h readers, I fear, seldom think much of this in regard to
books they have read--that the lesson taught in every page has been
good. There may be details of evil painted so as to disgust,--painted
almost too plainly,--but none painted so as to allure.

CHAPTER IV.

PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES.

The absence of the heroic was, in Thackeray, so palpable to Thackeray
himself that in his original preface to _Pendennis_, when he began to be
aware that his reputation was made, he tells his public what they may
expect and what they may not, and makes his joking complaint of the
readers of his time because they will not endure with patience the true
picture of a natural man. "Even the gentlemen of our age," he
says,--adding that the story of _Pendennis_ is an attempt to describe
one of them, just as he is,--"even those we cannot show as they are with
the notorious selfishness of their time and their education. Since the
author of _Tom Jones_ was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been
permitted to depict to his utmost power a MAN. We must shape him, and
give him a certain conventional temper." Then he rebukes his audience
because they will not listen to the truth. "You will not hear what moves
in the real world, what passes in society, in the clubs, colleges,
mess-rooms,--what is the life and talk of your sons." You want the
Raffaellistic touch, or that of some painter of horrors equally removed
from the truth. I tell you how a man really does act,--as did Fielding
with Tom Jones,--but it does not satisfy you. You will not sympathise
with this young man of mine, this Pendennis, because he is neither
angel nor imp. If it be so, let it be so. I will not paint for you
angels or imps, because I do not see them. The young man of the day,
whom I do see, and of whom I know the inside and the out thoroughly, him
I have painted for you; and here he is, whether you like the picture or
not. This is what Thackeray meant, and, having this in his mind, he
produced _Pendennis_.

The object of a novel should be to instruct in morals while it amuses. I
cannot think but that every novelist who has thought much of his art
will have realised as much as that for himself. Whether this may best be
done by the transcendental or by the commonplace is the question which
it more behoves the reader than the author to answer, because the author
may be fairly sure that he who can do the one will not, probably cannot,
do the other. If a lad b