THACKERAY




CHAPTER I.

BIOGRAPHICAL.


In the foregoing volumes of this series of _English Men of Letters_, and
in other works of a similar nature which have appeared lately as to the
_Ancient Classics_ and _Foreign Classics_, biography has naturally been,
if not the leading, at any rate a considerable element. The desire is
common to all readers to know not only what a great writer has written,
but also of what nature has been the man who has produced such great
work. As to all the authors taken in hand before, there has been extant
some written record of the man's life. Biographical details have been
more or less known to the world, so that, whether of a Cicero, or of a
Goethe, or of our own Johnson, there has been a story to tell. Of
Thackeray no life has been written; and though they who knew him,--and
possibly many who did not,--are conversant with anecdotes of the man,
who was one so well known in society as to have created many anecdotes,
yet there has been no memoir of his life sufficient to supply the wants
of even so small a work as this purports to be. For this the reason may
simply be told. Thackeray, not long before his death, had had his taste
offended by some fulsome biography. Paragraphs, of which the eulogy
seemed to have been the produce rather of personal love than of inquiry
or judgment, disgusted him, and he begged of his girls that when he