proprietor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• These little proprietors of businesses are lords indeed on their own ground. 这些小业主们，在他们自己的行当中，就是真正的至高无上的统治者。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Many proprietors try to furnish their hotels with antiques. 许多经营者都想用古董装饰他们的酒店。 来自辞典例句

162 guardian   

n.监护人；守卫者，保护者

参考例句：

• The form must be signed by the child's parents or guardian. 这张表格须由孩子的家长或监护人签字。
• The press is a guardian of the public weal. 报刊是公共福利的卫护者。

163 jot   

n.少量；vi.草草记下；vt.匆匆写下

参考例句：

• I'll jot down their address before I forget it.我得赶快把他们的地址写下来，免得忘了。
• There is not a jot of evidence to say it does them any good.没有丝毫的证据显示这对他们有任何好处。

164 jotting   

n.简短的笔记，略记v.匆忙记下( jot的现在分词 )；草草记下，匆匆记下

参考例句：

• All the time I was talking he was jotting down. 每次我在讲话时，他就会记录下来。 来自互联网
• The student considers jotting down the number of the businessman's American Express card. 这论理学生打算快迅速地记录下来下这位商贾的美国运通卡的金额。 来自互联网

165 plied   

v.使用（工具）( ply的过去式和过去分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意

参考例句：

• They plied me with questions about my visit to England. 他们不断地询问我的英国之行。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They plied us with tea and cakes. 他们一个劲儿地让我们喝茶、吃糕饼。 来自《简明英汉词典》

166 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

167 alias   

n.化名；别名；adv.又名

参考例句：

• His real name was Johnson,but he often went by the alias of Smith.他的真名是约翰逊，但是他常常用化名史密斯。
• You can replace this automatically generated alias with a more meaningful one.可用更有意义的名称替换这一自动生成的别名。

168 desultory   

adj.散漫的，无方法的

参考例句：

• Do not let the discussion fragment into a desultory conversation with no clear direction.不要让讨论变得支离破碎，成为没有明确方向的漫谈。
• The constables made a desultory attempt to keep them away from the barn.警察漫不经心地拦着不让他们靠近谷仓。

169 emboldened   

v.鼓励，使有胆量( embolden的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Emboldened by the wine, he went over to introduce himself to her. 他借酒壮胆，走上前去向她作自我介绍。
• His success emboldened him to expand his business. 他有了成就因而激发他进一步扩展业务。 来自《简明英汉词典》

170 eulogistic   

adj.颂扬的，颂词的

参考例句：

• This is a formal eulogistic composition.这是一篇正式的颂扬性文章。
• One is the eulogistic word freedom,and the other is the opprobrious word chance. 一个是表示褒义的词“自由”，另一个是表示贬义的词“偶然”。

171 gist   

n.要旨；梗概

参考例句：

• Can you give me the gist of this report?你能告诉我这个报告的要点吗？
• He is quick in grasping the gist of a book.他敏于了解书的要点。

172 minor   

adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修

参考例句：

• The young actor was given a minor part in the new play.年轻的男演员在这出新戏里被分派担任一个小角色。
• I gave him a minor share of my wealth.我把小部分财产给了他。

173 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

174 gambling   

n.赌博；投机

参考例句：

• They have won a lot of money through gambling.他们赌博赢了很多钱。
• The men have been gambling away all night.那些人赌了整整一夜。

175 dice   

n.骰子；vt.把（食物）切成小方块，冒险

参考例句：

• They were playing dice.他们在玩掷骰子游戏。
• A dice is a cube.骰子是立方体。

176 condign   

adj.应得的，相当的

参考例句：

• The public approved the condign punishment.公众一致称赞这个罪判得很恰当。
• Chinese didn’t obtain the equal position and condign respect.中方并没有取得平等的地位和应有的尊重。

177 satirist   

n.讽刺诗作者，讽刺家，爱挖苦别人的人

参考例句：

• Voltaire was a famous French satirist.伏尔泰是法国一位著名的讽刺作家。
• Perhaps the first to chronicle this dream was the Greek satirist Lucian.也许第一个记述这一梦想的要算是希腊的讽刺作家露西安了。

178 accomplished   

adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的

参考例句：

• Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
• Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。

179 impromptu   

adj.即席的，即兴的；adv.即兴的(地)，无准备的(地)

参考例句：

• The announcement was made in an impromptu press conference at the airport.这一宣布是在机场举行的临时新闻发布会上作出的。
• The children put on an impromptu concert for the visitors.孩子们为来访者即兴献上了一场音乐会。

180 inspection   

n.检查，审查，检阅

参考例句：

• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。
• The soldiers lined up for their daily inspection by their officers.士兵们列队接受军官的日常检阅。

181 zephyr   

n.和风，微风

参考例句：

• I feel very comfortable in the zephyr from the sea.从海上吹来的和风令我非常惬意。
• Zephyr,the West Wind,blew away the clouds so that Apollo,the sun god,could shine and made this flower bloom.西风之神吹散了云朵，太阳神阿波罗得以照耀它并使它开花。

