Thackeray was like Theophile Gautier, who began life as a painter, and who has left to posterity a wonderful etching of his own portrait, pale, romantic, with long sweeping moustache, and hair falling over his shoulders.  Both writers found their knowledge of the technique of painting useful in making their appreciation of art and nature more keen and versatile.  But Mr. Thackeray’s powers had another field—­he really did succeed in illustrating some of his own writings.  Accomplished his style never was.  There was a trace of the old school of caricature in the large noses and thin legs which he gave his figures.  Nor was his drawing very correct; the thin legs of the heroes of “The Virginians” are often strangely contorted.  He has even placed a thumb on the wrong side of a hand!  For all that, he gave to many of his own characters a visible embodiment, which another artist would have missed.  Mr. Frederick Walker, for instance, drew Philip Firmin admirably—­a large, rough man, with a serious and rather worn face, and a huge blonde beard.  Mr. Walker’s Philip has probably become the Philip of many readers, but he was not Mr. Thackeray’s.  It is delightful to be sure, on the other hand, that we have the author’s own Captain Costigan before us, in his habit as he lived—­the unshaven chin, the battered hat, the high stock, the blue cloak, the whiskeyfied stare, and the swagger.  Mr. Thackeray did not do his young men well.  Arthur Pendennis is only himself as he sits with Warrington over a morning paper; in his white hat and black band at the Derby, he has not the air of a gentleman.  Harry Foker is either a coarse exaggeration, or the modern types of Fokers have improved in demeanour on the great prototype.  But Costigan is always perfect; and the nose and wig of Major Pendennis are ideally correct.  In his drawings of women, Mr. Thackeray very much confined himself to two types.  There was the dark-eyed, brown-haired, bright-complexioned girl who was his favourite—­Laura, Betsinda, Amelia; and the blonde, ringletted, clever, and false girl—­Becky, Blanche, Angelica, who was the favourite of the reader.  He did not always succeed in making them pretty, though there is a beautiful head of Amelia, in a court dance at Pumpernickel; but he always made the dark young lady look honest, and the fair young minx look a thing all soul and enthusiasm.

It was a note of Mr. Thackeray’s art, and probably one among other proofs that the higher fields of art were closed to him, that his success by no means corresponded to the amount of pains he took with his work.  His drawings which appeared as steel engravings, were not unfrequently weak, while his sketches on the wood and his lithographs were much more free and masterly.  There is, indeed, a sketch on the steel of poor Pen tossing feverishly in his mother’s comforting arms, which is full of passion and life and sentiment.  But it was rare that success attended his ambition, and, indeed, another drawing of Pen and