the Anatomy of Conduct_, by John Skelton, and a very
absurd book no doubt it was. We may presume that it contained maxims on
etiquette, and that it was intended to convey in print those invaluable
lessons on deportment which, as Dickens has told us, were subsequently
given by Mr. Turveydrop, in the academy kept by him for that purpose.
Thackeray took this as his foundation for the _Fashionable Fax and
Polite Annygoats_, by Jeames Yellowplush, with which he commenced those
repeated attacks against snobbism which he delighted to make through a
considerable portion of his literary life. Oliver Yorke has himself
added four or five pages of his own to Thackeray's lucubrations; and
with the second, and some future numbers, there appeared illustrations
by Thackeray himself, illustrations at this time not having been common
with the magazine. From all this I gather that the author was already
held in estimation by _Fraser's_ confraternity. I remember well my own
delight with _Yellowplush_ at the time, and how I inquired who was the
author. It was then that I first heard Thackeray's name.

The _Yellowplush Papers_ were continued through nine numbers. No further
reference was made to Mr. Skelton and his book beyond that given at the
beginning of the first number, and the satire is only shown by the
attempt made by Yellowplush, the footman, to give his ideas generally on
the manners of noble life. The idea seems to be that a gentleman may, in
heart and in action, be as vulgar as a footman. No doubt he may, but the
chances are very much that he won't. But the virtue of the memoir does
not consist in the lessons, but in the general drollery of the letters.
The "orthogwaphy is inaccuwate," as a certain person says in the
memoirs,--"so inaccuwate" as to take a positive study to "compwehend"
it; but the joke, though old, is so handled as to be very amusing.
Thackeray soon rushes away from his criticisms on snobbism to other
matters. There are the details of a card-sharping enterprise, in which
we cannot but feel that we recognise something of the author's own
experiences in the misfortunes of Mr. Dawkins; there is the Earl of
Crab's, and then the first of those attacks which he was tempted to
make on the absurdities of his brethren of letters, and the only one
which now has the appearance of having been ill-natured. His first
victims were Dr. Dionysius Lardner and Mr. Edward Bulwer Lytton, as he
was then. We can surrender the doctor to