182 lithographs   

n.平版印刷品( lithograph的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The etchings, drypoints, lithographs, and engravings together formed his graphic work. 蚀刻画、铜版画、平版画以及雕刻构成了他书画刻印的作品。 来自互联网
• These historic works of art will be released as limited editions of signed lithographs. 这些艺术历史作品是以有限的单一的平版版本发行。 来自互联网

183 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

184 averse   

adj.厌恶的；反对的，不乐意的

参考例句：

• I don't smoke cigarettes,but I'm not averse to the occasional cigar.我不吸烟，但我不反对偶尔抽一支雪茄。
• We are averse to such noisy surroundings.我们不喜欢这么吵闹的环境。

185 alas   

int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等)

参考例句：

• Alas!The window is broken!哎呀！窗子破了！
• Alas,the truth is less romantic.然而，真理很少带有浪漫色彩。

186 doggerel   

n.拙劣的诗，打油诗

参考例句：

• The doggerel doesn't filiate itself.这首打油诗没有标明作者是谁。
• He styled his poem doggerel.他把他的这首诗歌叫做打油诗。

187 plentifully   

adv. 许多地，丰饶地

参考例句：

• The visitors were plentifully supplied with food and drink. 给来宾准备了丰富的食物和饮料。
• The oil flowed plentifully at first, but soon ran out. 起初石油大量涌出，但很快就枯竭了。

188 embroider   

v.刺绣于(布)上；给…添枝加叶，润饰

参考例句：

• The editor would take a theme and embroider upon it with drollery.编辑会将一篇文章，以调侃式的幽默笔调加以渲染。
• She wants to embroider a coverlet with flowers and birds.她想给床罩绣上花鸟。

189 muses   

v.沉思，冥想( muse的第三人称单数 )；沉思自语说（某事）

参考例句：

• We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. 欧洲那种御用的诗才，我们已经听够了。 来自辞典例句
• Shiki muses that this is, at least, probably the right atmosphere. 志贵觉得这至少是正确的气氛。 来自互联网

190 trifling   

adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的

参考例句：

• They quarreled over a trifling matter.他们为这种微不足道的事情争吵。
• So far Europe has no doubt, gained a real conveniency,though surely a very trifling one.直到现在为止,欧洲无疑地已经获得了实在的便利，不过那确是一种微不足道的便利。

191 bosom   

n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的

参考例句：

• She drew a little book from her bosom.她从怀里取出一本小册子。
• A dark jealousy stirred in his bosom.他内心生出一阵恶毒的嫉妒。

192 travesties   

n.拙劣的模仿作品，荒谬的模仿，歪曲( travesty的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• What is the dolphin and whale cause of such travesties upon earth that we have experienced? 在地球上我们所体验的这类悲剧中，我们海豚鲸鱼的带来了什么？ 来自互联网

193 engendering   

v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Certain soluble extracts of B pertussis may prove to be effective without engendering serious side effects. 某些可溶性百日咳杆菌提取物，可证明用之有效，也不产生严重副作用。 来自辞典例句
• The engendering, classification, path and control of environmental pollution transference were discussed. 对环境污染转嫁的产生、分类、途径及其控制与防范进行了分析。 来自互联网

194 lodgings   

n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍

参考例句：

• When he reached his lodgings the sun had set. 他到达公寓房间时，太阳已下山了。
• I'm on the hunt for lodgings. 我正在寻找住所。

195 chambers   

n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅

参考例句：

• The body will be removed into one of the cold storage chambers. 尸体将被移到一个冷冻间里。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Mr Chambers's readable book concentrates on the middle passage: the time Ransome spent in Russia. Chambers先生的这本值得一看的书重点在中间：Ransome在俄国的那几年。 来自互联网

196 lodge   

v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆

参考例句：

• Is there anywhere that I can lodge in the village tonight?村里有我今晚过夜的地方吗？
• I shall lodge at the inn for two nights.我要在这家小店住两个晚上。

197 complimentary   

adj.赠送的，免费的，赞美的，恭维的

参考例句：

• She made some highly complimentary remarks about their school.她对他们的学校给予高度的评价。
• The supermarket operates a complimentary shuttle service.这家超市提供免费购物班车。

198 abominable   

adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的

参考例句：

• Their cruel treatment of prisoners was abominable.他们虐待犯人的做法令人厌恶。
• The sanitary conditions in this restaurant are abominable.这家饭馆的卫生状况糟透了。

199 alluded   

提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• In your remarks you alluded to a certain sinister design. 在你的谈话中，你提到了某个阴谋。
• She also alluded to her rival's past marital troubles. 她还影射了对手过去的婚姻问题。

200 avenge   

v.为...复仇，为...报仇

参考例句：

• He swore to avenge himself on the mafia.他发誓说要向黑手党报仇。
• He will avenge the people on their oppressor.他将为人民向压迫者报仇。

201 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

202 precarious   

adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的

参考例句：

• Our financial situation had become precarious.我们的财务状况已变得不稳定了。
• He earned a precarious living as an artist.作为一个艺术家，他过得是朝不保夕的生活。

