and took seriously to
the work of a newspaper correspondent. On the romantic school, which
was just then at its height, he makes the following remark, which
betrays the antipathy to artificial and theatrical tendencies in
literature that always provoked his satire:

'In the time of Voltaire the heroes of poetry and drama were fine
gentlemen; in the days of Victor Hugo they bluster about in velvet
and mustachios and gold chains, but they seem in nowise more
poetical than their rigid predecessors.'

He had little taste, in fact, for mediaevalism in any shape, and 'old
Montaigne' was more to his liking. We are told, also, that he became
absorbed in Cousin's _Philosophy_, noting upon it that 'the excitement
of metaphysics must equal almost that of gambling'; and finding,
perhaps, no great attraction in either. After his marriage in 1836 he
settled down in London, devoting himself thenceforward to literature
as a profession; the _Yellowplush Papers_, published in 1837 by
_Fraser's Magazine_, being his earliest contribution of any length or
significance. In the introductory chapter Mrs. Ritchie says:

'I hardly know--nor, if I knew, should I care to give here--the
names and the details of the events which suggested some of the
_Yellowplush Papers_. The history of Mr. Deuceace was written from
life during a very early period of my father's career. Nor can one
wonder that his views were somewhat grim at that particular time,
and still bore the impress of an experience lately and very dearly
bought.... As a boy he had lost money at cards to some cardsharpers
who scraped acquaintance with him. He never blinked at the truth or
spared himself; but neither did he blind himself to the real
characters of the people in question, when once he had discovered
them. His villains became curious studies in human nature; he
turned them over in his mind, and he caused Deuceace, Barry Lyndon,
and Ikey Solomons, Esq., to pay back some of their ill-gotten
spoils, in an involuntary but very legitimate fashion, when he put
them into print and made them the heroes of those grim early
histories.'

We may infer from this passage that Thackeray's mind acted not only as
a microscope but as a magnifying glass; he had an eye, as one knows,
for characteristic details, and it appears that he could also enlarge
the small fry of scoundrelism into magnifice