of fancy the pen had lightly written all the fancies. He did not know it
when he was doing so, but with that word, fancy, he has described
exactly the gift with which his brain was specially endowed. If a writer
be accurate, or sonorous, or witty, or simply pathetic, he may, I think,
gauge his own powers. He may do so after experience with something of
certainty. But fancy is a gift which the owner of it cannot measure, and
the power of which, when he is using it, he cannot himself understand.
There is the same lambent flame flickering over everything he did, even
the dinner-cards and the picture pantomimes. He did not in the least
know what he put into those things. So it was with his verses. It was
only by degrees, when he was told of it by others, that he found that
they too were of infinite value to him in his profession.

The _Irish Sketch Book_ came out in 1843, in which he used, but only
half used, the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. He dedicates it to
Charles Lever, and in signing the dedication gave his own name. "Laying
aside," he says, "for a moment the travelling title of Mr. Titmarsh, let
me acknowledge these favours in my own name, and subscribe myself, &c.
&c., W. M. Thackeray." So he gradually fell into the declaration of his
own identity. In 1844 he made his journey to Turkey and Egypt,--_From
Cornhill to Grand Cairo_, as he called it, still using the old nom de
plume, but again signing the dedication with his own name. It was now
made to the captain of the vessel in which he encountered that famous
white squall, in describing which he has shown the wonderful power he
had over words.

In 1846 was commenced, in numbers, the novel which first made his name
well known to the world. This was _Vanity Fair_, a work to which it is
evident that he devoted all his mind. Up to this time his writings had
consisted of short contributions, chiefly of sketches, each intended to