203 vacancy   

n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺

参考例句：

• Her going on maternity leave will create a temporary vacancy.她休产假时将会有一个临时空缺。
• The vacancy of her expression made me doubt if she was listening.她茫然的神情让我怀疑她是否在听。

204 injustice   

n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利

参考例句：

• They complained of injustice in the way they had been treated.他们抱怨受到不公平的对待。
• All his life he has been struggling against injustice.他一生都在与不公正现象作斗争。

205 patronage   

n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场

参考例句：

• Though it was not yet noon,there was considerable patronage.虽然时间未到中午，店中已有许多顾客惠顾。
• I am sorry to say that my patronage ends with this.很抱歉，我的赞助只能到此为止。

206 scrupulous   

adj.审慎的，小心翼翼的，完全的，纯粹的

参考例句：

• She is scrupulous to a degree.她非常谨慎。
• Poets are not so scrupulous as you are.诗人并不像你那样顾虑多。

207 amenable   

adj.经得起检验的；顺从的；对负有义务的

参考例句：

• His scientific discoveries are amenable to the laws of physics.他在科学上的发现经得起物理定律的检验。
• He is amenable to counsel.他这人听劝。

208 nominee   

n.被提名者；被任命者；被推荐者

参考例句：

• His nominee for vice president was elected only after a second ballot.他提名的副总统在两轮投票后才当选。
• Mr.Francisco is standing as the official nominee for the post of District Secretary.弗朗西斯科先生是行政书记职位的正式提名人。

209 tormented   

饱受折磨的

参考例句：

• The knowledge of his guilt tormented him. 知道了自己的罪责使他非常痛苦。
• He had lain awake all night, tormented by jealousy. 他彻夜未眠，深受嫉妒的折磨。

210 sinecures   

n.工作清闲但报酬优厚的职位，挂名的好差事( sinecure的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He had lined up four sinecures that I knew of. 据我所知，他起码有四个挂名头衔。 来自辞典例句

211 sinecure   

n.闲差事，挂名职务

参考例句：

• She found him an exalted sinecure as a Fellow of the Library of Congress.她给他找了一个级别很高的闲职：国会图书馆研究员。
• He even had a job,a sinecure,more highly-paid than his old job had been.他甚至还有一个工作，一个挂名差使，比他原来的工作的待遇要好多了。

212 repudiated   

v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务）

参考例句：

• All slanders and libels should be repudiated. 一切诬蔑不实之词，应予推倒。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The Prime Minister has repudiated racist remarks made by a member of the Conservative Party. 首相已经驳斥了一个保守党成员的种族主义言论。 来自辞典例句

213 capability   

n.能力；才能；(pl)可发展的能力或特性等

参考例句：

• She has the capability to become a very fine actress.她有潜力成为杰出演员。
• Organizing a whole department is beyond his capability.组织整个部门是他能力以外的事。

214 aptitude   

n.(学习方面的)才能，资质，天资

参考例句：

• That student has an aptitude for mathematics.那个学生有数学方面的天赋。
• As a child,he showed an aptitude for the piano.在孩提时代，他显露出对于钢琴的天赋。

215 disposition   

n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署

参考例句：

• He has made a good disposition of his property.他已对财产作了妥善处理。
• He has a cheerful disposition.他性情开朗。

216 tedium   

n.单调；烦闷

参考例句：

• We played games to relieve the tedium of the journey.我们玩游戏，来解除旅行的沉闷。
• In myself I could observe the following sources of tedium. 从我自己身上，我所观察到的烦闷的根源有下列一些。

217 perseverance   

n.坚持不懈，不屈不挠

参考例句：

• It may take some perseverance to find the right people.要找到合适的人也许需要有点锲而不舍的精神。
• Perseverance leads to success.有恒心就能胜利。

218 burlesques   

n.滑稽模仿( burlesque的名词复数 )；（包括脱衣舞的）滑稽歌舞杂剧v.（嘲弄地）模仿，（通过模仿）取笑( burlesque的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

219 promotion   

n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传

参考例句：

• The teacher conferred with the principal about Dick's promotion.教师与校长商谈了迪克的升级问题。
• The clerk was given a promotion and an increase in salary.那个职员升了级，加了薪。

220 alludes   

提及，暗指( allude的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• In the vegetable kingdom Mr. Mivart only alludes to two cases. 在植物界中，密伐脱先生仅提出两点。
• Black-box testing alludes to test that are conducted at the software interface. 黑箱测试是指测试软件接口进行。

221 impoverish   

vt.使穷困，使贫困

参考例句：

• We need to reduce the burden of taxes that impoverish the economy.我们需要减轻导致经济困顿的税收负荷。
• America still has enough credibility to a more profitable path that would impoverish its creditors slowly.美国尚有足够的信用来让其得以选择一条更加有利可图的路径使它的债权人们渐渐贫困枯竭。

222 undoubtedly   

adv.确实地，无疑地

参考例句：

• It is undoubtedly she who has said that.这话明明是她说的。
• He is undoubtedly the pride of China.毫无疑问他是中国的骄傲。

