outside world must in the long run balance that of the services received of every province, every city, every hamlet, the same law is true. What then are the services with which London pays the world for the mighty tribute of material goods which it draws to itself year by year? The question is natural, for the outgoing stream of London's visible exports, large as it is in the aggregate, is but a driblet compared with the flood of imports which the metropolis receives.

To understand the economic strength of London as an industrial centre, we must rid our minds of the popular but misleading idea which draws a sharp distinction between production and distribution, and only regards the former as a true source of wealth. London is the great 'middleman' of the world. She produces little or no raw material, and but a small proportion of her activity is occupied with working up the product in its earlier stages. More and more London tends to devote her energies to the later stages of that long series of industrial processes which convert the raw material into the finished article of consumption; and in a special degree she' has concentrated attention on those final processes of transport, warehousing, buying, and selling which serve to place the products of manufacture within the reach of the final purchaser. Vast quantities of commodities are constantly passing through London, made elsewhere and destined for consumption elsewhere, on which London levies a toll. They are brought to port in London ships, insured in London offices, marketed by London dealers, stored in London warehouses.

But London is not only a vast distributing centre: she is the financial and banking centre of the world. She is, moreover, perhaps the greatest creditor community of the world, drawing annually a vast tribute of interest on capital invested in this country and abroad. A considerable part of this interest is paid in the shape of food. Again, London is the political and judicial centre of the Empire, and the work done for the whole country by the public services may be said, without undue straining of language, to constitute an 'invisible export' for which the capital must receive a return.

When we review the varied elements of the account between London and the outside world, we cannot fail to be struck with the precarious tenure on which the capital retains much of its power of supplying itself with food. Some have thought that there is a danger in the distance and variety of the sources on which it depends, and have counted the days for which its population would subsist if hostile fleet or army should intercept its usual supplies. But such fears are exaggerated,

if not entirely idle. Given a powerful navy in command of the seas, nothing can prevent an adequate supply of food from reaching London-so long as the attraction of its purchasing power continues. The prices may rise, but the food will come, unless the whole of our coasts be subjected to a strict blockade, which could not be established until our fleet were driven from the seas, and a condition of affairs reached in which our only course would be to sue for peace. Not this way does the danger lie.

But what if the magnet should begin to lose its power? What if the services which London can render should no longer balance those which she claims? If the tide of fortune should turn against her port, and the vessels which still frequent it should fly another flag; if the financial centre of the world should shift from London to New York, Paris, or Berlin; if the economic forces which have expelled into the provinces so many forms of London's productive enterprise should extend their pressure to those industries of buying and selling which as yet are peculiarly her own; if the development of growing tendencies towards direct trading, aided perchance by some ill-advised return to a restrictive fiscal policy, should give the death-blow to London's position as an entrepôt of the world's trade; finally, if the British Empire should itself decay, and its capital, from being the organic centre of a vast political and commercial administration, should be resolved into a mere amorphous aggregation of human beings-then, indeed, the problem of the feeding of five millions of mouths would assume a shape which could not be contemplated without dismay. But that day we may hope is yet far off.

ART. VII.-1. The Life of William Makepeace Thackeray. By Lewis Melville. Two vols. London: Hutchinson and Co., 1899.

2. The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, with Biographical Introductions by his daughter, Anne Ritchie. Thirteen vols. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1898-99.

6

R. LEWIS MELVILLE, who has just published a ‘Life' of Thackeray in two thick volumes, has not presented the public with a living portrait, but he has done several other things. He has, for instance, put a rather doubtful word to heroic use. Though,' he begins his preface, it is more than five and thirty years since his death, until now there has never been published a Life of Thackeray which has had any pretensions to finality.' Are we to interpret this as meaning that the last word about Thackeray had not been spoken before Mr. Melville published his Life,' and that Mr. Melville has at length spoken it? If so, we have only the author's own testimony that his work is final, and it remains to be seen whether it has anything more than the 'pretensions' to finality which, according to him, have as yet been unknown.

It is courageous of this new writer to challenge comparisons by publishing his book whilst the reading world is still enjoying Mrs. Richmond Ritchie's biographical introductions to the last edition of her father's works. Her knowledge of every intimate or important fact, not to speak of her enchanted pen, might have daunted men more talented than Mr. Melville. Not so; he is without fear-if not without reproach—for, while gleaning much from Mrs. Ritchie's pages, he claims to have produced a work of a higher order. He brushes away his obligations with the somewhat contemptuous remark: 'Mrs. Ritchie's interesting biographical Introductions are little else than material for a full Life.'

