Chapter XV: Fall of the Second Empire (4)

[340] Being for the benefit of an individual, if the Queen had consented to “bespeak” them she would have been compelled to assent to an endless number of similar applications, or give a great many people bitter offence by refusal.

[341] Thackeray’s attacks on the Queen’s family and ancestors apparently had not rendered him a _persona grata_, like Dickens.

[342] See Forster’s Life of Dickens.