223 bestow   

v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费

参考例句：

• He wished to bestow great honors upon the hero.他希望将那些伟大的荣誉授予这位英雄。
• What great inspiration wiII you bestow on me?你有什么伟大的灵感能馈赠给我？

224 gilding   

n.贴金箔，镀金

参考例句：

• The dress is perfect. Don't add anything to it at all. It would just be gilding the lily. 这条裙子已经很完美了，别再作任何修饰了，那只会画蛇添足。
• The gilding is extremely lavish. 这层镀金极为奢华。

225 baron   

n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王

参考例句：

• Henry Ford was an automobile baron.亨利·福特是一位汽车业巨头。
• The baron lived in a strong castle.男爵住在一座坚固的城堡中。

226 honourable   

adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的

参考例句：

• I don't think I am worthy of such an honourable title.这样的光荣称号，我可担当不起。
• I hope to find an honourable way of settling difficulties.我希望设法找到一个体面的办法以摆脱困境。

227 lucrative   

adj.赚钱的，可获利的

参考例句：

• He decided to turn his hobby into a lucrative sideline.他决定把自己的爱好变成赚钱的副业。
• It was not a lucrative profession.那是一个没有多少油水的职业。

228 parturition   

n.生产，分娩

参考例句：

• Did the parturition go well yesterday evening?昨天晚上分娩顺利吗？
• She is a well-known parturition hastening midwife.她是这一带有名的催生婆。

229 alluring   

adj.吸引人的，迷人的

参考例句：

• The life in a big city is alluring for the young people. 大都市的生活对年轻人颇具诱惑力。
• Lisette's large red mouth broke into a most alluring smile. 莉莎特的鲜红的大嘴露出了一副极为诱人的微笑。

230 distress   

n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛

参考例句：

• Nothing could alleviate his distress.什么都不能减轻他的痛苦。
• Please don't distress yourself.请你不要忧愁了。

231 ridicule   

v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄

参考例句：

• You mustn't ridicule unfortunate people.你不该嘲笑不幸的人。
• Silly mistakes and queer clothes often arouse ridicule.荒谬的错误和古怪的服装常会引起人们的讪笑。

232 deterred   

v.阻止，制止( deter的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• I told him I wasn't interested, but he wasn't deterred. 我已告诉他我不感兴趣，可他却不罢休。
• Jeremy was not deterred by this criticism. 杰里米没有因这一批评而却步。 来自辞典例句

233 spasms   

n.痉挛( spasm的名词复数 )；抽搐；（能量、行为等的）突发；发作

参考例句：

• After the patient received acupuncture treatment,his spasms eased off somewhat. 病人接受针刺治疗后，痉挛稍微减轻了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The smile died, squeezed out by spasms of anticipation and anxiety. 一阵阵预测和焦虑把她脸上的微笑挤掉了。 来自辞典例句

234 malady   

n.病，疾病(通常做比喻)

参考例句：

• There is no specific remedy for the malady.没有医治这种病的特效药。
• They are managing to control the malady into a small range.他们设法将疾病控制在小范围之内。

235 miraculous   

adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的

参考例句：

• The wounded man made a miraculous recovery.伤员奇迹般地痊愈了。
• They won a miraculous victory over much stronger enemy.他们战胜了远比自己强大的敌人，赢得了非凡的胜利。

236 profusion   

n.挥霍；丰富

参考例句：

• He is liberal to profusion.他挥霍无度。
• The leaves are falling in profusion.落叶纷纷。

237 solitude   

n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方

参考例句：

• People need a chance to reflect on spiritual matters in solitude. 人们需要独处的机会来反思精神上的事情。
• They searched for a place where they could live in solitude. 他们寻找一个可以过隐居生活的地方。

238 rambling   

adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的

参考例句：

• We spent the summer rambling in Ireland. 我们花了一个夏天漫游爱尔兰。
• It was easy to get lost in the rambling house. 在布局凌乱的大房子里容易迷路。

239 skits   

n.讽刺文( skit的名词复数 )；小喜剧；若干；一群

参考例句：

• One of these skits, "The King of Beasts" resembles a traditional frontier prank. 一出滑稽短剧《兽王》酷似传统的边疆闹剧。 来自英汉非文学 - 民俗
• Kids can develop ad campaigns, commercials and skits to illustrate character traits. 孩子们会发动宣传运动，制作广告宣传片和幽默短剧来说明性格品质。 来自互联网

240 aggression   

n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害

参考例句：

• So long as we are firmly united, we need fear no aggression.只要我们紧密地团结，就不必惧怕外来侵略。
• Her view is that aggression is part of human nature.她认为攻击性是人类本性的一部份。

241 odious   

adj.可憎的，讨厌的

参考例句：

• The judge described the crime as odious.法官称这一罪行令人发指。
• His character could best be described as odious.他的人格用可憎来形容最贴切。

242 piquant   

adj.辛辣的，开胃的，令人兴奋的

参考例句：

• Bland vegetables are often served with a piquant sauce.清淡的蔬菜常以辛辣的沙司调味。
• He heard of a piquant bit of news.他听到了一则令人兴奋的消息。

