st of all, perhaps, in his etchings.
It is in his smallest cuts that he is seen to the best advantage, and in
them he occasionally challenges comparison with Doyle and Leech himself.

In the execution of his _Punch_ sketches, in nearly all the three
hundred and eighty of them, Thackeray was as summary as in the turning
of a ballad, and I describe elsewhere how he would make a drawing on the
wood while the engraver waited and chatted over a cigar. It was clearly
not his opinion that, as is nowadays adjudged to be the proper course,
elaborate studies should first be made from the life-model, even for
the execution of a simple _Punch_ picture. He preferred, when possible,
to confine his pencil to the illustration of his own text; but on
occasion he would produce a "social" cut--a drawing, that is to say,
with a joke printed beneath. Sometimes it would be in the manner of
Leech, as in the joke in Volume IX. (p. 3) called "The Ascot Cup Day,"
wherein a hot-potato-seller asks a small boy with a broom, "Why are you
on the crossing, James? Is your father Hill?" and is informed "No. He's
drove mother down to Hascot." More personal was such work as "The Stags,
a Drama of To-day," in which a retired thimblerigger and an unfortunate
costermonger, under a magnificent alias, take advantage of the railway
mania to make their application for shares--for which they could not
pay, of course, if things went wrong--in accordance with the game of
"heads I win, tails I vanish," at that time extensively played
throughout the country. Later on (in Volume XV.), following "The
Heavies," he gave, in seven scenes, a panorama of an "Author's
Miseries." In 1847 (Volume XII., p. 59) Thackeray contributed a "social"
picture which is to this day a wonder to all beholders. It is entitled
"Horrid Tragedy in Private Life," and represents a room in which two
ladies, or a lady and a servant, are in a state of the greatest alarm.
What the meaning of it all is there is nothing whatever to indicate
(unless it be that something has fallen on the taller lady's dress); and
on its appearance the "Man in the Moon" offered a reward of L500 and a
free pardon to anyone who would publish an explanation. The reward was
never claimed; and Thackeray's contribution remains one of _Punch's_
Prize Puzzles, unsolved, and, apparently, unsolvable.

It was in No. 137--that notable part which contained "The Song of the
Shirt"--that Thackeray appeared in his own right, as belongin