the victor on the occasion. There is some good fun in the
four first and four last lines of Thackeray's production.

In Africa,--a quarter of the world,--
Men's skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled;
And somewhere there, unknown to public view
A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.

* * * * *

I see her tribes the hill of glory mount,
And sell their sugars on their own account;
While round her throne the prostrate nations come,
Sue for her rice, and barter for her rum.

I cannot find in _The Snob_ internal evidence of much literary merit
beyond this. But then how many great writers have there been from whose
early lucubrations no future literary excellence could be
prognosticated?

There is something at any rate in the name of the publication which
tells of work that did come. Thackeray's mind was at all times
peculiarly exercised with a sense of snobbishness. His appreciation of
the vice grew abnormally, so that at last he had a morbid horror of a
snob--a morbid fear lest this or the other man should turn snob on his
hands. It is probable that the idea was taken from the early _Snob_ at
Cambridge, either from his own participation in the work or from his
remembrance of it. _The Snob_ lived, I think, but nine weeks, and was
followed at an interval, in 1830, by _The Gownsman_, which lived to the
seventeenth number, and at the opening of which Thackeray no doubt had a
hand. It professed to be a continuation of _The Snob_. It contains a
dedication to all proctors, which I should not be sorry to attribute to
him. "To all Proctors, past, present, and future--

Whose taste it is our privilege to follow,
Whose virtue it is our duty to imitate,
Whose presence it is our interest to avoid."

There is, however, nothing beyond fancy to induce me to believe that
Thackeray was the author of the dedication, and I do not know that there
is any evidence to show that he was connected with _The Snob_ beyond the
writing of _Timbuctoo_.

In 1830 he left Cambridge, and went to Weimar either in that year or in
1831. Between Weimar and Paris he spent some portion of his earlier
years, while his family,--his mother, that is, and his stepfather,--were
living in Devonshire. It was then the purport of his life to become an
artist, and he studied drawing at Paris, affecting especially
Bonnington, the young English artist who had himself