243 sustenance   

n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计

参考例句：

• We derive our sustenance from the land.我们从土地获取食物。
• The urban homeless are often in desperate need of sustenance.城市里无家可归的人极其需要食物来维持生命。

244 reluctance   

n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿

参考例句：

• The police released Andrew with reluctance.警方勉强把安德鲁放走了。
• He showed the greatest reluctance to make a reply.他表示很不愿意答复。

245 propriety   

n.正当行为；正当；适当

参考例句：

• We hesitated at the propriety of the method.我们对这种办法是否适用拿不定主意。
• The sensitive matter was handled with great propriety.这件机密的事处理得极为适当。

246 contractor   

n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌

参考例句：

• The Tokyo contractor was asked to kick $ 6000 back as commission.那个东京的承包商被要求退还6000美元作为佣金。
• The style of house the contractor builds depends partly on the lay of the land.承包商所建房屋的式样，有几分要看地势而定。

247 sordid   

adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的

参考例句：

• He depicts the sordid and vulgar sides of life exclusively.他只描写人生肮脏和庸俗的一面。
• They lived in a sordid apartment.他们住在肮脏的公寓房子里。

248 filthy   

adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的

参考例句：

• The whole river has been fouled up with filthy waste from factories.整条河都被工厂的污秽废物污染了。
• You really should throw out that filthy old sofa and get a new one.你真的应该扔掉那张肮脏的旧沙发，然后再去买张新的。

249 lucre   

n.金钱，财富

参考例句：

• She married a foreigner for mere lucre.她仅仅为钱财而嫁给了一个外国人。
• He would sell his soul for filthy lucre.他会为了不义之财而出卖灵魂。

250 wholesome   

adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的

参考例句：

• In actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.实际上我喜欢做的事大都是有助于增进身体健康的。
• It is not wholesome to eat without washing your hands.不洗手吃饭是不卫生的。

251 qualified   

adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的

参考例句：

• He is qualified as a complete man of letters.他有资格当真正的文学家。
• We must note that we still lack qualified specialists.我们必须看到我们还缺乏有资质的专家。

252 saturated   

a.饱和的，充满的

参考例句：

• The continuous rain had saturated the soil. 连绵不断的雨把土地淋了个透。
• a saturated solution of sodium chloride 氯化钠饱和溶液

253 provincial   

adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人

参考例句：

• City dwellers think country folk have provincial attitudes.城里人以为乡下人思想迂腐。
• Two leading cadres came down from the provincial capital yesterday.昨天从省里下来了两位领导干部。

254 rendering   

n.表现，描写

参考例句：

• She gave a splendid rendering of Beethoven's piano sonata.她精彩地演奏了贝多芬的钢琴奏鸣曲。
• His narrative is a super rendering of dialect speech and idiom.他的叙述是方言和土语最成功的运用。

255 oratorio   

n.神剧，宗教剧，清唱剧

参考例句：

• It's the world's most popular oratorio.这是世界上最流行的清唱剧。
• The Glee Club decided to present an oratorio during their recital.高兴俱乐部的决定提出的清唱剧在其演奏。

256 intonation   

n.语调，声调；发声

参考例句：

• The teacher checks for pronunciation and intonation.老师在检查发音和语调。
• Questions are spoken with a rising intonation.疑问句是以升调说出来的。

257 divested   

v.剥夺( divest的过去式和过去分词 )；脱去（衣服）；2。从…取去…；1。（给某人）脱衣服

参考例句：

• He divested himself of his jacket. 他脱去了短上衣。
• He swiftly divested himself of his clothes. 他迅速脱掉衣服。 来自《简明英汉词典》

258 fable   

n.寓言；童话；神话

参考例句：

• The fable is given on the next page. 这篇寓言登在下一页上。
• He had some motive in telling this fable. 他讲这寓言故事是有用意的。

259 stickler   

n.坚持细节之人

参考例句：

• She's a real stickler for etiquette,so you'd better ask her advice.她非常讲求礼节，所以你最好问她的意见。
• You will find Mrs. Carboy a stickler about trifles.您会发现卡博太太是个拘泥小节的人。

260 majesty   

n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权

参考例句：

• The king had unspeakable majesty.国王有无法形容的威严。
• Your Majesty must make up your mind quickly!尊贵的陛下，您必须赶快做出决定！

261 assailed   

v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对

参考例句：

• He was assailed with fierce blows to the head. 他的头遭到猛烈殴打。
• He has been assailed by bad breaks all these years. 这些年来他接二连三地倒霉。 来自《用法词典》

262 fictitious   

adj.虚构的，假设的；空头的

参考例句：

• She invented a fictitious boyfriend to put him off.她虚构出一个男朋友来拒绝他。
• The story my mother told me when I was young is fictitious.小时候妈妈对我讲的那个故事是虚构的。

263 enjoined   

v.命令( enjoin的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The embezzler was severely punished and enjoined to kick back a portion of the stolen money each month. 贪污犯受到了严厉惩罚，并被责令每月退还部分赃款。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She enjoined me strictly not to tell anyone else. 她严令我不准告诉其他任何人。 来自辞典例句

