d and changed
the subject, not caring to dwell on thoughts painful to him. The
elbow-grease of thinking was always distasteful to him, and had no doubt
been so when he conceived and carried out this work.

To the ordinary labour necessary for such a novel he added very much by
his resolution to write it in a style different, not only from that
which he had made his own, but from that also which belonged to the
time. He had devoted himself to the reading of the literature of Queen
Anne's reign, and having chosen to throw his story into that period, and
to create in it personages who were to be peculiarly concerned with the
period, he resolved to use as the vehicle for his story the forms of
expression then prevalent. No one who has not tried it can understand
how great is the difficulty of mastering a phase of one's own language
other than that which habit has made familiar. To write in another
language, if the language be sufficiently known, is a much less arduous
undertaking. The lad who attempts to write his essay in Ciceronian Latin
struggles to achieve a style which is not indeed common to him, but is
more common than any other he has become acquainted with in that tongue.
But Thackeray in his work had always to remember his Swift, his Steele,
and his Addison, and to forget at the same time the modes of expression
which the day had adopted. Whether he asked advice on the subject, I do
not know. But I feel sure that if he did he must have been counselled
against it. Let my reader think what advice he would give to any writer
on such a subject. Probably he asked no advice, and would have taken
none. No doubt he found himself, at first imperceptibly, gliding into a
phraseology which had attractions for his ear, and then probably was so
charmed with the peculiarly masculine forms of sentences which thus
became familiar to him, that he thought it would be almost as difficult
to drop them altogether as altogether to assume the use of them. And if
he could do so successfully, how great would be the assistance given to
the local colouring which is needed for a novel in prose, the scene of
which is thrown far back from the writer's period! Were I to write a
poem about Coeur de Lion I should not mar my poem by using the simple
language of the day; but if I write a prose story of the time, I cannot
altogether avoid some attempt at far-away quaintnesses in language. To
call a purse a "gypsire," and to begin your little speeches