The reason is that Thackeray worked by 'diffuseness of style.'

The temptation to diffuseness and irrelevancy is as embarrassing and dangerous.

It is, in short, to guard against the confusion that comes from diffuseness.

The lectures are written in simple style, but suffer from diffuseness.

But when poems are paid by the line, bards are pardonable for diffuseness.

There is no waste of power in diffuseness and no employment of unnecessary epithets.

His writings are all interesting and informing, but in general suffer from his tendency to diffuseness.

Belknap is an excellent authority, as accurate as Stith without his diffuseness; and Hubbard's notes are worthy of the text.

But in contrast to the diffuseness of the Americans the French are distinguished by a brevity characteristic of their language.

But the best of the book is second-rate, vitiated by diffuseness, imitativeness, and the usual sentimentality.