When the Letters began to be written, in 1847, Thackeray had his worst years, in a worldly sense, behind him. They were past: the times when he wrote in _Galignani_ for ten francs a day. Has any literary ghoul disinterred his old ten-franc articles in _Galignani_? The time of "Barry Lyndon," too, was over. He says nothing of that masterpiece, and only a word about "The Great Hoggarty Diamond." "I have been re-reading it. Upon my word and honour, if it doesn't make you cry, I shall have a mean opinion of you. It was written at a time of great affliction, when my heart was very soft and humble. Amen. Ich habe auch viel geliebt." Of "Pendennis," as it goes on, he writes that it is "awfully stupid," which has not been the verdict of the ages. He picks up materials as he passes. He dines with some officers, and perhaps he stations them at Chatteris. He meets Miss G---, and her converse suggests a love passage between Pen and Blanche. Why did he dislike fair women so? It runs all through his novels. Becky is fair. Blanche is fair. Outside the old yellow covers of "Pendennis," you see the blonde mermaid, "amusing, and clever, and depraved," dragging the lover to the sea, and the nut-brown maid holding him back. Angelina, of the "Rose and the Ring," is the Becky of childhood; she is fair, and the good Rosalba is _brune_. In writing "Pendennis" he had a singular experience. He looked over his own "back numbers," and found "a passage which I had utterly forgotten as if I had never read or written it." In Lockhart's "Life of Scott," James Ballantyne says that "when the 'Bride of Lammermoor' was first put into his hands in a complete shape, he did not recollect one single incident, character, or conversation it contained." That is to say, he remembered nothing of his own invention, though his memory of the traditional parts was as clear as ever. Ballantyne remarks, "The history of the human mind contains nothing more wonderful." The experience of Thackeray is a parallel to that of Scott. "Pendennis," it must be noted, was interrupted by a severe illness, and "The Bride of Lammermoor" was dictated by Sir Walter when in great physical pain. On one occasion Thackeray "lit upon a very stupid part of 'Pendennis,' I am sorry to say; and yet how well written it is! What a shame the author don't write a complete good story! Will he die before doing so? or come back from America and do it?"