Contributions to Punch.

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its lid. A passer-by-who had long been grateful to our author, as to a dear unknown and enriching friend, for his writings in Fraser and in Punch, and had longed for some way of reaching him, and telling him how his work was relished and valued--bethought himself of sending this inkstand to Mr. Thackeray. He went in, and asked its price. "Ten guineas, sir." He said to himself, "There are many who feel as I do; why shouldn't we send him up to him? I'll get eighty several half-crowns, and that will do it;" (he had ascertained that there would be discount for ready money). With the help of a friend, who says he awoke to Thackeray, and divined his great future, when he came, one evening, in Fraser for May 1844, on the word "kinopium," the half-crowns were soon forthcoming, and it is pleasant to remember, that in the "octogint" are the names of Lord Jeffrey and Sir William Hamilton, who gave their halfcrowns with the heartiest good-will. A short note was written telling the story. The little man in silver was duly packed, and sent with the following inscription round the base :

13, YOUNG STReet, Kensington Square, May 11, 1848.

"MY DEAR SIR,-The arms and the man arrived in safety yesterday, and I am glad to know the names of two of the eighty Edinburgh friends who have taken such a kind method of showing their good-will towards me. If you are grati I am gratior. Such tokens of regard & sympathy are very precious to a writer like myself, who have some

Here is the passage. It is from Little Travels and Roadside Sketches. Why are they not republished? We must have his Opera Omnia. He is on the top of the Richmond omnibus. "If I were a great prince, and rode outside of coaches (as I should if I were a great prince), I would, whether I smoked or not, have a case of the best Havannahs in my pocket, not for my own smoking, but to give them to the snobs on the coach, who smoke the vilest cheroots. They poison the air with the odour of their filthy weeds. A man at all easy in circumstances would spare himself much annoyance by taking the above simple precaution.

"A gentleman sitting behind me tapped me on the back, and asked for a light. He was a footman or rather valet. He had no livery, but the three

difficulty still in making people understand what you have been good enough to find out in Edinburgh that under the mask satirical there walks about a sentimental gentleman who means not unkindly to any mortal person. I can see exactly the same expression under the vizard of my little friend in silver, and hope some day to shake the whole octogint by the hand gratos & gratas, and thank them for their friendliness and regard. I think I had best say no more on the subject lest I should be tempted into some enthusiastic writing of wh I am afraid. I assure you these tokens of what I can't help acknowledging as popularity-make me humble as well as grateful-and make me feel an almost awful sense of the responsibility wh falls upon a man in such a station. Is it deserved or undeserved? Who is this that sets up to preach to mankind, and to laugh at many things wh men reverence? I hope I may be able to tell the truth always, & to see it aright, according to the eyes w God Almighty gives me. And if, in the exercise of my calling I get friends, and find encouragement and sympathy, I need not tell you how much I feel and am thankful for this support.- Indeed I can't reply lightly upon this subject or feel otherwise than very grave when people begin to praise me as you do. Wishing you and my Edinburgh friends all health and happiness believe me my dear Sir most faithfully yours

"W. M. THACKERAY."

How like the man is this gentle and serious letter, written these long years ago! He tells us frankly his "calling:" he is a preacher to mankind. He "laughs," he does not sneer. He asks home questions at himself as well as the world: "Who is this?" Then his feeling "not otherwise than very grave" when people begin to praise, is true Conscientiousness. This servant of his Master hoped to be able to tell the truth always, and to see it aright, according to the eyes which God Almighty gives me." His picture by himself will be received as correct now, "a sentimental gentleman, meaning not unkindly to any mortal person"-sentimental in its good old sense, and a gentleman in heart and speech. And that little touch about enthusiastic writing, proving all the more that the enthusiasm itself was there.

Of his work in Punch, the "Ballads of Pleaceman X," the "Snob friends who accompanied him were tall men in pepper-and-salt undress jackets, with a duke's coronet on their buttons.

"After tapping me on the back, and when he had finished his cheroot, the gentleman produced another wind instrument, which he called a ‘kinopium,' a sort of trumpet, on which he showed a great inclination to play. He began puffing out of the kinopium an abominable air, which he said was the Duke's March.' It was played by the particular request of the pepper-and-salt gentry. "The noise was so abominable, that even the coachman objected, and said it was not allowed to play on his bus. 'Very well,' said the valet, we're only of the Duke of B's establishment, THAT'S ALL.'"

"The Paris Sketch-Book."

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Papers," "Jeames' Diary," the "Travels and Sketches in London," a "Little Dinner at Timmins'," are now familiar to most readers. But besides these he wrote much which has found no place in the Miscellanies. M. de la Pluche discoursed touching many matters other than his own rise and fall. "Our Fat Contributor" wandered over the face of the earth gaining and imparting much wisdom and experience, if little information; Dr. Solomon Pacifico "prosed" on various things besides the "pleasures of being a Fogy;" and even two of the "Novels by Eminent Hands," Crinoline and Stars and Stripes, have been left to forgetfulness." Mrs. Tickletoby's Lectures on the History of England" in vol. iii. are especially good reading. Had they been completed, they would have formed a valuable contribution to the philosophy of history. His contributions to Punch became less frequent about 1850, but the connexion was not entirely broken off till much later; we remember, in 1854, the "Letters from the Seat of War, by our own Bashi-Bazouk," who was, in fact, Major Gahagan again, always foremost in his country's cause. To the last, as Mr. Punch has himself informed us, he continued to be an adviser and warm friend, and was a constant guest at the weekly symposia.

