“If there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire and Sentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you light on the strangest contrasts laughable and tearful; where you may be gentle and pathetic, or savage and cynical with perfect propriety; it is at one of those public assemblies, a crowd of which are advertised every day in the last page of the ‘Times’ newspaper, and over which the late Mr. George Robins used to preside with so much dignity.” And again:[125] “This is a species of dignity in which the high-bred British female reigns supreme. To watch the behavior of a fine lady to other and humbler women, is a very good sport for a philosophical frequenter of Vanity Fair.” He delights in whimsical classic comparisons:[126] “Is this case a rare one? and don’t we see every day in the world many an honest Hercules at the apron-strings of Omphale, and great whiskered Samsons prostrate in Delilah’s lap?” Sometimes the classical is mingled in with the Scriptural:[127] “A good housewife is of necessity a humbug; and Cornelia’s husband was hoodwinked, as Potiphar was--only in a different way.” Sometimes we have a scientific simile, as the comment on Becky’s ambition to be presented at Court.[128] “If she did not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to enjoy a character for virtue, and we know that no lady in the genteel world can possess this desideratum, until she has put on a train and feathers, and has been presented to her Sovereign at court. From that august interview they come out stamped as honest women. The Lord Chamberlain gives them a certificate of virtue. And as dubious goods or letters are passed through an oven at quarantine, sprinkled with aromatic vinegar, and then pronounced clean--many a lady whose reputation would be doubtful otherwise and liable to give infection, passes through the wholesome ordeal of the Royal Presence, and issues from it free from all taint.” In his later novels Thackeray used in greater proportion the more artistic indirect method, although he could more easily have plucked out his eye and cast it from him than to have performed the same operation on his habit of moralizing, which most frequently took the form of a semi-whimsical but wholly homiletic exhortation to his dear readers to make a personal application of the lessons involved in the story.[129] Of these later instances, one illustrates the use of literary allusion, neatly combined with the commercial.[130]