"Sullen socialism"—such is Macaulay's view of the political philosophy of "Hard Times." "Entirely right in main drift and purpose"—such is the verdict of Mr. Ruskin. Who shall decide between the two? or, if a decision be necessary, then I would venture to say, yes, entirely right in feeling. Dickens is right in sympathy for those who toil and suffer, right in desire to make their lives more human and beautiful, right in belief that the same human heart beats below all class distinctions. But, beyond this, a novelist only, not a philosopher, not fitted to grapple effectively with complex social and political problems, and to solve them to right conclusions. There are some things unfortunately which even the best and kindest instincts cannot accomplish.

The last chapter of "Hard Times" appeared in the number of Household Words for the 12th of August, 1854, and the first number of "Little Dorrit" came out at Christmas, 1855. Between those dates a great war had waxed and waned. The heart of England had been terribly moved by the story of the sufferings and privations which the army had had to undergo amid the snows of a Russian winter. From the trenches before Sebastopol the newspaper correspondents had sent terrible accounts of death and disease, and of ills which, as there seemed room for suspicion, might have been prevented by better management. Through long disuse the army had rusted in its scabbard, and everything seemed to go wrong but the courage of officers and men. A great demand arose for reform in the whole administration of the country. A movement, now much forgotten, though not fruitless at the time, was started for the purpose of making the civil service more efficient, and putting John Bull's house in order. "Administrative Reform," such was the cry of the moment, and Dickens uttered it with the full strength of his lungs. He attended a great meeting held at Drury Lane Theatre on the 27th of June, in furtherance of the cause, and made what he declared to be his first political speech. He spoke on the subject again at the dinner of the Theatrical Fund. He urged on his friends in the press to the attack. He was in the forefront of the battle. And when his next novel, "Little Dorrit," appeared, there was the Civil Service, like a sort of gibbeted Punch, executing the strangest antics.

But the "Circumlocution Office," where the clerks sit lazily devising all day long "how not to do" the business of the country, and devote their energies alternately to marmalade and general insolence,—the "Circumlocution Office" occupies after all only a secondary position in the book. The main interest of it circles round the place that had at one time been almost a home to Dickens. Again he drew upon his earlier experiences. We are once more introduced into a debtors' prison. Little Dorrit is the child of the Marshalsea, born and bred within its walls, the sole living thing about the place on which its taint does not fall. Her worthless brother, her sister, her father—who is not only her father, but the "father of the Marshalsea"—the prison blight is on all three. Her father especially is a piece of admirable character-drawing. Dickens has often been accused of only catching the surface peculiarities of his personages, their outward tricks, and obvious habits of speech and of mind. Such a study as Mr. Dorrit would alone be sufficient to rebut the charge. No novelist specially famed for dissecting character to its innermost recesses could exhibit a finer piece of mental analysis. We follow the poor weak creature's deterioration from the time when the helpless muddle in his affairs brings him into durance. We note how his sneaking pride seems to feed even on the garbage of his degradation. We see how little inward change there is in the man himself when there comes a transformation scene in his fortunes, and he leaves the Marshalsea wealthy and prosperous. It is all thoroughly worked out, perfect, a piece of really great art. No wonder that Mr. Clennam pities the child of such a father; indeed, considering what a really admirable woman she is, one only wonders that his pity does not sooner turn to love.

"Little Dorrit" ran its course from December, 1855, to June, 1857, and within that space of time there occurred two or three incidents in Dickens' career which should not pass unnoticed. At the first of these dates he was in Paris, where he remained till the middle of May, 1856, greatly feted by the French world of letters and art; dining hither and thither; now enjoying an Arabian Nights sort of banquet given by Emile de Girardin, the popular journalist; now meeting George Sand, the great novelist, whom he describes as "just the sort of woman in appearance whom you might suppose to be the queen's monthly nurse—chubby, matronly, swarthy, black-eyed;" then studying French art, and contrasting it with English art, somewhat to the disadvantage of the latter; anon superintending the translation of his works into French, and working hard at "Little Dorrit;" and all the while frequenting the Paris theatres with great assiduity and admiration. Meanwhile, too, on the 14th of March, 1856, a Friday, his lucky day as he considered it, he had written a cheque for the purchase of Gad's Hill Place, at which he had so often looked when a little lad, living penuriously at Chatham—the house which it had been the object of his childish ambition to win for his own.