264 nil   

n.无，全无，零

参考例句：

• My knowledge of the subject is practically nil.我在这方面的知识几乎等于零。
• Their legal rights are virtually nil.他们实际上毫无法律权利。

265 banishes   

v.放逐，驱逐( banish的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Work banishes those three great evils: boredom, vice, and poverty.(Voltaire, French philosopher) 工作撵跑三个魔鬼：无聊、堕落和贫穷。（法国哲学家伏尔基泰） 来自互联网
• The Consumer: It Banishes Uterine Fibroids, but for How Long? 消费者：它驱逐子宫的纤维瘤，但是为多久？ 来自互联网

266 gallantly   

adv. 漂亮地，勇敢地，献殷勤地

参考例句：

• He gallantly offered to carry her cases to the car. 他殷勤地要帮她把箱子拎到车子里去。
• The new fighters behave gallantly under fire. 新战士在炮火下表现得很勇敢。

267 reverence   

n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬

参考例句：

• He was a bishop who was held in reverence by all.他是一位被大家都尊敬的主教。
• We reverence tradition but will not be fettered by it.我们尊重传统，但不被传统所束缚。

268 unduly   

adv.过度地，不适当地

参考例句：

• He did not sound unduly worried at the prospect.他的口气听上去对前景并不十分担忧。
• He argued that the law was unduly restrictive.他辩称法律的约束性有些过分了。

269 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

270 revered   

v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• A number of institutions revered and respected in earlier times have become Aunt Sally for the present generation. 一些早年受到尊崇的惯例，现在已经成了这代人嘲弄的对象了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Chinese revered corn as a gift from heaven. 中国人将谷物奉为上天的恩赐。 来自辞典例句

271 innocence   

n.无罪；天真；无害

参考例句：

• There was a touching air of innocence about the boy.这个男孩有一种令人感动的天真神情。
• The accused man proved his innocence of the crime.被告人经证实无罪。

272 amenities   

n.令人愉快的事物；礼仪；礼节；便利设施；礼仪( amenity的名词复数 )；便利设施；（环境等的）舒适；（性情等的）愉快

参考例句：

• The campsite is close to all local amenities. 营地紧靠当地所有的便利设施。
• Parks and a theatre are just some of the town's local amenities. 公园和戏院只是市镇娱乐设施的一部分。 来自《简明英汉词典》

273 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

274 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

275 amplification   

n.扩大，发挥

参考例句：

• The voice of despair may be weak and need amplification.绝望的呼声可能很微弱，需要扩大。
• Some of them require further amplification.其中有些内容需进一步详细阐明。

276 peg   

n.木栓，木钉；vt.用木钉钉，用短桩固定

参考例句：

• Hang your overcoat on the peg in the hall.把你的大衣挂在门厅的挂衣钩上。
• He hit the peg mightily on the top with a mallet.他用木槌猛敲木栓顶。

277 erect   

n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的

参考例句：

• She held her head erect and her back straight.她昂着头，把背挺得笔直。
• Soldiers are trained to stand erect.士兵们训练站得笔直。

278 countenance   

n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同

参考例句：

• At the sight of this photograph he changed his countenance.他一看见这张照片脸色就变了。
• I made a fierce countenance as if I would eat him alive.我脸色恶狠狠地，仿佛要把他活生生地吞下去。

279 expressive   

adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的

参考例句：

• Black English can be more expressive than standard English.黑人所使用的英语可能比正式英语更有表现力。
• He had a mobile,expressive,animated face.他有一张多变的，富于表情的，生动活泼的脸。

280 bestowed   

赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• It was a title bestowed upon him by the king. 那是国王赐给他的头衔。
• He considered himself unworthy of the honour they had bestowed on him. 他认为自己不配得到大家赋予他的荣誉。

281 humble   

adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低

参考例句：

• In my humble opinion,he will win the election.依我拙见，他将在选举中获胜。
• Defeat and failure make people humble.挫折与失败会使人谦卑。

282 honorarium   

n.酬金，谢礼

参考例句：

• Travel and hotel costs as well as an honorarium will be provided.我们提供旅费和住宿费以及酬金。
• A group of residents agreed to conduct the survey for a small honorarium.一部分居民同意去进行这样的一个调查，在支付一小点酬金的情况下。

283 contrive   

vt.谋划，策划；设法做到；设计，想出

参考例句：

• Can you contrive to be here a little earlier?你能不能早一点来？
• How could you contrive to make such a mess of things?你怎么把事情弄得一团糟呢？

284 contrived   

adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的

参考例句：

• There was nothing contrived or calculated about what he said.他说的话里没有任何蓄意捏造的成分。
• The plot seems contrived.情节看起来不真实。

285 allured   

诱引，吸引( allure的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They allured her into a snare. 他们诱她落入圈套。
• Many settlers were allured by promises of easy wealth. 很多安家落户的人都是受了诱惑，以为转眼就能发财而来的。

286 riddle   

n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜

参考例句：

• The riddle couldn't be solved by the child.这个谜语孩子猜不出来。
• Her disappearance is a complete riddle.她的失踪完全是一个谜。

