d, of a calmer and easier time,
and perhaps also of a different class of readers. Thackeray has now
discovered that, as he says in his preface, 'to describe a real rascal
you must make him too hideous to show;' and that 'Society will not
tolerate the Natural in our Art.' Even the attempt to describe, in
_Pendennis_, one of 'the gentlemen of our age, no better nor worse
than most educated men,' has startled the prudery of the public for
whom he now finds himself writing. 'Many ladies have remonstrated, and
subscribers left me, because, in the course of the story, I described
a young man resisting and affected by temptation.' Here, again, is
another instance of the changes which rules of taste and convention
may undergo in the course of a generation; for surely not even the
straitest middle-class sect would in our day banish _Pendennis_ on the
score of impropriety. Mrs. Ritchie mentions that the author's
descriptions of literary life were criticised on the ground that he
was trying to win favour with the non-literary classes by decrying his
own profession--an absurd accusation which nettled him into replying.
The truth seems to be that Thackeray, who poked fun at the weak sides
of every class and calling, saw no reason why he should leave out his
own; and the men of letters might have been comforted by observing
that he dealt with them much more tenderly than with their natural
enemy the publisher, who has taken philosophically, for all we have
ever heard, the unmerciful caricatures of Bungay and Bacon in
Paternoster Row. Yet it may have been annoying to find such a writer
confidentially whispering to his readers 'that there is no race of
people who talk about books, or perhaps read books, so little as
literary men.'

_Pendennis_ is in Thackeray's best style, as the novelist of manners.
It opens, like _Vanity Fair_, with a short amusing scene that poses,
as the French say, some leading actor in the play, and encourages the
reader to go on. Next follows, as is usual with our author, a short
retrospective account of the people and places among whom the plot is
laid, with a descriptive pedigree of his hero. In his habit of setting
his portraits in a framework of family history (compare the Crawleys,
the Newcomes, the Esmonds) he resembles, though with less prolixity,
Balzac, and he displays much knowledge and observation of English
provincial life. He is, we imagine, the first high-class writer who
brought the Bohemian, pos