CHAPTER IV.
PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES.
The absence of the heroic was, in Thackeray, so palpable to Thackeray himself that in his original preface to _Pendennis_, when he began to be aware that his reputation was made, he tells his public what they may expect and what they may not, and makes his joking complaint of the readers of his time because they will not endure with patience the true picture of a natural man.

"Even the gentlemen of our age," he says,--adding that the story of _Pendennis_ is an attempt to describe one of them, just as he is,--"even those we cannot show as they are with the notorious selfishness of their time and their education.

Since the author of _Tom Jones_ was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power a MAN.

We must shape him, and give him a certain conventional temper." Then he rebukes his audience because they will not listen to the truth.

"You will not hear what moves in the real world, what passes in society, in the clubs, colleges, mess-rooms,--what is the life and talk of your sons." You want the Raffaellistic touch, or that of some painter of horrors equally removed from the truth.