In

In addition to all this work for periodicals, Mr. Thackeray had ventured on various independent publications. We have already alluded to Flore et Zephyr, his first attempt. 1840, he again tried fortune with "The Paris Sketch-Book," which is at least remarkable for a dedication possessing the quite peculiar merit of expressing real feeling. It is addressed to M. Aretz, Tailor, 27, Rue Richelieu, Paris; and we quote it the more readily that, owing to the failure of these volumes to attract public attention, the rare virtues of that gentleman have been less widely celebrated than they deserve:

"SIR,-It becomes every man in his station to acknowledge and praise virtue wheresoever he may find it, and to point it out for the admiration and example of his fellow-men.

"Some months since, when you presented to the writer of these pages a small account for coats and pantaloons manufactured by you, and when you were met by a statement from your debtor that an immediate settlement of your bill would be extremely inconvenient to him, your reply was, 'Mon dieu, Sir, let not that annoy you; if you want money, as a gentleman often does in a strange country, I have a thousand-franc note at my house, which is quite at your service.' History or experience, Sir, makes us acquainted with so few actions that can be compared to yours-an offer like this from a stranger and a tailor seems to me so astonishing,-that you must pardon me for making your virtue public, and acquainting the English nation with your merit and your name. Let me add, Sir, that you live on the first

VOL. XL. NO. LXXIX.

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floor; that your cloths and fit are excellent, and your charges moderate and just; and, as a humble tribute of my admiration, permit me to lay these volumes at your feet.-Your obliged faithful servant,

"M. A. TITMARSH."

Some of the papers in these two volumes were reprints, as "Little Poinsinet" and "Cartouche" from Fraser for 1839; "Mary Ancel" from The New Monthly for 1839; others appeared then for the first time. They are, it must be confessed, of unequal merit. "A Caution to Travellers" is a swindling business, afterwards narrated in Pendennis by Amory or Altamont as among his own respectable adventures; "Mary Ancel," and "The Painter's Bargain" are amusing stories; while a "Gambler's Death" is a tale quite awful in the everyday reality of its horror. There is much forcible criticism on the French school of painting and of novel-writing, and two papers especially good called "Caricatures and Lithography in Paris," and "Meditations at Versailles," the former of which gives a picture of Parisian manners and feeling in the Orleans times in no way calculated to make us desire those days back again; the latter an expression of the thoughts called up by the splendour of Versailles and the beauty of the Petit Trianon, in its truth, sarcasm, and half-melancholy, worthy of his best days. All these the public, we think, would gladly welcome in a more accessible form. Of the rest of the Sketch-Book the same can hardly be said, and yet we should ourselves much regret never to have seen, for example, the four graceful imitations of Béranger.

The appreciative and acquisitive tendencies of our Yankee friends forced, we are told, independent authorship on Lord Macaulay and Sir James Stephen. We owe to the same cause the publication of the "Comic Tales and Sketches" in 1841; Mr Yellowplush's memoirs having been more than once reprinted in America before that date. The memoirs were accompanied with "The Fatal Boots" (from the Comic Almanack); the "Bedford Row Conspiracy," and the Reminiscences of that astonishing Major Gahagan (both from the New Monthly Magazine, 1838-40, a periodical then in great glory, with Hood, Marryat, Jerrold, and Laman Blanchard among its contributors); all now so known and so appreciated that the failure of this third effort seems altogether unaccountable. In 1843, however, the "Irish Sketch-Book" was, we believe, tolerably successful; and in 1846 the "Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo was still more so; in which year also Vanity Fair began the career which has given him his place and name in English literature.

We have gone into these details concerning Mr. Thackeray's

His way of Working.

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early literary life, not only because they seem to us interesting and instructive in themselves; not only because we think his severe judgment rejecting so many of his former efforts should in several instances be reversed; but because they give us much aid in arriving at a true estimate of his genius. He began literature as a profession early in life-about the age of twenty-five-but even then he was, as he says of Addison, "full and ripe." Yet it was long before he attained the measure of his strength, or discovered the true bent of his powers. His was no sudden leap into fame. On the contrary, it was by slow degrees, and after many and vain endeavours that he attained to anything like success. Were it only to show how hard these endeavours were, the above retrospect would be well worth while; not that the retrospect is anything like exhaustive. In addition to all we have mentioned, he wrote for the Westminster, for the Examiner, and the Times; was connected with the Constitutional, and also, it is said, with the Torch and the Parthenon-these last three being papers which enjoyed a brief existence. No man ever more decidedly refuted the silly notion which disassociates genius from labour. His industry must have been unremitting, for he worked slowly, rarely retouching, writing always with great thought and habitual correctness of expression. His writing would of itself show this; always neat and plain; capable of great beauty and minuteness. He used to say that if all trades failed, he would earn sixpences by writing the Lord's Prayer and the Creed (not the Athanasian) in the size of one. He considered and practised caligraphy as one of the fine arts, as did Porson and Dr. Thomas Young. He was continually catching new ideas from passing things, and seems frequently to have carried his work in his pocket, and when a thought, or a turn, or a word struck him, it was at once recorded. In the fulness of his experience, he was well pleased when he wrote six pages of Esmond in a day; and he always worked in the day, not at night. He never threw away his ideas; if at any time they passed unheeded, or were carelessly expressed, he repeats them, or works them up more tellingly. In these earlier writings we often stumble upon the germ of an idea, or a story, or a character with which his greater works have made us already familiar; thus the swindling scenes during the sad days of Becky's decline and fall, and the Baden sketches in the Newcomes, the Deuceaces, and Punters, and Loders, are all in the Yellowplush Papers and the Paris Sketch-Book; the University pictures of Pendennis are sketched, though slightly, in the ShabbyGenteel Story; the anecdote of the child whose admirer of seven will learn that she has left town "from the newspapers," is transferred from the "Book of Snobs" to Ethel Newcome;