54/125 Here it will be necessary only to declare that, such was the choice he now made of a subject in his first attempt to rise out of a world of small literary contributions, into the more assured position of the author of a work of importance. We are aware that the monthly nurses of periodical literature did not at first smile on the effort. The proprietors of magazines did not see their way to undertake _Vanity Fair_, and the publishers are said to have generally looked shy upon it. At last it was brought out in numbers,--twenty-four numbers instead of twenty, as with those by Dickens,--under the guardian hands of Messrs. |