This was completed in 1848, and then it was that, at the age of thirty-seven, Thackeray first achieved for himself a name and reputation through the country.

Before this he had been known at _Fraser's_ and at the _Punch_ office.

He was known at the Garrick Club, and had become individually popular among literary men in London.

He had made many fast friends, and had been, as it were, found out by persons of distinction.

But Jones, and Smith, and Robinson, in Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, did not know him as they knew Dickens, Carlyle, Tennyson, and Macaulay,--not as they knew Landseer, or Stansfeld, or Turner; not as they knew Macready, Charles Kean, or Miss Faucit.