When he tells us, at the end of the first chapter, of a certain Colonel Snobley, whom he met at "Bagnigge Wells," as he says, and with whom he was so disgusted that he determined to drive the man out of the house, we are well aware that he had met an offensive military gentleman,--probably at Tunbridge.
Gentlemen thus offensive, even though tamely offensive, were peculiarly offensive to him.

We presume, by what follows, that this gentleman, ignorantly,--for himself most unfortunately,--spoke of Public[=o]la.
Thackeray was disgusted,--disgusted that such a name should be lugged into ordinary conversation at all, and then that a man should talk about a name with which he was so little acquainted as not to know how to pronounce it.

The man was therefore a snob, and ought to be put down; in all which I think that Thackeray was unnecessarily hard on the man, and gave him too much importance.
So it was with him in his whole intercourse with snobs,--as he calls them.

He saw something that was distasteful, and a man instantly became a snob in his estimation.

"But you _can_ draw," a man once said to him, there having been some discussion on the subject of Thackeray's art powers.