his golden fleece among plain people, and Thackeray in high society.  The chief difference between the two novelists, however, is not one of environment but of temperament.  Put Thackeray in a workhouse, and he will still find material for another Book of Snobs; put Dickens in society, and he cannot help finding undreamed-of possibilities among bewigged and bepowdered high lords and ladies.  For Dickens is romantic and emotional, and interprets the world largely through his imagination; Thackeray is the realist and moralist, who judges solely by observation and reflection.  He aims to give us a true picture of the society of his day, and as he finds it pervaded by intrigues and snobbery he proceeds to satirize it and point out its moral evils.  In his novels he is influenced by Swift and Fielding, but he is entirely free from the bitterness of the one and the coarseness of the other, and his satire is generally softened by a noble tenderness.  Taken together, the novels of Dickens and Thackeray give us a remarkable picture of all classes of English society in the middle of the nineteenth century.

LIFE.  Thackeray was born in 1811, in Calcutta, where his father held a civil position under the Indian government.  When the boy was five years old his father died, and the mother returned with her child to England.  Presently she married again, and Thackeray was sent to the famous Charterhouse school, of which he has given us a vivid picture in The Newcomes.  Such a school would have been a veritable heaven to Dickens, who at this time was tossed about between poverty and ambition; but Thackeray detested it for its rude manners, and occasionally referred to it as the “Slaughterhouse.”  Writing to his mother he says:  “There are three hundred and seventy boys in the school.  I wish, there were only three hundred and sixty-nine.”

In 1829 Thackeray entered Trinity College, Cambridge, but left after less than two years, without taking a degree, and went to Germany and France where he studied with the idea of becoming an artist.  When he became of age, in 1832, he came into possession of a comfortable fortune, returned to England, and settled down in the Temple to study law.  Soon he began to dislike the profession intensely, and we have in Pendennis a reflection of his mental attitude toward the law and the young men who studied it.  He soon lost his fortune, partly by gambling and speculation, partly by unsuccessful attempts at running a newspaper, and at twenty-two began for the first time to earn his own living, as an artist and illustrator.  An interesting meeting between Thackeray and Dickens at this time (1836) suggests the relative importance of the two writers.  Seymour, who was illustrating the Pickwick Papers, had just died, and Thackeray called upon Dickens with a few drawings and asked to be allowed to continue the illustrations.  Dickens was at this time at the beginning of his great popularity.  The better literary artist, whose