With this added complexity goes a more frequent interposition of the author in his own person--one of the conventions as we have seen of this national style.

Thackeray is present to his readers, indeed, not as the manager who pulls the strings and sets the puppets in motion, but as an interpreter who directs the reader's attention to the events on which he lays stress, and makes them a starting-point for his own moralising.

This persistent moralizing--sham cynical, real sentimental--this thumping of death-bed pillows as in the dreadful case of Miss Crawley, makes Thackeray's use of the personal interposition almost less effective than that of any other novelist.

Already while he was doing it, Dickens had conquered the public; and the English novel was making its second fresh start.
He is an innovator in more ways than one.

In the first place he is the earliest novelist to practise a conscious artistry of plot.