But he is a gentleman from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot.

Thackeray had let the whole power of his intellect apply itself to a conception of the character of a gentleman.
This man is brave, polished, gifted with that old-fashioned courtesy which ladies used to love, true as steel, loyal as faith himself, with a power of self-abnegation which astonishes the criticising reader when he finds such a virtue carried to such an extent without seeming to be unnatural.

To draw the picture of a man and say that he is gifted with all the virtues is easy enough,--easy enough to describe him as performing all the virtues.

The difficulty is to put your man on his legs, and make him move about, carrying his virtues with a natural gait, so that the reader shall feel that he is becoming acquainted with flesh and blood, not with a wooden figure.

The virtues are all there with Henry Esmond, and the flesh and blood also, so that the reader believes in them.