stand by itself in the periodical to which it was sent. _Barry Lyndon_
had hitherto been the longest; but that and _Catherine Hayes_, and the
_Hoggarty Diamond_, though stories continued through various numbers,
had not as yet reached the dignity,--or at any rate the length,--of a
three-volume novel. But of late novels had grown to be much longer than
those of the old well-known measure. Dickens had stretched his to nearly
double the length, and had published them in twenty numbers. The attempt
had caught the public taste and had been pre-eminently successful. The
nature of the tale as originated by him was altogether unlike that to
which the readers of modern novels had been used. No plot, with an
arranged catastrophe or _dénoûment_, was necessary. Some untying of the
various knots of the narrative no doubt were expedient, but these were
of the simplest kind, done with the view of giving an end to that which
might otherwise be endless. The adventures of a _Pickwick_ or a
_Nickleby_ required very little of a plot, and this mode of telling a
story, which might be continued on through any number of pages, as long
as the characters were interesting, met with approval. Thackeray, who
had never depended much on his plot in the shorter tales which he had
hitherto told, determined to adopt the same form in his first great
work, but with these changes;--That as the central character with
Dickens had always been made beautiful with unnatural virtue,--for who
was ever so unselfish as _Pickwick_, so manly and modest as _Nicholas_,
or so good a boy as _Oliver_?--so should his centre of interest be in
every respect abnormally bad.

As to Thackeray's reason for this,--or rather as to that condition of
mind which brought about this result,--I will say something in a final
chapter, in which I will endeavour to describe the nature and effect of
his work generally. Here it will be necessary only to declare that, such
was the choice he now made of a subject in his first attempt to rise out