the
story of his life as far as it was then known;

"Full many a valuable truth," says the reviewer, "has been sent
undulating through the air by men who have lived and died unknown. At
this moment the rising generation are supplied with the best of their
mental aliment by writers whose names are a dead letter to the mass; and
among the most remarkable of these is Michael Angelo Titmarsh, alias
William Makepeace Thackeray, author of the _Irish Sketch Book_, of _A
Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo_, of _Jeames's Diary_, of _The Snob
Papers_ in _Punch_, of _Vanity Fair_, etc. etc.

"Mr. Thackeray is now about thirty-seven years of age, of a good family,
and originally intended for the bar. He kept seven or eight terms at
Cambridge, but left the university without taking a degree, with the
view of becoming an artist; and we well remember, ten or twelve years
ago, finding him day after day engaged in copying pictures in the
Louvre, in order to qualify himself for his intended profession. It may
be doubted, however, whether any degree of assiduity would have enabled
him to excel in the money-making branches, for his talent was altogether
of the Hogarth kind, and was principally remarkable in the pen-and-ink
sketches of character and situation, which he dashed off for the
amusement of his friends. At the end of two or three years of desultory
application he gave up the notion of becoming a painter, and took to
literature. He set up and edited with marked ability a weekly journal,
on the plan of _The Athenaeum_ and _Literary Gazette_, but was unable to
compete successfully with such long-established rivals. He then became a
regular man of letters,--that is, he wrote for respectable magazines and
newspapers, until the attention attracted to his contributions in
_Fraser's Magazine_ and _Punch_ emboldened him to start on his own
account, and risk an independent publication." Then follows a eulogistic
and, as I think, a correct criticism on the book as far as it had gone.
There are a few remarks perhaps a little less eulogistic as to some of
his minor writings, _The Snob Papers_ in particular; and at the end
there is a statement with which I think we shall all now agree; "A
writer with such a pen and pencil as Mr. Thackeray's is an acquisition
of real and high value in our literature."

The reviewer has done his work in a tone friendly to the author, whom he
knew,[2]--as indeed it may be said that this little book will be wr