So had merit proved to be not without its visible prize, literally a prize for good conduct. He took possession of the house in the following February, and turned workmen into it, and finished "Little Dorrit" there. At first the purchase was intended mainly as an investment, and he only purposed to spend some portion of his time at Gad's Hill, letting it at other periods, and so recouping himself for the interest on the L1,790 which it had cost, and for the further sums which he expended on improvements. But as time went on it became his hobby, the love of his advancing years. He beautified here and beautified there, built a new drawing-room, added bedrooms, constructed a tunnel under the road, erected in the "wilderness" on the other side of the road a Swiss chalet, which had been presented to him by Fechter, the French-English actor, and in short indulged in all the thousand and one vagaries of a proprietor who is enamoured of his property. The matter seems to have been one of the family jokes; and when, on the Sunday before his death, he showed the conservatory to his younger daughter, and said, "Well, Katey, now you see positively the last improvement at Gad's Hill," there was a general laugh. But this is far on in the story; and very long before the building of the conservatory, long indeed before the main other changes had been made, the idea of an investment had been abandoned. In 1860 he sold Tavistock House, in London, and made Gad's Hill Place his final home.

Even here, however, I am anticipating; for before getting to 1860 there is in Dickens' history a page which one would willingly turn over, if that were possible, in silence and sadness. But it is not possible. No account of his life would be complete, and what is of more importance, true, if it made no mention of his relations with his wife.

For some time before 1858 Dickens had been in an over-excited, nervous, morbid state. During earlier manhood his animal spirits and fresh energy had been superb. Now, as the years advanced, and especially at this particular time, the energy was the same; but it was accompanied by something of feverishness and disease. He could not be quiet. In the autumn of 1857 he wrote to Forster, "I have now no relief but in action. I am become incapable of rest. I am quite confident I should rust, break, and die if I spared myself. Much better to die doing." And again, a little later, "If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish." It was the foreshadowing of such utterances as these, and the constant wanderings to and fro for readings and theatricals and what not, that led Harriet Martineau, who had known and greatly liked Dickens, to say after perusing the second volume of his life, "I am much struck by his hysterical restlessness. It must have been terribly wearing to his wife." On the other hand, there can be no manner of doubt that his wife wore him. "Why is it," he had said to Forster in one of the letters from which I have just quoted, "that, as with poor David (Copperfield), a sense comes always crushing on me now, when I fall into low spirits, as of one happiness I have missed in life, and one friend and companion I have never made?" And again: "I find that the skeleton in my domestic closet is becoming a pretty big one." Then come even sadder confidences: "Poor Catherine and I are not made for each other, and there is no help for it. It is not only that she makes me uneasy and unhappy, but that I make her so too, and much more so. She is exactly what you know in the way of being amiable and complying; but we are strangely ill-assorted for the bond there is between us.... Her temperament will not go with mine." And at last, in March, 1858, two months before the end: "It is not with me a matter of will, or trial, or sufferance, or good humour, or making the best of it, or making the worst of it, any longer. It is all despairingly over." So, after living together for twenty years, these two went their several ways in May, 1858. Dickens allowed to his wife an income of L600 a year, and the eldest son went to live with her. The other children and their aunt, Miss Hogarth, remained with Dickens himself.

Scandal has not only a poisonous, but a busy tongue, and when a well-known public man and his wife agree to live apart, the beldame seldom neglects to give her special version of the affair. So it happened here. Some miserable rumour was whispered about to the detriment of Dickens' morals. He was at the time, as we have seen, in an utterly morbid, excited state, sore doubtless with himself, and altogether out of mental condition, and the lie stung him almost to madness. He published an article branding it as it deserved in the number of Household Words for the 12th of June, 1858.

So far his course of action was justifiable. Granted that it was judicious to notice the rumour at all, and to make his private affairs the matter of public comment, then there was nothing in the terms of the article to which objection could be taken. It contained no reflection of any kind on Mrs. Dickens. It was merely an honest man's indignant protest against an anonymous libel which implicated others as well as himself. Whether the publication, however, was judicious is a different matter. Forster thinks not. He holds that Dickens had altogether exaggerated the public importance of the rumour, and the extent of its circulation. And this, according to my own recollection, is entirely true. I was a lad at the time, but a great lover of Dickens' works, as most lads then were, and I well remember the feeling of surprise and regret which that article created among us of the general public. At the same time, it is only fair to Dickens to recollect that the lying story was, at least, so far fraught with danger to his reputation, that Mrs. Dickens would seem for a time to have believed it; and further, that Dickens occupied a very peculiar position towards the public, and a position that might well in his own estimation, and even in ours, give singular importance to the general belief in his personal character.