What then, we must ask, is Biography? Is it a picture which conveys the living presence of a man, or is it a discursive collection of remarks and facts? And what are the qualities necessary to a biographer? Not only courage: of this, as we have pointed out, Mr. Melville has enough. Not only industry and hero-worship, for of these virtues also he possesses full measure; and if they sufficed to create a work of art he might found an artistic reputation. But these qualities are not enough, though many recent examples seem to show a widespread opinion that industry and hero-worship are sufficient capital to begin writing upon, and some recent Lives' are little more than bundles of excellent testimonials tendered to

posterity. These are not the biographies that live, that possess finality. Yet there have been, in comparatively recent times, not a few biographies which, if not 'final,' are at least permanent-not merely chronicles of a man's life, but literary achievements, sometimes literary monuments. To confine ourselves to our own century, we can quote such different examples as Scott's Life of Swift,' Lockhart's of Scott, Stanley's of Arnold, and Mrs. Gaskell's of Charlotte Brontë, besides Carlyle's 'Sterling,' Froude's 'Carlyle,' Trevelyan's 'Macaulay,' Canon Ainger's Lamb,' and Mrs. Oliphant's 'Edward Irving.' All of these books leave us with a vital impression of their subjects, not because of the actual facts that they contribute-for inferior works may contain as many or more-but because the facts are stamped with the biographer's personality; and art may be said to consist in this impress of an individual mind upon its material. It is obvious, too, that the biographer must be in strong sympathy with the man whose life he is recording; and, for this purpose-though proximity is not without its disadvantages the closer they have actually stood to one another in life the better. Nearly all the books we have just cited were the result of long friendship; and the three exceptions (Scott's 'Life of Swift' and the two last-mentioned works) are inspired by the only valuable substitute for personal knowledge -a strong sympathetic imagination, which gains in a flash the insight that months of intercourse may fail to produce. There are, if we may so express ourselves, friendships of the soul, independent of time and space. They are the most enduring of relationships; and great men remain magnetic after death. Canon Ainger, we feel, knew Charles Lamb as intimately as did Coleridge, and more intimately than Wordsworth.

It

Imagination, delicacy, and vigour, such are the qualities which go to make good biography and good style; and personal acquaintance or, if that is impossible, a rare intellectual and moral sympathy, are indispensable to the biographer. cannot be said that these qualifications belong to Mr. Melville. Personally unacquainted with Thackeray, he appears to know as little of those who were near to him. This, if his misfortune, is not his fault; but, instead of being content to write from the outside point of view, with warmth for the writer and respect for the man, he has endeavoured to make up for the want of intimacy by adopting an air of familiarity and a tone of hearty assurance which is sometimes apparent in persons new to the society in which they find themselves. His authorities, when not the books of others, seem to be of the

mysterious kind whose friends have known friends of the great, as, for example, the daughter of a doctor who at one time saw Thackeray at Boulogne.

6

This is a pity-the more so after the recent appearance of so much new and authentic information in Mrs. Ritchie's work. Literary traditions are within everybody's reach; they are indeed the business of a biographer; yet our writer can hardly be familiar with the memoirs concerning the circle he is describing. Nor, when he touches on that circle, can his observations be described as happy. When, a little before the end,' he writes, one of his daughters asked Thackeray which of his friends he had loved the best, he replied, "Why, dear old Fitz, of course, and Brookfield." "It is a singular fact,' adds Mr. Melville,* in a note to the word 'Fitz,' that Tennyson also regarded "dear old Fitz"-after the death of Arthur Hallam-as "his best-loved friend," though, like Thackeray, he saw but little of the Recluse of Woodbridge in later life.' We are at a loss to discover why it is a singular fact' that three men of genius, who have been warm friends at Cambridge, should remain true and sympathetic to each other through life, especially as the 'Recluse of Woodbridge' (who would have been the first to laugh at such a pompous title) was in every way made to be the crony of the two others. It seems also unnecessary to announce to 'Sir Walter Besant and many others' that Thackeray did not owe his knowledge of the manner of the Upper Ten' to the position brought him by Vanity Fair,' and that there were other reasons: his University friends, Edward Fitzgerald, Monckton Milnes, W. H. Thompson, R. C. Trench, John Sterling, Alfred Tennyson, James Spedding, John Allen, William Brookfield,

were all gentlemen of good social standing.'

The imagination which is a substitute for personal knowledge has evidently not been vouchsafed to Mr. Melville, but, even apart from this, there is another and an excellent way. The best moments of biography are when a great man speaks for himself, and there are plenty of Thackeray's delightful letters in print. As Mr. Melville's book is made up of extracts, some acknowledged and some unacknowledged, as well from other volumes as from the countless articles he enumerates at the end

·

Vol. ii, p. 71. Mrs. Ritchie thus recounts the incident in her Introduction to the Christmas Books': In the autumn of 1863 some impulse one day made me ask my father which of his old friends he cared for most. He was standing near the window in the dining-room at Palace Green. He paused a moment, then he said in a gentle sort of way, that of all his friends he had best loved "Old Fitz". "and Brookfield," he added.'