287 joint   

adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合

参考例句：

• I had a bad fall,which put my shoulder out of joint.我重重地摔了一跤，肩膀脫臼了。
• We wrote a letter in joint names.我们联名写了封信。

288 delicacies   

n.棘手( delicacy的名词复数 )；精致；精美的食物；周到

参考例句：

• Its flesh has exceptional delicacies. 它的肉异常鲜美。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• After these delicacies, the trappers were ready for their feast. 在享用了这些美食之后，狩猎者开始其大餐。 来自英汉非文学 - 民俗

289 viands   

n.食品，食物

参考例句：

• Greek slaves supplied them with exquisite viands at the slightest nod.只要他们轻轻点点头希腊奴隶就会供奉给他们精美的食品。
• The family sat down to table,and a frugal meal of cold viands was deposited beforethem.一家老少，都围着桌子坐下，几样简单的冷食，摆在他们面前。

290 barbarians   

n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人

参考例句：

• The ancient city of Rome fell under the iron hooves of the barbarians. 古罗马城在蛮族的铁蹄下沦陷了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• It conquered its conquerors, the barbarians. 它战胜了征服者——蛮族。 来自英汉非文学 - 历史

291 inauguration   

n.开幕、就职典礼

参考例句：

• The inauguration of a President of the United States takes place on January 20.美国总统的就职典礼于一月二十日举行。
• Three celebrated tenors sang at the president's inauguration.3位著名的男高音歌手在总统就职仪式上演唱。

292 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

293 archer   

n.射手，弓箭手

参考例句：

• The archer strung his bow and aimed an arrow at the target.弓箭手拉紧弓弦将箭瞄准靶子。
• The archer's shot was a perfect bull's-eye.射手的那一箭正中靶心。

294 delightful   

adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的

参考例句：

• We had a delightful time by the seashore last Sunday.上星期天我们在海滨玩得真痛快。
• Peter played a delightful melody on his flute.彼得用笛子吹奏了一支欢快的曲子。

295 locker   

n.更衣箱，储物柜，冷藏室，上锁的人

参考例句：

• At the swimming pool I put my clothes in a locker.在游泳池我把衣服锁在小柜里。
• He moved into the locker room and began to slip out of his scrub suit.他走进更衣室把手术服脱下来。

296 vindicated   

v.澄清（某人/某事物）受到的责难或嫌疑( vindicate的过去式和过去分词 )；表明或证明（所争辩的事物）属实、正当、有效等；维护

参考例句：

• I have every confidence that this decision will be fully vindicated. 我完全相信这一决定的正确性将得到充分证明。
• Subsequent events vindicated the policy. 后来的事实证明那政策是对的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

297 accusation   

n.控告，指责，谴责

参考例句：

• I was furious at his making such an accusation.我对他的这种责备非常气愤。
• She knew that no one would believe her accusation.她知道没人会相信她的指控。

298 stationery   

n.文具；(配套的)信笺信封

参考例句：

• She works in the stationery department of a big store.她在一家大商店的文具部工作。
• There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.文具一多，心里自会觉得踏实。

299 situated   

adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的

参考例句：

• The village is situated at the margin of a forest.村子位于森林的边缘。
• She is awkwardly situated.她的处境困难。

300 judicious   

adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的

参考例句：

• We should listen to the judicious opinion of that old man.我们应该听取那位老人明智的意见。
• A judicious parent encourages his children to make their own decisions.贤明的父亲鼓励儿女自作抉择。

301 deluged   

v.使淹没( deluge的过去式和过去分词 )；淹没；被洪水般涌来的事物所淹没；穷于应付

参考例句：

• The minister was deluged with questions. 部长穷于应付像洪水般涌来的问题。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They deluged me with questions. 他们向我连珠发问。 来自《简明英汉词典》

302 disapproving   

adj.不满的，反对的v.不赞成( disapprove的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Mother gave me a disapproving look. 母亲的眼神告诉我她是不赞成的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Her father threw a disapproving glance at her. 她父亲不满地瞥了她一眼。 来自《简明英汉词典》

303 incited   

刺激，激励，煽动( incite的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He incited people to rise up against the government. 他煽动人们起来反对政府。
• The captain's example incited the men to bravery. 船长的榜样激发了水手们的勇敢精神。

304 susceptible   

adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的

参考例句：

• Children are more susceptible than adults.孩子比成人易受感动。
• We are all susceptible to advertising.我们都易受广告的影响。

305 destined   

adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的

参考例句：

• It was destined that they would marry.他们结婚是缘分。
• The shipment is destined for America.这批货物将运往美国。

306 collateral   

adj.平行的；旁系的；n.担保品

参考例句：

• Many people use personal assets as collateral for small business loans.很多人把个人财产用作小额商业贷款的抵押品。
• Most people here cannot borrow from banks because they lack collateral.由于拿不出东西作为抵押，这里大部分人无法从银行贷款。

307 laborious   

adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅

参考例句：

• They had the laborious task of cutting down the huge tree.他们接受了伐大树的艰苦工作。
• Ants and bees are laborious insects.蚂蚁与蜜蜂是勤劳的昆虫。

