Thackeray resembled Lamb in the all-pervading character of his humour. He adorned with it almost everything he touched, but did not enter into it heart and soul, like a man of really joyous mirth-loving disposition. His pages teem with sly hits and insinuations, but he never developes a comic scene, and we can scarcely find a single really laughable episode in the whole course of his works. So little did he grasp or finish such pictures that we rarely select a passage from Thackeray for recitation. He thought more of plot and stratagem than of humour, and used the latter, not for its own sake, but mostly to give brilliance to his narrative, to make his figures prominent, and his remarks salient. He thus silvers unpalatable truths, and although he disowns being a moralist, we generally see some substratum of earnestness peeping through the eddies of his fancy. With him, humour is subservient. And he speaks from his inner self, when he exclaims, "Oh, brother wearers of motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of the cap and bells." We may say that much of Thackeray's humour is more inclined to produce a grin than a smile--merely to cause a grimace, owing to the bitterness from which it springs. It must be remembered, however, that the greater part of modern wit consists of sarcastic criticism, though it is not generally severe. In Thackeray we do not find any of that consciousness of the imbecility of man, which made some French writers call the humour of Democritus "melancholy." The "Vanity" of which he speaks is not that universal emptiness alluded to by the surfeited author of Ecclesiastes, nor has it even the ordinary signification of personal conceit. No; he implies something more culpable, such immorality as covetousness, deception, vindictiveness, and hypocrisy. He approaches the Roman Satirists in the relentless hand with which he exposes vice. Some of his characters are monstrous, and almost grotesque in selfishness, as that of Becky Sharp, to whom he does not allow one good quality. Cunning and unworthy motives add considerably to the zest of his humour. He says-- "This history has Vanity Fair for a title, and Vanity Fair is a very vain foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falseness and pretentions. One is bound to speak the truth, as one knows it, whether one mounts a cap and bells, or a shovel hat; and a deal of disagreeable matter must come out in the course of such an undertaking." Here is his description of a baronet, Sir Pitt Crawley;-- "The door was opened by a man in dark breeches and gaiters with a dirty coat, a foul old neck cloth lashed round his bristly neck, a shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair of twinkling grey eyes, and a mouth perpetually on the grin. "'This Sir John Pitt Crawley's?' says John, from the box. "'Ees,' says the man at the door, with a nod.