. Thackerayana;. to their names, or stars and ribands hooked on their coats and waist-coats, as men most undoubtedly are, and as their wives, families, andrelations are, there can be no reason why men of letters should nothave the chance, as well as men of the robe or the sword; or why,if honour and money are good for one profession, they should notbe good for another. No man in other callings thinks himselfdegraded by receiving a reward from his Government; nor,surely, need the literary man be more squeamish about pensions,and ribands, and titles* than the ambassador, or general, or
. Thackerayana;. to their names, or stars and ribands hooked on their coats and waist-coats, as men most undoubtedly are, and as their wives, families, andrelations are, there can be no reason why men of letters should nothave the chance, as well as men of the robe or the sword; or why,if honour and money are good for one profession, they should notbe good for another. No man in other callings thinks himselfdegraded by receiving a reward from his Government; nor,surely, need the literary man be more squeamish about pensions,and ribands, and titles* than the ambassador, or general, or European State but ours rewards its men of letters; theAmerican Government gives them their full share of its smallpatronage, and if Americans, why not Englishmen ? If PittCrawley is disappointed at not getting a riband on retiring fromhis diplomatic post at Pumpernickel, if General ODowd ispleased to be called Sir Hector ODowd, , and his wife atbeing denominated my Lady ODowd, are literary men to be the. i6o THA CKERA YANA, only persons exempt from vanity, and is it to be a sin in them tocovet honour? And now, with regard to the charge against myself of fostering baneful preju-dices against our calling—to which I no more pleadguilty than I should thinkFielding would have doneif he had been accused of adesign to bring the Churchinto contempt by describingParson Trulliber — permitme to say, that before youdeliver sentence it wouldbe as well if you had waitedto hear the whole of theargument. Who knows whatis coming in the futurenumbers of the work whichhas incurred your displea-sure and the Examiners,and whether you, in accus-ing me of prejudice, and the Examiner (alas !) of swindlingand flattering the public, have not been premature ? Time andthe hour may solve this mystery, for which the candid reader isreferred to our next. That I have a prejudice against runninginto debt, and drunkenness, and disorderly life, and againstquackery and falsehood in my profession, I
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