ntaining her mother's letters and her mementoes of home." Miss
Quigley is an ass; but we are made to sympathise entirely with the ass,
because of that morsel of pathos as to her mother's letters.

Clive Newcome, our hero, who is a second Pen, but a better fellow, is
himself a satire on young men,--on young men who are idle and ambitious
at the same time. He is a painter; but, instead of being proud of his
art, is half ashamed of it,--because not being industrious he has not,
while yet young, learned to excel. He is "doing" a portrait of Mrs.
Pendennis, Laura, and thus speaks of his business. "No. 666,"--he is
supposed to be quoting from the catalogue of the Royal Academy for the
year,--"No. 666. Portrait of Joseph Muggins, Esq., Newcome, George
Street. No. 979. Portrait of Mrs. Muggins on her gray pony, Newcome. No.
579. Portrait of Joseph Muggins, Esq.'s dog Toby, Newcome. This is what
I am fit for. These are the victories I have set myself on achieving. Oh
Mrs. Pendennis! isn't it humiliating? Why isn't there a war? Why haven't
I a genius? There is a painter who lives hard by, and who begs me to
come and look at his work. He is in the Muggins line too. He gets his
canvases with a good light upon them; excludes the contemplation of
other objects; stands beside his picture in an attitude himself; and
thinks that he and they are masterpieces. Oh me, what drivelling
wretches we are! Fame!--except that of just the one or two,--what's the
use of it?" In all of which Thackeray is speaking his own feelings about
himself as well as the world at large. What's the use of it all? Oh
vanitas vanitatum! Oh vanity and vexation of spirit! "So Clive Newcome,"
he says afterwards, "lay on a bed of down and tossed and tumbled there.
He went to fine dinners, and sat silent over them; rode fine horses, and
black care jumped up behind the moody horseman." As I write this I have
before me a letter from Thackeray to a friend describing his own
success when _Vanity Fair_ was coming out, full of the same feeling. He
is making money, but he spends it so fast that he never has any; and as
for the opinions expressed on his books, he cares little for what he
hears. There was always present to him a feeling of black care seated
behind the horseman,--and would have been equally so had there been no
real care present to him. A sardonic melancholy was the characteristic
most common to him,--which, however, was relieved by an always present
capacity for