He had opened his oyster,--with his pen, an achievement which he cannot be said to have accomplished until _Vanity Fair_ had come out.

In inquiring about him from those who survive him, and knew him well in those days, I always hear the same account.

"If I could only tell you the impromptu lines which fell from him!" "If I had only kept the drawings from his pen, which used to be chucked about as though they were worth nothing!" "If I could only remember the drolleries!" Had they been kept, there might now be many volumes of these sketches, as to which the reviewer says that their talent was "altogether of the Hogarth kind." Could there be any kind more valuable?
Like Hogarth, he could always make his picture tell his story; though, unlike Hogarth, he had not learned to draw.

I have had sent to me for my inspection an album of drawings and letters, which, in the course of twenty years, from 1829 to 1849, were despatched from Thackeray to his old friend Edward Fitzgerald.

Looking at the wit displayed in the drawings, I feel inclined to say that had he persisted he would have been a second Hogarth.