The really important characters in Dickens are the _unimportant_ ones, those who are introduced _en passant_, and who might as well be anywhere else as far as the story is concerned. In _Nicholas Nickleby_ Nicholas himself does not interest me, neither does his sister, neither do Madeline Bray and Mr. Bray, neither does Ralph Nickleby. The people who do interest me are people like Mrs. Nickleby, Mantalini, the Squeers family, the Kenwigs, and Vincent Crummies. In _Martin Chuzzlewit_ the least important character is Martin himself, but his life serves as a string upon which are hung Pecksniff, Todger's Boarding House and all that therein was, Chevy Slime, Esq., Sairey Gamp, Betsy Prigg, Mr. Mould, Elijah Pogram, and many others in whose company there is endless delight. All these, however, might just as well have been hung on the string of _Nicholas Nickleby_ or _David Copperfield_ or _Bleak House_ or almost any of the other books. Similarly all through. In _Dombey_ Florence is a nonentity, Walter Gay is a nonentity, Dombey himself is a "made character," well-made, but not created. In _David Copperfield_ David begins by being a reality, but tails off into an abstraction. In _A Tale of Two Cities_ Darnay does not exist, and Lucie Manette only barely exists. In both Dickens and Thackeray, in fact, the romantic element is really subordinate, in Dickens very much so; and in neither writer do St. George, the Princess, and the Dragon ever become all-important. Both writers, in fact, are to be judged piece-meal, as creators of situations and characters, rather than in the bulk as creators of novels. The keynote of the work of both our authors was struck in two of their first works of any note. In 1848 Thackeray published in _Punch_ the series of papers entitled the _Book of Snobs_, which marks his dedication to the especial task of unmasking the pretence and sham which underlay the whole of English public and private life. His definition of the word _snob_ was comprehensive. "The snob," says Thackeray, "is a child of aristocratical societies. Perched on his step of the long social ladder, he respects the man on the step above and despises the man on the step below, without enquiring what they are worth, solely on account of their position; in his innermost heart he finds it natural to kiss the boots of the first, and to kick the second." Starting with this definition, Thackeray lashed unsparingly all classes of society from the highest to the lowest. He discovered and unmasked snobs of all descriptions, church snobs, military snobs, literary snobs, country snobs, political snobs, Continental snobs. In this book Thackeray appears as the caustic satirist of every sort of social hypocrisy, and this character he maintains in his novels. _Pendennis, Vanity Fair_, and _The Newcomes_ are largely _Books of Snobs_ worked into the form of novels.