discomfiture of the Whigs and Lord Melbourne, suggested to Thackeray the
line: "Young's Night Thought--Wish I hadn't franked that letter!" Its
appearance in _Punch_ caused Mr. Sparkes to buttonhole the writer at the
Reform Club, and excitedly dilate on the mischief that was being done to
the Party by such very public and sarcastic means. Thackeray burst out
laughing--"the mountain shook," says the historian--but felt a little
genuine pleasure at the circumstance all the same.

As success and public recognition came to him for his novels--the
success for which he had worked so hard--his disinclination to work for
_Punch_ increased. No doubt the policy of the paper had something to do
with it; but there can be little question that the great fame and reward
he derived from novel writing made more occasional work distasteful to
him, and in 1854--the year of "The Newcomes"--Thackeray corrected his
last proof for _Punch_. He had foreseen it for some time, for in 1849 he
had written to Mrs. Brookfield from Paris, "What brought me to this
place? Well, I am glad I came; it will give me a subject for at least
six weeks in _Punch_" ["Paris Revisited," &c.], "of which I was getting
so weary that I thought I must have done with it." Five years afterwards
he wrote to the same lady: "What do you think I have done to-day? I have
sent in my resignation to _Punch_. There appears in next _Punch_ an
article so wicked, I think, by poor ---- [? Jerrold] that upon my word
I don't think I ought to pull any longer in the same boat with such a
savage little Robespierre. The appearance of this incendiary article put
me in such a rage that I could only cool myself with a ride in the
park." Writing a long while afterwards for the public eye, he said,
"Another member of _Punch's_ Cabinet, the biographer of Jeames, the
author of the 'Snob papers,' resigned his functions on account of Mr.
Punch's assaults upon the present Emperor of the French nation, whose
anger he thought it was unpatriotic to arouse"--being thus in Punchian
policy, if not in motive, in entire accord with Mr. Ruskin.

A more complete and emphatic statement of the facts, as Thackeray viewed
them, will be found in the subjoined letter from the novelist to one of
the _Punch_ proprietors, which, by their courtesy, is here printed for
the first time:--

"March 24th, 1855.
"36, Onslo