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 amusement of his friends. At the end of two or three years of desultory 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 Athenæum 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 emboldened him to start on his own account, and risk an independent publication."

The origin of the work in Thackeray's mind can only be traced conjecturally. Mr. James Payn, a successor to the novelist in the conduct of Cornhill Magazine, has given an account of his first meeting with Thackeray at a dinner party. "There were

a dozen people or so at dinner, all unknown to Thackeray, but he was in good spirits and made himself very agreeable. It disappointed me excessively when, immediately after dinner, he informed me that he had a most particular engagement, and was about to wish good-night to his host. 'But will you not even smoke a cigar first?' I enquired. 'A cigar? Oh, they smoke here, do they? Well, to tell you the truth, that was my engagement,' and

he remained for some hours. There was an ancient gentleman at table who had greatly distinguished himself half a century ago at college, by whom the novelist was much attracted, and especially when he told him that there was nothing really original in modern literature; everything, he said, came indirectly more or less from I think he said - Pindar. "But at all events Pindar did not write Vanity Fair,' I said.

"Yes, sir,' answered the old gentleman confidently, he did. In the highest and noblest sense Pindar did write it.'

"This view of affairs, which was quite new to him, delighted Thackeray, who was so pleased with his evening that he invited the whole company, teen in all, to dine with him the next day."

four

Mr. Payn is not quite sure that it was Pindar who was the father of all modern literature: no matter, it was some Greek classical author. But though Thackeray resided for a year or two at Cambridge, and knew the outside of college life, as his novels show, it is quite certain that he owed little to a distinctly classical training. It is nearer the mark to say that he was in temper and breeding an English gentleman who knew his Paris well, and whose personal experience had made a sort of Asmodeus of him in his early manhood.

"Thackeray had nearly all the materials that usually go to the making of a first-rate classical scholar. He had wonderful memory, an absolute faculty of imitation, which might have been employed in following the great classic models of verse and prose; he had the he had the power of acquiring language; and, it is needless to say, an intense admiration of the beautiful. He got to love his Horace, and was,

no doubt, actually a better scholar than many of our first-rate writers of English; but he was not, and never pretended to be, a high classical scholar. I speak of the fact; none but a pedant would think of detracting from him on that ground: we have five hundred, five thousand, high classical scholars, without getting a Thackeray out of them. 'Son esprit etait a libre allure,' as Lamartine says of one of his school friends. He had no school industry. One would be sorry to let any schoolboy read the long list of great literary men of whom the same might be said. Probably, too, as a younger boy he had been ill-grounded, and so lost confidence when he came to cope with those who had been better initiated, and gave up the race in which he thought he might fail, for he had plenty of pride and ambition. Not one of us would have given him credit for that 'stalk of carl hemp' with which he met subsequent misfortunes and difficulties, and that firm and noble perseverance with which he worked his way gradually upwards, when the cheers of encouragement were comparatively faint and few." 1

If we take his earlier work as practice work, it is not surprising that he should wish to try his hand at some longer flight, and fortunately for him there had come into vogue, through Dickens's popularity, a style of publication which exactly suited his needs. Dickens had been issuing his novels in monthly parts with illustrations, and had won a marked success. It is interesting to consider that this mode of publication once so prevalent in England has now pretty much ceased there, and that it never has had any vogue in the United States. The explanation is a simple one. The monthly magazine in England

1 J. F. B. in The Cornhill Magazine for January, 1865.

at that time was high-priced and had but a limited circulation; it had hardly established itself as a common vehicle for the best literature, for it was overshadowed by the great quarterlies, and even authors looked upon it as hardly more than a useful means of livelihood while they were making ready for their books—the real literature. The monthly parts disappeared with the advent of the Cornhill Magazine and Household Words, with their host of imitators. In America, the cheap monthly magazine had an earlier start and a clearer field, and quickly availed itself of the serial novel as a special

attraction.

This issue in monthly numbers had an additional attraction for Thackeray that it fitted well his genius, which appealed to readers through the delicate detail of his work rather than through the accumulation of current or the development of an absorbing plot. It was his business to make his readers acquainted with the men and women who thronged his mind, and by the leisurely movement of a monthly publication he could gather into a comprehensive record the vast variety of observations of life which heretofore he had scattered through disjointed sketches. A great writer, conscious of growing power, becomes dissatisfied with any mode of composition which forbids him to let his power out, and Thackeray must have waxed impatient under the fretting limitations of periodical and scrappy work. He calls his book a novel without a hero, and by this frank announcement indicates clearly his own understanding of the nature of his genius, which is essentially historical rather than dramatic.

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that Thackeray was confident of his power in the sense

that Dickens was confident. He was in reality a humble man, who was impelled to write and to draw by the instinct of his genius, but whose knowledge of art and literature, added to a sensitive nature and an almost morbid passion for sincerity, made him shrink from the test of final composition. He was besides, like many men who see clearly and see many sides, hard to be driven into execution of work. There was always some inertia to be overcome, and in Thackeray's case the need of maintenance and the desire to give his children the best of everything were the spurs which started him. "I married early and wrote for bread," he once said, "and Vanity Fair was my first successful work.”

When he wrote this book he was living at No. 13 (now No. 16) Young Street, Kensington. "Most of his work was done in a second-story room, overlooking an open space of gardens and orchards; and the gentleman who at present occupies the house has placed an entablature under the window commemorating the genius that has consecrated it. Between the dates, 1847 and 1853, the initials W. M. T. are grouped in a monogram in the centre of the entablature, and in the border the names of Vanity Fair, Esmond, and Pendennis are inscribed. Just across the street Miss Thackeray (Mrs. Ritchie) now lives, in full view of her old home, and in her charming novel, Old Kensington, she affectionately calls Young Street dear old street!' There is no doubt that the happiest years of Thackeray's life were spent in the old, bow-windowed cottage.

"I once made a pilgrimage with Thackeray," says Mr. Fields, "to the various houses where his books had been written; and I remember, when we came

1 Thackeray's London, by W. H. Rideing, pp. 98, 99.