Pen tried to engage her in conversation about poetry and about her profession.  He asked her what she thought about Ophelia’s madness, and whether she was in love with Hamlet or not?  “In love with such a little ojus creature as that stunted manager of a Bingley?” She bristled with indignation at the thought.  Pen explained that it was not of her he spoke, but of Ophelia of the play.  “Oh, indeed, if no offense was meant none was taken:  but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him—­not that glass of punch.”  Pen next tried her on Kotzebue.  “Kotzebue? who was he?” “The author of the play in which she had been performing so admirably.”  “She did not know that, the man’s name at the beginning of the book was Thompson,” she said.  Pen laughed at her adorable simplicity....  “How beautiful she is,” thought Pen, cantering homewards.  “How simple and how tender!  How charming it is to see a woman of her genius busying herself with the humble affairs of domestic life, cooking dishes to make her old father comfortable, and brewing him drink!  How rude it was of me to begin to talk of professional matters, and how well she turned the conversation! ...  Pendennis, Pendennis,—­how she spoke the word!  Emily!  Emily! how good, how noble, how beautiful, how perfect she is!"[207]

Thackeray’s satire is all the more powerful in that it is directed against foibles more than against vices.  Many a reader who will reject Swift’s portrait of man as a libel, cannot but feel a twinge at Thackeray’s delicate pencillings.  After dwelling on the worldliness, the hypocrisy, the self-seeking of the inmates of Queen’s Crawley, how softly but how terribly he scourges them!  “These honest folks at the Hall, whose simplicity and sweet rural purity surely show the advantage of a country life over a town one.”  His praise is the severest cut of all.  “Dear Rebecca,” “the dear creature,” and we wince for Becky.  “What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker’s!  How tenderly we look at her faults, if she be a relative.”  “These money transactions, these speculations in life and death—­these silent battles for reversionary spoil—­make brothers very loving toward each other in Vanity Fair.”

Thackeray is the novelist whose works depend in the least degree on narrative interest.  The characters are so clearly drawn and so interesting, the manner of Thackeray’s writing is so uniformly entertaining, that his books can always be opened at random and read with pleasure.  “Henry Esmond” is the only novel in which the plot is carefully constructed.  The others are a string of consecutive chapters, each one of which possesses its individual interest.[208]