that author a singular weakness not easily explained. His own scenes lie in "the cold, wet, shelterless midnight streets of London," in "foul and frowsy dens," in "haunts of hunger and disease"; and "where" -- he asks -- "are the attractions of these things?" This defence, no doubt, had in view (amongst other things) the censure upon Oliver Twist contained in Thackeray's story of Catherine, which was published in Fraser's Magazine, 1839-40, under the signature of "Ikey Solomons jun." Thackeray at this time was not the great novelist whom we know; seven years had still to elapse before the publication of Vanity Fair. His Catherine is a stinging satire upon the same popular fiction that Dickens had in view, but he throws a wider net, attacking with scornful vigour Paul Clifford and Ernest Maltravers, together with the Jack Sheppards and Dick Turpins and Duvals, and, in two instances, speaking contemptuously of Oliver itself. "To tread in the footsteps of the immortal Fagin requires a genius of inordinate stride," and he cannot present his readers with any "white-washed saints," like poor "Biss Dadsy" in Oliver Twist. Still, says the author, he has taken pains to choose a subject "agreeably low, delightfully disgusting, and at the same time eminently pleasing and pathetic." His heroine is a -real person, one Catherine Hayes, whose history can be read in the Newgate Calendar --she was brought up in the workhouses, apprenticed to the landlady of a village inn, and, in the year 1726, was burned at Tyburn for the murder of her husband. Thackeray uses his lash on all novelists who show themselves indulgent to evil-doers. "Let your rogues act like rogues, and your honest men like honest men; don't let us have any juggling and thimblerigging with virtue and vice." In short, he writes very angrily, having, it is plain, Dickens often in mind. Nor is it hard to see the cause of this feeling. Thackeray was impatient with the current pictures of ...
