At first he is the indefatigable satirist, rejoicing in the assault. Youth is almost always inclined that way—far more swift and sweeping in judgment, more severe in condemnation, than maturity or age. Thackeray writes much that is merely amusing, full of high spirits and pure fun, in his first period. But his main business is to expose false pretensions, false methods, false principles in literature and life; to show up the fakers, to ridicule the humbugs, to convict the crooks of every rank and degree.
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Here, for example, is a popular fashion of books with criminals and burglars for heroes and heroines, portrayed in the glamour of romance. Very well, our satirist, assuming the name of “Ikey Solomons, Esq.,” will take a real criminal, a murderess, and show us the manner of life she leads with her associates. So we have Catherine. Here is another fashion of weaving a fiction about a chevalier d’industrie, a bold, adventurous, conscienceless fellow who pursues his own pleasure with a swagger, and makes a brave show hide a mean and selfish heart. Very well, a fellow of this kidney shall tell his own story and show himself in his habit as he lives, and as he dies in prison. So we have The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. Here are innumerable fashions of folly and falsehood current not only in high society, but also in the region of respectable mediocrity, and in the “world below-stairs.” Very well, our satirist, under the name of “Jeames Yellowplush,” or “M. Angelo Titmarsh,” or “Fitz-Boodle,” will show them up for us. So we have various bundles of short stories, and skits, and sketches of travel, some of them bubbling over with fun, some
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 of them, like Dennis Haggarty’s Wife, touched with quiet pathos.
The culmination of this satiric period is The Book of Snobs, which appeared serially in the London Punch, 1845-46. In order to understand the quality and meaning of Thackeray’s satire—an element which stayed with him all through his writing, though it was later subdued to its proper place—we must take the necessary pains to know just what he meant by a “snob.”
A snob is an unreal person who tries to pass himself off for a real person; a pretender who meanly admires and imitates mean things; an ape of gentility. He is a specific variety of the great genus “Sham.” Carlyle, the other notable English satirist of the nineteenth century, attacked the whole genus with heavy artillery. Thackeray, with his light cavalry of ridicule, assailed the species.
All snobs are shams, but not all shams are snobs. The specific qualities of the snob are developed only in countries where there are social classes and distinctions, but no insuperable barriers between them. Thus in native India with its immutable caste, or
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 in Central Africa with its general barbarism, I fancy it must be difficult to discover snobbism. (Yet I have seen traces of it even among dogs and cats.) But in a country like E............