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the plot. Thus judged "Edwin Drood" mised to be as worthless as many considered it.

It was not of such a story, thus ill told, that Longfellow spoke with such enthusiasm. The real story is more mysterious, more terrible; it is at once more pathetic and more humorous. All that we know of Dickens's favourite ideas, all he said to his most intimate friends about his plot of "Edwin Drood," all that the unfinished story really tells us, assures those who understand Dickens, that his favourite theme was to have been worked into this novel in striking and masterly fashion. The lovers of Dickens who have not cared to read his unfinished story, because fearing lest the end should not be known, may read it with full assurance that its great charm is scarcely affected by any doubt as to the fate of the principal chaThe delicate clue running through the story suffices, if followed, to make "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," incomplete though it is, one of the most interesting (to myself it is far the most interesting) of Dickens's novels.

racters.

IN the Cornhill Magazine for February 1864, Charles Dickens, speaking of the work which had been left unfinished by the great writer who died on Christmas Eve, 1863, said:-" Before me lies all that he had written of his latest story and the pain I have felt in perusing it has not been deeper than the conviction that he was in the healthiest vigour of his powers when he worked out this last labour." In June 1870, not six years and a half after Thackeray's death, the poet Longfellow wrote thus of the work left unfinished by Dickens:-"I hope his book is finished. It is certainly one of his most beautiful works, if not the most beautiful of all. It

would be too sad to think the pen had fallen from his hand, and left it incomplete."

As we all know, the pen had so fallen. The "Mystery of Edwin Drood" was not to be unravelled by the master-hand which had interwoven its seemingly tangled skeins. How Dickens would have worked out the details of the story we can never know. It has even been said by Mr. Forster, who had better opportunities of knowing what Dickens had planned than any other, save perhaps Miss Hogarth, that "the evidence of matured designs never to be accomplished, intentions planned never to be executed, roads of thought marked out never to be traversed, goals shining in the distance never to be reached, was wanting here: it was all a blank." In "Denis Duval" the end is shown. We know that whatever hardships and dangers are in store for Denis, all ends well at last. pray, was Agnes ?" Denis writes:-" To-day her name is Agnes Duval, and she sits at her work-table hard by. The lot of my life has been changed by knowing her to win such a prize in life's lottery has been given to very few. What I have done of any worth has been done

"Who

by trying to deserve her. Monsieur, mon fils, if ever you marry and have a son, I hope the little chap will have an honest man for a grandfather, and that you will be able to say, 'I loved him,' when the daisies cover me."

It is otherwise with the "Mystery of Edwin Drood." We have no direct indications of the end towards which the story was to tend. There are indications, some sufficiently plain; others carefully masked, so to speak; others, we may be sure, intended specially to draw the reader's attention away from the writer's purpose. But the clear indications relate only to one set of circumstances. In writing this story, as in writing "Our Mutual Friend," Dickens probably "foresaw," to use his own words, "the likelihood that a class of readers and commentators would suppose "he "was at great pains to conceal exactly what he was at great pains to suggest," and "was not alarmed by the supposition." But here also he proposed to himself "to keep for a long time unsuspected, yet always working itself out, another purpose originating in the leading incident, and turning it to a pleasant and useful account at last."

In writing "Our Mutual Friend," Dickens had found this the most interesting and the most difficult part of his task. We may well believe, apart from the strong evidence afforded in the story itself, that Dickens intended to renew this interesting task, making use of the experience he had already acquired to overcome its difficulties. And it is as to this carefully concealed purpose that the indications of the story in its unfinished condition are most obscure, even where they are not intended to be actually misleading.

Yet Forster was mistaken in regarding the story as "all a blank" in this respect. The purpose which Dickens intended to be little suspected by the class of readers who supposed he intended carefully to conceal what he was at great pains to suggest, can be recognised, can even be felt, by readers more discerning.

Let us consider some of these.

The story, so far as it runs, must first be sketched, but very briefly, and not so much with the idea of conveying even its general purport to those who have not read it, as to recall its leading incidents to those who have.