That he was anxious we have seen, by his attempts to subsidise his literary gains by a Government office.

I cannot but think that had he undertaken public duties for which he was ill qualified, and received a salary which he could hardly have earned, he would have done less for his fame than by reading to the public.

Whether he did that well or ill, he did it well enough for the money.

The people who heard him, and who paid for their seats, were satisfied with their bargain,--as they were also in the case of Dickens; and I venture to say that in becoming publicly a reader, neither did Dickens or Thackeray "alter his position as a writer," and "that it was a change to be justified," though the success of the old calling had in no degree waned.

What Thackeray did enabled him to leave a comfortable income for his children, and one earned honestly, with the full approval of the world around him.
Having saturated his mind with the literature of Queen Anne's time,--not probably in the first instance as a preparation for _Esmond_, but in such a way as to induce him to create an Esmond,--he took the authors whom he knew so well as the subject for his first series of lectures.