Possibly the real truth of the matter is a very much simpler one. It may have been either that Thackeray was himself disgusted with the brutal frankness of the picture when he saw it printed, and insisted on its removal, or that the block met with some accident. Indeed, I am inclined to think, judging from my memory of the subject, that the idea of an action for libel is one that has only found expression in more modern booksellers’ catalogues. If I am not mistaken, the older booksellers used to speak of the engraving not as “suppressed,” but as “extremely rare,” and that it was supposed to have disappeared from later issues because it was broken before many impressions were taken. Of course, a threatened action for libel, on account of its striking likeness to a member of the aristocracy, added piquancy to the affair, and so redounded to the benefit of the vendor of the earliest issue of a first edition; and the identification of Lord Steyne’s prototype, in the letterpress, gave colour to the idea. Once set going, we may be certain that {19} the legend would not be allowed to lapse for lack of advertisement. To adapt what Dr. Johnson said of the “Countess,” “Sir,” said he to Boswell, “in the case of a (marquis) the imagination is more excited.” The accompanying portraits of the third and fourth Marquises of Hertford give the reader an opportunity of forming his own opinion in the matter of identity. That of the third Marquis is from the engraving by William Holl of the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and certainly seems to suggest, in the prime of life, the features and expression which Thackeray has portrayed in old age. The bald head, and the arrangement of the whiskers—which are allowed to approach the corners of the mouth—are incontestable points of resemblance; and if the old voluptuary is somewhat more battered than Lawrence’s rather spruce model, we must remember that his portrait was painted by the courtly President of the Royal Academy many years before the period of life at which he is introduced to us by the novelist. Certainly he is not an attractive object; and I was amused to receive a letter from a member of the family to whom I first showed the wood {20} engraving in which these words occur: “I find we have no portrait whatever of the Lord Hertford in question, and am not surprised at it if he at all resembled that of the Marquis in _Vanity Fair_!”[7]