CHAPTER V.
ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS.
The novel with which we are now going to deal I regard as the greatest work that Thackeray did.

Though I do not hesitate to compare himself with himself, I will make no comparison between him and others; I therefore abstain from assigning to _Esmond_ any special niche among prose fictions in the English language, but I rank it so high as to justify me in placing him among the small number of the highest class of English novelists.

Much as I think of _Barry Lyndon_ and _Vanity Fair_, I cannot quite say this of them; but, as a chain is not stronger than its weakest link, so is a poet, or a dramatist, or a novelist to be placed in no lower level than that which he has attained by his highest sustained flight.

The excellence which has been reached here Thackeray achieved, without doubt, by giving a greater amount of forethought to the work he had before him than had been his wont.

When we were young we used to be told, in our house at home, that "elbow-grease" was the one essential necessary to getting a tough piece of work well done.