Even _The Great Hoggarty Diamond_ (1841-1842) was apparently cut short by request, and still lay open to an unjust, but not quite inexcusable, question on this same point of "seriousness." In all there was, or might seem to be, a queer and to some readers an unsatisfactory blend of what they had not learnt to call "realism" with what they were quite likely to think fooling.

During these years Thackeray was emphatically of the class of writers of whom people "do not know what to make." And it is a true saying of English people--though perhaps not so pre-eminently true of them as some would have it--that "not to know what to make" of a thing or a person is sufficient reason for them to distrust, dislike, and "wash their hands of" it or him.
[22] For this reason, and for the variety of kind of his later novels a little more individual notice must be given to them than in the case of Dickens, but still only a little, and nothing like detailed criticism.
Some would have it that _Barry Lyndon_ (1843) marks the close of this period of indecision and the beginning of that of maturity.

The commoner and perhaps the juster opinion is that this position belongs to _Vanity Fair_ (1846-1848).

At any rate, _after_ that book there could be no doubt about the fact of the greatness of its writer, though it may be doubted whether even now the quality of this greatness is correctly and generally recognised.

It is this--that at last the novel of real life on the great scale has been discovered.