In his line I think Thackeray is as great as Balzac. When I had read _Vanity Fair_, _Pendennis_, _The Newcomes_ and _Barry Lyndon_, I was so much interested that I read anything of his I could lay my hands on, over and over again. With a novel of Thackeray's in my hand I would become oblivious to my surroundings, and long to know something of this writers personality. I think I formed his mental make-up correctly, for I imagined him to be gentle and humane. Any man with ability and brains equal to his could not be otherwise. What a character is Becky Sharp! In her way she was as clever a grafter as Sheenie Annie. She did not love Rawdon as a good wife should. If she had she would not be the interesting Becky that she is. She was grateful to Rawdon for three reasons; first, he married her; second, he gave her a glimpse into a station in life her soul longed for; third, he came from a good family, and was a soldier and tall, and it is well-known that little women like big men. Then Rawdon amused Becky. She often grinned at his lack of brains. She grinned at everything, and when we learn that Becky got religion at the end of the book, instead of saying, God bless her, we only grin, too. _Pendennis_ is a healthy book. I always sympathize with Pen and Laura in their struggles to get on, and when the baby was born I was willing to become Godpapa, just for its Mamma's sake. _The Newcomes_ I call Thackeray's masterpiece. It is truer to life than any other book I ever read. Take the scene where young Clive throws the glass of wine in his cousin's face. The honest horror of the father, his indignation when old Captain Costigan uses bad language, his exit when he hears a song in the Music Hall--all this is true realism. But the scene that makes this book Thackeray's masterpiece is that where the old Colonel is dying. The touching devotion of Madam and Ethel, the love for old Tom, his last word "_adsum_" the quiet weeping of his nurse, and the last duties to the dead; the beautiful tenderness of the two women, of a kind that makes the fair sex respected by all men--I can never forget this scene till my dying day. When I was sick in stir a better tonic than the quack could prescribe was Thackeray's _Book of Snobs_. Many is the night I could not sleep until I had read this book with a relish. It acted on me like a bottle of good wine, leaving me peaceful after a time of pleasure. In this book are shown up the little egotisms of the goslings and the foibles of the sucklings in a masterly manner.