literature has entered upon a career of extreme respectability, this prejudice is unnecessary. But in the days of Bludyer and the Captain no one who respected his craft could do less than impose upon his fellow-craftsmen the obligations of order and honesty. Moreover, Thackeray was not unduly censorious in his judgment of his colleagues. While he would have them preserve a high standard of life, he would not condemn them too hardly if they failed. His sympathy with Shandon is clearly expressed, and he was no less kind to the model who sat for Shandon's portrait. "I have carried money," said he, "and from a noble brother man-of-letters, to some one not unlike Shandon in prison, and have watched the beautiful devotion of his wife in that place." But he was never of those who believed that a servile imitation of Shelley's or Byron's supposed vices was the short cut to genius, and the simple, honest views which he held he set forth with honest simplicity.

Nor, for the rest, would he cherish any illusions concerning his craft. He puts the strongest case against the professors of literature in the mouth of Warrington, and that sturdy hack does not spare the defendants. "A good deal of undeserved compassion has been thrown away upon what is called a bookseller's drudge," says Warrington; and when Pen in the inexperienced enthusiasm of youth protests against the cynicism bred of solitary pipes and ale, "a fiddlestick about men of genius," cries Warrington,-"I deny that there are so

many geniuses as people who whimper about the fate of men of letters assert there are." And in his own person Thackeray supports Warrington's view. In a review of Lytton's Memoir of Laman Blanchard, he declines to pity what he deems a fortunate career. He recognises that Blanchard followed the profession he loved best, and found his delight not only in the scanty reward of his work, but in the mere practice of literature. This attitude is surely more reasonable than Lytton's posture of sorrow and regret. After all, Blanchard's talent was slender enough, and doubtless he put it to the best possible use in the literature of the day.

Indeed, Thackeray's main argument that the man of letters must obey the general law of life and conduct is irrefragable, and it is only when he would apply the tenets of the Manchester school to literature that you disagree with him. Literature is not a mere matter of supply and demand. Some men, at any rate, write because they have something to say, and are undeterred by lack of appreciation. Thackeray himself did not renounce his craft because he failed to find readers. For ten years he wrote assiduously for the magazines, often without success. Barry Lyndon was a sad failure when it appeared in the pages of Regina, and Vanity Fair itself was within an ace of being suppressed at the fifth number for lack of subscribers. But Thackeray neither hesitated nor despaired. He knew in his heart that what he "supplied" was superior to the popular "demand"; he knew also that reputation was far better

than what he afterwards called it, "the cant of our trade"; and loyally he worked to win it. And his work was not thrown away, for reputation, conferred by fellowcraftsmen, is the assurance of self-respect, to sacrifice which is the peculiar sin of literature.

Nevertheless, if Thackeray erred at all in the judgment of his profession, he erred upon the right side. That which he wrote seems less than half true today, because the conditions of literary life are changed. Men of letters long ago deserted Bohemia to live upon the outskirts of Belgravia or within the sacred precincts of Tyburnia. They no longer address an audience of gentlemen from the Fleet, nor do they write masterpieces while hiding from their creditors. They pay their tailors, and they refrain from drink, and so far they conform to the standard which Thackeray set up for them. But with their prosperity they have developed new vices, which no Thackeray has arisen to castigate. They are pompous; they take themselves and their profession all too gravely; and, worse still, they hunger and thirst after notoriety. It is not legitimate reputation which keeps them awake— that is no longer the cant of their trade. They are sleeplessly eager for the advertisement not of their works, but of themselves. They are unhappy when they are taken for mere men, like lawyers or stockbrokers. They would, if they could, go through life with the stamp of their art upon them. It is hard to say which Thackeray would have preferred, his own

age or ours. But it is certain that the chapters devoted to the literary profession claimed an audience for Pendennis which would have been obstinately indifferent to its easy unaffected style, its pictures of contemporary manners, and its half-a-dozen vividly drawn characters. Perhaps the author's own comment upon the book is the fairest. "I lit upon a very stupid part, I'm sorry to say," he wrote to Mrs Brookfield, after reading some back numbers of Pendennis, "and yet how well written it is! What a shame the author don't write a complete good book!" A shame, indeed, which presently the author did his best to remove.

160

CHAPTER VI.

LECTURES AND LECTURING. ESMOND.

IN 1850, when the last number of Pendennis was given to the world, Thackeray's reputation was firmly assured, He was, in fact, the one rival near the throne of Dickens, and the zealous readers of the day enrolled themselves under one banner or the other, according to temperament. A year later, election to the Athenæum Club set a seal upon his fame, and it should be remembered to Croker's credit that Thackeray, as has been said, owed this honour in some measure to the advocacy of Mr Wenham. But in those days fame was not easily convertible into money, and men of letters were not apt to make a fortune with a single book. To enrich his family, therefore, Thackeray resolved upon a course of lectures. Within four years he travelled from end to end of England, and paid two visits to America. It was a task which was always irksome to him, yet he performed it with excellent taste and tact; and, after the first display at Willis's Rooms, success was