fears;--with a resolution of which we can well understand that it should
have waned at times, of earning his bread, if he did not make his
fortune, in the world of literature. One has not to look far for
evidence of the condition I have described,--that it was so, Amaryllis
and all. How or when he made his very first attempt in London, I have
not learned; but he had not probably spent his money without forming
"press" acquaintances, and had thus found an aperture for the thin end
of the wedge. He wrote for _The Constitutional_, of which he was part
proprietor, beginning his work for that paper as a correspondent from
Paris. For a while he was connected with _The Times_ newspaper, though
his work there did not I think amount to much. His first regular
employment was on _Fraser's Magazine_, when Mr. Fraser's shop was in
Regent Street, when Oliver Yorke was the presumed editor, and among
contributors, Carlyle was one of the most notable. I imagine that the
battle of life was difficult enough with him even after he had become
one of the leading props of that magazine. All that he wrote was not
taken, and all that was taken was not approved. In 1837-38, the _History
of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond_ appeared in the
magazine. The _Great Hoggarty Diamond_ is now known to all readers of
Thackeray's works. It is not my purpose to speak specially of it here,
except to assert that it has been thought to be a great success. When it
was being brought out, the author told a friend of his,--and of
mine,--that it was not much thought of at Fraser's, and that he had been
called upon to shorten it. That is an incident disagreeable in its
nature to any literary gentleman, and likely to be specially so when he
knows that his provision of bread, certainly of improved bread and
butter, is at stake. The man who thus darkens his literary brow with the
frown of disapproval, has at his disposal all the loaves and all the
fishes that are going. If the writer be successful, there will come a
time when he will be above such frowns; but, when that opinion went