Think of it--a collection of little wood-cuts or etchings, with each
its appropriate legend--a series of small pictures equal in volume and
in value to the whole of Thackeray's literary work! Think of the
laughter and the tears from old and young, rich and poor, and from the
thousands who have not the intelligence or the culture to appreciate
great books, or lack time or inclination to read them.

All there was in the heart and mind of Thackeray, expressed through a
medium so simple and direct that even a child could be made to feel
it, or a chimney-sweep! For where need we draw the line? We are only
pretending.

Now I am quite content with Thackeray as he is--a writer of books,
whose loss to literature could not be compensated by any gain to the
gentle art of drawing little figures in black and white--"thousands of
funny women and droll men." All I wish to point out--in these days
when drawing is pressed into the service of daily journalism, and with
such success that there will soon be as many journalists with the
pencil as with the pen--is this, that the career of the future social
pictorial satirist is full of splendid possibilities undreamed-of yet.

It is a kind of hybrid profession still in its infancy--hardly
recognised as a profession at all--something halfway between
literature and art--yet potentially combining all that is best and
most essential in both, and appealing as effectively as either to some
of our strongest needs and most natural instincts.

It has no school as yet; its methods are tentative, and its few
masters have been pretty much self-taught. But I think that a method
and a school will evolve themselves by degrees--are perhaps evolving