There can be no doubt that the heroic had appeared contemptible to him, as being untrue.

The girl who had deceived her papa and mamma seemed more probable to him than she who perished under the willow-tree from sheer love,--as given in the last chapter.

Why sing songs that are false?
Why tell of Lucy Ashtons and Kate Nicklebys, when pretty girls, let them be ever so beautiful, can be silly and sly?
Why pour philosophy out of the mouth of a fashionable young gentleman like Pelham, seeing that young gentlemen of that sort rarely, or we may say never, talk after that fashion?
Why make a housebreaker a gallant charming young fellow, the truth being that housebreakers as a rule are as objectionable in their manners as they are in their morals?
Thackeray's mind had in truth worked in this way, and he had become a satirist.

That had been all very well for _Fraser_ and _Punch_; but when his satire was continued through a long novel, in twenty-four parts, readers,--who do in truth like the heroic better than the wicked,--began to declare that this writer was no novelist, but only a cynic.
Thence the question arises what a novel should be,--which I will endeavour to discuss very shortly in a later chapter.

But this special fault was certainly found with _Vanity Fair_ at the time.