Moreover, when one begins to reflect upon the literature of one's own time, so many eminent names crowd in upon one's recollection, that the task of selecting the greatest of them appears full of almost insuperable difficulties. It is a case of not being able to see the wood for trees; we need, but cannot find, some vantage-ground from which we may survey the surrounding landscape. The limits of this book require that only a few of many names deserving notice shall be mentioned here; but we shall endeavour to make the selection as representative as possible.

As the drama was the favourite vehicle of Elizabethan genius, so the novel has been the most richly cultivated field of literature during the reign of Queen Victoria. More pens have been employed in this department, and greater successes have been gained, than in any other. We may therefore fitly begin our survey with fiction, being farther induced to do so by the consideration that by far the most popular author of recent times was a novelist. It is scarcely necessary to say that we refer to Charles Dickens, whose literary career began earlier, continued longer, and was more brilliant than that of any preceding English writer of fiction. He was born at Landport, Portsea, in 1812. His father, John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, was the good-hearted, shiftless, sanguine, and unfortunate individual afterwards portrayed in immortal colours as Mr. Micawber. In the silken sail of Dickens's infancy the wind of a by no means particularly joyful dawn blew free. His youth was a hard one, and the dark reflection of what he then endured coloured more or less distinctly the whole of his subsequent life. While he was yet little more than an infant his father was brought up by his duties from London to Portsmouth; soon after he was placed upon duty at Chatham Dockyard; and at Chatham Charles lived from his fourth or fifth year till he was nine. There he received the elements of education, first from his mother, and afterwards at two schools. He was a small sickly boy, unfitted to join in the rough sports of his companions, and he read incessantly, devouring with intense eagerness such glorious books as the

Dickens's Early Years.

379

'Arabian Nights," the "Vicar of Wakefield," "Roderick Random," "Robinson Crusoe," "Gil Blas," &c., &c. his love of reading was not the only token of his precocity. He wrote a tragedy called "Misnar, the Sultan of India;" was an excellent storyteller; and sang comic songs so well that admiring friends used to hoist him on a chair in order that he might delight their guests with an exhibition of his powers. When the boy was nine years old, his father was removed from Chatham to Somerset House, and it was now that Dickens began to have experience of those wretched shifts and petty trials brought on by poverty, with which he has filled many pages of his novels. His father fell into the clutches of his creditors, and was lodged in the Marshalsea; and Dickens, never a particularly well-taken-care-of boy, was now employed in such vile offices as running errands and taking messages to the prisoner, and pledging one by one nearly all the household goods at the pawnbroker's shop. The worst, however, was yet to come. A relative, James Lamert, who had started a blacking business, knowing the depressed circumstances of the Dickens family, offered Charles employment in his warehouse at a salary of six or seven shillings a week. The offer was at once thankfully accepted. In the description of the life which David Copperfield led at Murdstone and Grimby's, Dickens has revealed to all the world how infinitely bitter and agonising to him was the time he passed at Lamert's blacking warehouse. A proud, sensitive boy, he shrank both from entering into close companionship. with his rough fellow-drudges, and from taking any one into. his confidence and revealing the secret misery which was gnawing at his heart. Unconsciously, all through the troubled years of his boyhood, he was receiving a better training for his future work in life than any school or University could have given him. He employed his faculty of observation, which appears from his earliest years to have been almost morbidly keen, in noting in his mind in indelible characters all the odd scenes, and things, and persons that he met with in his diversified existence. What is perhaps even more remarkable than the

extraordinary faculty of observation which he possessed while yet a mere child, is the fact that, in spite of all his bitterness of spirit at this time, he seems to have seen quite clearly the humorous side of his father's misfortunes. At last a fortunate mischance released him from the slavery of the blacking business. His father and James Lamert quarrelled, and although his mother set herself to accommodate the quarrel, his father decided that he should go back no more, but should be sent to school. Fortunately for Dickens and for the world this determination was acted on. "I do not write regretfully or angrily," he wrote many years afterwards in words whose apparent harshness it is impossible not to condone, "for I know how all these things have worked together to make me what I am; but I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back."

