During the days of Dickens' early popularity a clever young man had been making a name for himself as a humorist and satirist in the pages of _Fraser's Magazine, Punch_, and similar journals. This was William Makepeace Thackeray. In 1838, the year after _Pickwick_, Thackeray began a series known as the _Yellow Plush Papers_; during the next ten years he produced a great variety of journalistic work, short stories, sketches and essays, and wrote, in addition, two satirical novels, _Catherine_ and _Barry Lyndon_. In 1848 he burst on the world as a great novelist with _Vanity Fair_, and within ten years more he had published _Pendennis, Esmond, The Newcomes_, and _The Virginians_. This brings us up to 1859. By that year Dickens had produced his best work; Thackeray had only four more years to live; and he was followed to the grave by Dickens in 1870. From this account it is apparent that Dickens made a much bigger stir than Thackeray in the contemporary literary world. He was the leviathan who frolicked at will in the sea of popular appreciation. Thackeray was a much smaller fish. Considering Dickens and Thackeray first strictly as novelists, we find a point of resemblance in the fact that, from the point of view of form, they are both uncommonly bad novelists. A good novel, like any other work of art, must have some unity about it. The incidents must not be bundled in pell-mell, but must all contribute to the working out of some central idea or situation. Then we must have an element of romance, and this ought to regulate the subordination of the characters. The characters in every romance are essentially three, as Chesterton puts it, St. George, the Princess, and the Dragon; that is, St. George, something that loves and fights; the Princess, something that is loved and fought for; while the Dragon represents the opposition. Other characters besides these three there may and must be, but they serve as mere machinery or scenery as far as the romance is concerned. Now let us consider the novels of Dickens and Thackeray from these points of view. As regards incident they are almost wholly lacking in unity. We cannot exactly deny them plots. They develop stories and interesting stories, but it is not an orderly development. Dickens strings his incidents together almost haphazard, and so, to a large extent, does Thackeray. (By the way, in these remarks on Thackeray I do not include _Esmond_, which is magnificent, but is not really Thackeray.)