308 allotted   

分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• I completed the test within the time allotted . 我在限定的时间内完成了试验。
• Each passenger slept on the berth allotted to him. 每个旅客都睡在分配给他的铺位上。

309 bust   

vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部

参考例句：

• I dropped my camera on the pavement and bust it. 我把照相机掉在人行道上摔坏了。
• She has worked up a lump of clay into a bust.她把一块黏土精心制作成一个半身像。

310 likeness   

n.相像，相似（之处）

参考例句：

• I think the painter has produced a very true likeness.我认为这位画家画得非常逼真。
• She treasured the painted likeness of her son.她珍藏她儿子的画像。

311 alleged   

a.被指控的，嫌疑的

参考例句：

• It was alleged that he had taken bribes while in office. 他被指称在任时收受贿赂。
• alleged irregularities in the election campaign 被指称竞选运动中的不正当行为

312 lengthiness   

n.冗长

参考例句：

313 protrusion   

n.伸出，突出

参考例句：

• a protrusion on the rock face 岩石表面的突起部分
• Thumb-sucking can cause protrusion of the teeth. 经常吮吸拇指能使牙齿向外突出。 来自辞典例句

314 dignified   

a.可敬的，高贵的

参考例句：

• Throughout his trial he maintained a dignified silence. 在整个审讯过程中，他始终沉默以保持尊严。
• He always strikes such a dignified pose before his girlfriend. 他总是在女友面前摆出这种庄严的姿态。

315 stanzas   

节，段( stanza的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The poem has six stanzas. 这首诗有六小节。
• Stanzas are different from each other in one poem. 诗中节与节差异颇大。

316 wrought   

v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的

参考例句：

• Events in Paris wrought a change in British opinion towards France and Germany.巴黎发生的事件改变了英国对法国和德国的看法。
• It's a walking stick with a gold head wrought in the form of a flower.那是一个金质花形包头的拐杖。

317 kindly   

adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地

参考例句：

• Her neighbours spoke of her as kindly and hospitable.她的邻居都说她和蔼可亲、热情好客。
• A shadow passed over the kindly face of the old woman.一道阴影掠过老太太慈祥的面孔。

318 chafing   

n.皮肤发炎v.擦热（尤指皮肤）( chafe的现在分词 )；擦痛；发怒；惹怒

参考例句：

• My shorts were chafing my thighs. 我的短裤把大腿磨得生疼。 来自辞典例句
• We made coffee in a chafing dish. 我们用暖锅烧咖啡。 来自辞典例句

319 overflowing   

n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The stands were overflowing with farm and sideline products. 集市上农副产品非常丰富。
• The milk is overflowing. 牛奶溢出来了。

320 generosity   

n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为

参考例句：

• We should match their generosity with our own.我们应该像他们一样慷慨大方。
• We adore them for their generosity.我们钦佩他们的慷慨。

321 woe   

n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌

参考例句：

• Our two peoples are brothers sharing weal and woe.我们两国人民是患难与共的兄弟。
• A man is well or woe as he thinks himself so.自认祸是祸，自认福是福。

322 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

323 wink   

n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁

参考例句：

• He tipped me the wink not to buy at that price.他眨眼暗示我按那个价格就不要买。
• The satellite disappeared in a wink.瞬息之间，那颗卫星就消失了。

324 middle-aged   

adj.中年的

参考例句：

• I noticed two middle-aged passengers.我注意到两个中年乘客。
• The new skin balm was welcome by middle-aged women.这种新护肤香膏受到了中年妇女的欢迎。

325 astounded   

v.使震惊(astound的过去式和过去分词)；愕然；愕；惊讶

参考例句：

• His arrogance astounded her. 他的傲慢使她震惊。
• How can you say that? I'm absolutely astounded. 你怎么能说出那种话？我感到大为震惊。

326 wilfully   

adv.任性固执地；蓄意地

参考例句：

• Don't wilfully cling to your reckless course. 不要一意孤行。 来自辞典例句
• These missionaries even wilfully extended the extraterritoriality to Chinese converts and interfered in Chinese judicial authority. 这些传教士还肆意将"治外法权"延伸至中国信徒，干涉司法。 来自汉英非文学 - 白皮书

327 inflicting   

把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He was charged with maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm. 他被控蓄意严重伤害他人身体。
• It's impossible to do research without inflicting some pain on animals. 搞研究不让动物遭点罪是不可能的。

328 instigated   

v.使（某事物）开始或发生，鼓动( instigate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The government has instigated a programme of economic reform. 政府已实施了经济改革方案。
• He instigated the revolt. 他策动了这次叛乱。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

329 upwards   

adv.向上，在更高处...以上

参考例句：

• The trend of prices is still upwards.物价的趋向是仍在上涨。
• The smoke rose straight upwards.烟一直向上升。

330 grudge   

n.不满，怨恨，妒嫉；vt.勉强给，不情愿做

参考例句：

• I grudge paying so much for such inferior goods.我不愿花这么多钱买次品。
• I do not grudge him his success.我不嫉妒他的成功。