Dickens was now sent to a school called "Wellington House Academy," where he remained for nearly two years, quitting it when a little over fourteen years of age. While here he, according to his own account, "distinguished himself like a brick;" according to the more credible narratives of his school companions, he was remarkable rather for his fondness for fun and practical jokes than for learning. Nevertheless he somehow managed to pick up a good deal of information, including a smattering of Latin. Soon after he left school he became a clerk in a lawyer's office, at the modest salary of ten shillings and sixpence a week. Encouraged by the example of his father, who had become a reporter for the Morning Herald, Dickens determined to follow in his footsteps, and set himself resolutely to the study of shorthand, in order that he too might obtain employment in that fairly remunerated and not unattractive profession, which has afforded a steppingstone to higher positions to so many young men of literary capacity. After much arduous labour Dickens succeeded in obtaining a mastery of the crooked cipher; and there being at that time no opening in the Gallery, he became a reporter for one of the offices in Doctor's Commons. The work there

Dickens's First Writings.

381

was uninteresting and precarious, and he made an attempt to escape from it by going upon the stage. Had this attempt succeeded, there can be no doubt he would have distinguished himself; and instead of a great comic author, we should have had a great comic actor. Fortunately, however, it came to nothing; and, advancing in his career as reporter, he was employed on various newspapers, including, last and most important, the Morning Chronicle, one of the leading daily journals of the time. He was an excellent reporter-not particularly neat indeed, but almost unprecedentedly rapid in his execution.

From reporting, the transition to original writing is not difficult. One day in 1834 Dickens dropped " Mrs. Joseph Porter over the Way," the first of the afterwards well-known "Sketches by Boz," into the letter-box of the Old Monthly Magazine. It was, to the author's great pride and joy, accepted, and was followed by eight more in the same periodical, the remainder of the series appearing in the Evening Chronicle, the afternoon edition of the newspaper with which Dickens was connected. In 1836 the "Sketches by Boz" were reprinted in book form. They were very successful for a first publication; and Messrs. Chapman & Hall were induced by their originality, and the promise of future power which they exhibited, to ask Dickens to write the text of a humorous work to be illustrated by Seymour, and to be published in monthly numbers. He consented, and the result was the "Pickwick Papers." The original plan of the work was considerably modified, owing to the suicide of Mr. Seymour before the second number was completed. As number after number appeared, its circulation grew greater and greater, until by the time half of it had been issued Dickens had taken the position, which he maintained till his death, of the most popular novelist of the day. During the publication of "Pickwick," "Oliver Twist," another work of great power, of a different kind, however, from "Pickwick," was appearing in Bentley's Miscellany, a monthly periodical of which Dickens had become editor. No better proof of the extraordinary

rapidity with which his fame had increased could be given than the fact that when, after the publication of "Pickwick," he tried to buy back the copyright of the "Sketches," which he had sold for £150, the publisher refused to sell it for less than £2000. After "Oliver Twist" came "Nicholas Nickleby," which was completed in October 1839. Then followed the collection of stories published under the name of "Master Humphrey's Clock:" "The Clock," "The Old Curiosity Shop" (containing what is perhaps the finest specimen of Dickens's pathos-the death of Little Nell), and "Barnaby Rudge." A tour in America in 1842 led to the writing of "American Notes for General Circulation," and "Martin Chuzzlewit" (1844), the latter of which, in some portions of it, must stand for his greatest success. In 1843, while "Chuzzlewit" was appearing in monthly parts, he began that series of Christmas books which charmed so many hearts, by writing the "Christmas Carol." "Dombey and Son" came out in 1847-48; "David Copperfield," a semi-autobiographical story, which was the favourite child of the author, and of perhaps the majority of his readers, in 1849-50; "Bleak House" (which marks the beginning of the decadence of his genius), in 1853; and thereafter "Hard Times," "Little Dorrit," "A Tale of Two Cities," "Great Expectations," and "Our Mutual Friend." In 1870 began the publication of "Edwin Drood," never, alas! completed, death staying the progress of his magic pen on June 9, 1870. The above is not by any means a full list of his publications. He wrote besides "A Child's History of England," excellent in plan but not in execution, which was published originally in Household Words, a weekly periodical begun by him, and carried on till 1859, when, owing to a quarrel with his publishers, it was incorporated with All the Year Round, and went on with unflagging success until the editor's death; "Pictures from Italy," &c., &c. Among his more notable contributions to his magazine were the Christmas numbers, which he wrote in whole or in part for some years. He left behind him a fortune of £95,000, amassed partly by the success of his works, partly by the enormous