CHAPTER VI.
THACKERAY'S BURLESQUES.
As so much of Thackeray's writing partakes of the nature of burlesque, it would have been unnecessary to devote a separate chapter to the subject, were it not that there are among his tales two or three so exceedingly good of their kind, coming so entirely up to our idea of what a prose burlesque should be, that were I to omit to mention them I should pass over a distinctive portion of our author's work.
The volume called _Burlesques_, published in 1869, begins with the _Novels by Eminent Hands_, and _Jeames's Diary_, to which I have already alluded.

It contains also _The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan_, _A Legend of the Rhine_, and _Rebecca and Rowena_.

It is of these that I will now speak.

_The History of the Next French Revolution_ and _Cox's Diary_, with which the volume is concluded, are, according to my thinking, hardly equal to the others; nor are they so properly called burlesques.
Nor will I say much of Major Gahagan, though his adventures are very good fun.

He is a warrior,--that is, of course,--and he is one in whose wonderful narrative all that distant India can produce in the way of boasting, is superadded to Ireland's best efforts in the same line.
Baron Munchausen was nothing to him; and to the bare and simple miracles of the baron is joined that humour without which Thackeray never tells any story.