itten
with the same feeling,--but the public has already recognised the truth
of the review generally. There can be no doubt that Thackeray, though he
had hitherto been but a contributor of anonymous pieces to
periodicals,--to what is generally considered as merely the ephemeral
literature of the month,--had already become effective on the tastes and
morals of readers. Affectation of finery; the vulgarity which apes good
breeding but never approaches it; dishonest gambling, whether with dice
or with railway shares; and that low taste for literary excitement which
is gratified by mysterious murders and Old Bailey executions had already
received condign punishment from Yellowplush, Titmarsh, Fitzboodle, and
Ikey Solomon. Under all those names Thackeray had plied his trade as a
satirist. Though the truths, as the reviewer said, had been merely sent
undulating through the air, they had already become effective.

Thackeray had now become a personage,--one of the recognised stars of
the literary heaven of the day. It was an honour to know him; and we may
well believe that the givers of dinners were proud to have him among
their guests. He had opened his oyster,--with his pen, an achievement
which he cannot be said to have accomplished until _Vanity Fair_ had
come out. In inquiring about him from those who survive him, and knew
him well in those days, I always hear the same account. "If I could only
tell you the impromptu lines which fell from him!" "If I had only kept
the drawings from his pen, which used to be chucked about as though they
were worth nothing!" "If I could only remember the drolleries!" Had they
been kept, there might now be many volumes of these sketches, as to
which the reviewer says that their talent was "altogether of the Hogarth
kind." Could there be any kind more valuable? Like Hogarth, he could
always make his picture tell his story; though, unlike Hogarth, he had
not learned to draw. I have had sent to me for my inspection an album of
drawings and letters, which, in the course of twenty years, from 1829 to
1849, were despatched from Thackeray to his old friend Edward
Fitzgerald. Looking at the wit displayed in the drawings, I feel
inclined to say that had he persisted he would have been a second
Hogarth. There is a series of ballet scenes, in which "Flore et Zephyr"
are the two chief performers, which for expression and drollery exceed
anything that I know of the kind. The set in this book are lithograp