He pursued it with the most searching subtlety ever devoted to a definite aim in all his books. The villain of all his stories is the hypocrite.
I suppose a critic of the strict æsthetic camp would say that Thackeray loved truth because he was an artist. Mr. Brownell, for whom there is neither beauty nor goodness without truth, appears to say that he was an artist because he loved truth and had a fresh vision of it; and that seems to my own sense less like standing the facts on their heads. Keeping the facts right side up does not hinder Mr. Brownell from perceiving the mere æsthetic usefulness of truth as "artistic material":
It need hardly be pointed out that hypocrisy constitutes one of the most effective elements which the novelist can use in portraying human life on a large scale and under civilized conditions. Imposture of one kind or another almost monopolizes the seamy side of any society's existence. In the material of the novelist of manners it has the same place as crime in that of the romance of adventure. . . . Almost inevitably the novelist, who both by predisposition and by practice handles it well, presents a picture of sound and vital verisimilitude, and of profounder and more universal significance than a study of most other social forces.
If one bears in mind Mr. Brownell's almost unqualified admiration for Thackeray's truth of substance and for his effortless ease and simplicity of style, and if one also recalls the other features of his ideal man of letters, it will be evident that his
