If, he often says, ‘people could write about that of which they are really thinking, how interesting books would be!’ More than most writers of fiction, he felt the difficulty of abstracting his thoughts and imagination from near facts which _would_ make themselves felt. The sick wife in the next room, the unpaid baker’s bill, the lodging-house keeper who doubts your solvency; these, and such as these,—the usual accompaniments of an early literary life,—are constantly alluded to in his writings. Perhaps he could never take a grand enough view of literature, or accept the truth of ‘high art,’ because of his natural tendency to this stern and humble realism. He knew that he was writing a tale which would appear in a green magazine (with others) on the 1st of March, and would be paid for perhaps on the 11th, by which time, probably, ‘Mr. Smith’ would have to ‘make up a sum,’ and would again present his ‘little account.’ There are many minds besides his who feel an interest in these realities, though they yawn over ‘high art’ and elaborate judgments. A painfulness certainly clings like an atmosphere round Mr. Thackeray’s writings, in consequence of his inseparable and ever-present realism. We hardly know where it is, yet we are all conscious of it less or more. A free and bold writer, like Sir Walter Scott, throws himself far away into fictitious worlds, and soars there without effort, without pain, and with unceasing enjoyment. You see as it were between the lines of Mr. Thackeray’s writings, that his thoughts were never long away from the close proximate scene. His writings might be better if it had been otherwise; but they would have been less peculiar, less individual; they would have wanted their character, their flavour, if he had been able while writing them to forget for many moments the ever-attending, the ever-painful sense of himself.