strokes. Thackeray's
famous book owes half its popularity to the happy name he borrowed from
John Bunyan. Thackeray's author's heart must have leaped in his bosom
when Vanity Fair struck him as a title for his great satire. 'Then I saw
in my dream that when they were got out of the wilderness they presently
saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity, and at that
town there is a fair kept called Vanity Fair. The fair is kept all the
year long, and it beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where
it is kept is lighter than Vanity. And, also, because all that is sold
there is vanity. As is the saying of the wise, All that cometh is
vanity. The fair is no new erected business, but a thing of ancient
standing: I will show you the original of it. About five thousand years
ago there were pilgrims walking to the Celestial City, as these two
honest persons now are, and Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with their
companions, perceiving that by the path that the pilgrims made, that
their way to the city lay through this town of Vanity, they contrived
there to set up a fair: a fair wherein should be sold all sorts of
vanity, and that it should last all the year long. Therefore at this
fair are all such merchandise sold as houses, lands, trades, places,
honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, pleasures, and
delights of all sorts, as wives, husbands, children, masters, servants,
lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, precious stones, and what not.
And, moreover, at this fair at all times there is to be seen juggling,
cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every
kind.' And then our author goes on to tell us the names of the various
streets and rows where such and such wares are vended. And from that
again he goes on to tell how the Prince of princes Himself went at one
time through this same fair, and that upon a fair day too, and how the
lord of the fair himself came and took Him from street to street to try
to get Him induced to cheapen and buy some of the vain merchandise. But
as it turned out He had no mind to the merchandise in question, and He
therefore passed through the town without laying out so much as one
farthing upon its vanities. The fair, therefore, you will see, is of
long standing and a very great fair. Now, our two pilgrims had heard of
all that, they remembered also what Evangelist had told them about the
fair, and so they buttoned up