I need to know the source of the ff. quotation:


How light he vaulted up four pair of stairs 
In the brave days when we were twenty-one!

Greetings Cdbl!  The line in question is from "The Garret," a ballad
by William Makepeace Thackeray.

The section containing the line from which you quoted is the ballad's
first verse and it reads:

"With pensive eyes the little room I view,
  Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long;
With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
  And a light heart still breaking into song:
Making a mock of life, and all its cares,
  Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs,
  In the brave days when I was twenty-one."

The entire ballad may be viewed at
http://www.screen-capture.net/library/153-1.html.  Scroll almost to
the bottom of that site page and you'll find the ballad.

A comprehensive web site dedicated to Thackeray and his works is
available at http://65.107.211.206/authors/wmt/wmtov.html and you may
read some of his works online, including excerpts from "Vanity Fair"
at http://www.mastertexts.com/Thackeray_William_Makepeace/Index.htm


If you need clarification before rating my answer, please request it.


SEARCH PHRASES:

"four pair of stairs" vaulted
William Makepeace Thackeray

---

Request for Answer Clarification by cdbl-ga on 16 Nov 2002 17:34 PST

Any chance you can also attribute a date (year) to this poem?  Many
thanks for the prompt response!

---

Clarification of Answer by journalist-ga on 16 Nov 2002 18:59 PST

While a chronology of his life is available at
http://65.107.211.206/authors/wmt/chron.html, it does not list "The
Garret" so I did numerous phrase searches with his name and the ballad
title and finally found a reference to "The Paris Sketch Book, by W.
M. Thackeray - Page 7" where "The Garret" was shown
(http://www.simonova.net/library/1376-7.html). It was a Nancy Drew
quest if there ever was one.  lol

That book wasn't mentioned in the chronology I listed above so I then
searched for the book title.  I found a publishing reference on the
site http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.robert-morten.de/baseportal/Redaktionssytem/britannia_mini_detail%26Id%3D%3D1134&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%2522The%2BParis%2BSketchbook%2522%2BThackeray%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8
which I translated from German using Google "Translate this page"
feature.  It stated "1840 appeared "The Paris Sketchbook" with
reproductions of its contributions to different literature magazines,
followed by "Comic of valley and Sketches" (1841)"

Another reference from
http://faculty.uccb.ns.ca/philosophy/arcadia/dictionary.htm stated "In
1840 despite a series of financial reverses and the mental illness of
his wife Thackeray produced the "Paris Sketchbook."

Although the ballad might have been written earlier, it was published
in 1840 in "The Paris Sketchbook" meaning he was only 29 or younger
when he penned it.  The Google results site has a couple of other
foreign language references for the same year at
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22The+Paris+Sketchbook%22+Thackeray

Should you need further clarification before rating my answer, please
request it.

This researcher did exemplary work, accessing databases that few know
of (I suspect). I am very pleased with the results and appreciate the
thinking behind the practical knowledge. Well done!

Thank you for your rating and comments.  All databases used in my
searches were public ones - it's just finding the working keyphrases
and then surfing the search results that produced your answer.  :)