of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. It is on
these unimportant papers that Chesterton thinks was based the attack on
Thackeray for being a cynic.

In passing, it is not necessary to say more than that Thackeray's
marriage ended in a horrible manner: Mrs. Thackeray was sent to an
asylum. 'I would do it over again,' said Thackeray; which was a 'fine
thing to say.' It was really carrying out 'for better or worse,' which
often enough really means for better only.

* * * * *

It will now be well at once to plunge into the very heart of Thackeray,
that heart which beat beneath the huge, gaunt frame. The two books which
have made his name famous, and what Chesterton thinks of them, must be
now gone into.

'The Book of Snobs' was one of those literary rarities that has genius
in its very name. No one probably really thinks himself a snob; every
one likes to read of one. Thackeray brought snobbishness to a classic.
There had been books of scoundrels, there had been books of heroes,
there had been books of nincompoops, now there was a book of those
people who abound in every community, and who are snobs.

'This work was much needed and very admirably done. The solemn
philosophic framework, the idea of treating snobbishness as a science,
was original and sound; for snobbishness is indeed a disease in our
Society.'

Unfortunately Chesterton is not nearly hard enough on snobbishness. Were
it a disease, it might be excusable as being at times unavoidable; it is
nothing of the sort, it is a deliberate thing that undermines society
more than anything; it is entirely spontaneous, and flourishes in every
community, from the Church to the Jockey Club.

'Aristocracy does not have snobs any more than democracy'; but this
'Thackeray was too restrained and early Victorian to see.' There are at
the present day a great number of people who will not see that
Bolshevism is as snobbish as Suburbia, that the poor man in the Park
Lodge is as much a snob as his master, who only knows the county folks.
Snobbery is not the monopoly of any one set; even also is it, as
Thackeray says,'a mean admiration' that thinks it is better to be a
'made' peer than an honest gardener.

'The true source of snobs in England was the refusal to take one side or
the other in the crisis of the French Revolution.'

The title of 'Vanity Fair' was an inspiration. It gives the ideas of the
disharmonies that can be found in any market pl