This point will bear dwelling upon. Dickens claimed, and claimed truly, that the relation between himself and the public was one of exceptional sympathy and affection. Perhaps an illustration will best show what that kind of relationship was. Thackeray tells of two ladies with whom he had, at different times, discussed "The Christmas Carol," and how each had concluded by saying of the author, "God bless him!" God bless him!—that was the sort of feeling towards himself which Dickens had succeeded in producing in most English hearts. He had appealed from the first and so constantly to every kind and gentle emotion, had illustrated so often what is good and true in human character, had pleaded the cause of the weak and suffering with such assiduity, had been so scathingly indignant at all wrong; and he had moreover shown such a manly and chivalrous purity in all his utterance with regard to women, that his readers felt for him a kind of personal tenderness, quite distinct from their mere admiration for his genius as a writer. Nor was that feeling based on his books alone. So far as one could learn at the time, no great dissimilarity existed between the author and the man. We all remember Byron's corrosive remark on the sentimentalist Sterne, that he "whined over a dead ass, and allowed his mother to die of hunger." But Dickens' feelings were by no means confined to his pen. He was known to be a good father and a good friend, and of perfect truth and honesty. The kindly tolerance for the frailties of a father or brother which he admired in Little Dorrit, he was ready to extend to his own father and his own brother. He was most assiduous in the prosecution of his craft as a writer, and yet had time and leisure of heart at command for all kinds of good and charitable work. His private character had so far stood above all floating cloud of suspicion.

That Dickens felt an honourable pride in the general affection he inspired, can readily be understood. He also felt, even more honourably, its great responsibility. He knew that his books and he himself were a power for good, and he foresaw how greatly his influence would suffer if a suspicion of hypocrisy—the vice at which he had always girded—were to taint his reputation. Here, for instance, in "Little Dorrit," the work written in the thick of his home troubles, he had written of Clennam as "a man who had, deep-rooted in his nature, a belief in all the gentle and good things his life had been without," and had shown how this belief had "saved Clennam still from the whimpering weakness and cruel selfishness of holding that because such a happiness or such a virtue had not come into his little path, or worked well for him, therefore it was not in the great scheme, but was reducible, when found in appearance, to the basest elements." A touching utterance if it expressed the real feeling of a writer sorely disappointed and in great trouble; but an utterance moving rather to contempt if it came from a writer who had transferred his affections from his wife to some other woman. I do not wonder, therefore, that Dickens, excited and exasperated, spoke out, though I think it would have been better if he had kept silence.

But he did other things that were not justifiable. He quarrelled with Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, his publishers, because they did not use their influence to get Punch, a periodical in which Dickens had no interest, to publish the personal statement that had appeared in Household Words; and worse, much worse, he wrote a letter, which ought never to have been written, detailing the grounds on which he and his wife had separated. This letter, dated the 28th of May, 1858, was addressed to his secretary, Arthur Smith, and was to be shown to any one interested. Arthur Smith showed it to the London correspondent of The New York Tribune, who naturally caused it to be published in that paper. Then Dickens was horrified. He was a man of far too high and chivalrous feeling not to know that the letter contained statements with regard to his wife's failings which ought never to have been made public. He knew as well as any one, that a literary man ought not to take the world into his confidence on such a subject. Ever afterwards he referred to the letter as his "violated letter." But, in truth, the wrong went deeper than the publication. The letter should never have been written, certainly never sent to Arthur Smith for general perusal. Dickens' only excuse is the fact that he was clearly not himself at the time, and that he never fell into a like error again. It is, however, sad to notice how entirely his wife seems to have passed out of his affection. The reference to her in his will is almost unkind; and when death was on him she seems not to have been summoned to his bedside.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Dickens did not accept the whole Carlyle creed. He retained a sort of belief in the collective wisdom of the people, which Carlyle certainly did not share.



CHAPTER XII.

Dickens' career as a reader reading for money commenced on the 29th of April, 1858, while the trouble about his wife was at the thickest; and, after reading in London on sixteen nights, he made a reading tour in the provinces, and in Scotland and Ireland. In the following year he read likewise. But meanwhile, which is more important to us than his readings, he was writing another book. On the 30th of April, 1859, in the first number of All the Year Round,[26] was begun "The Tale of Two Cities," a simultaneous publication in monthly parts being also commenced.

"The Tale of Two Cities" is a tale of the great French Revolution of 1793, and the two cities in question are London and Paris,—London as it lay comparatively at peace in the days when George III. was king, and Paris running blood and writhing in the fierce fire of anarchy and mob rule. A powerful book, unquestionably. No doubt there is in its heat and glare a reflection from Carlyle's "French Revolution," a book for which Dickens had the greatest admiration. But that need not be regarded as a demerit. Dickens is no pale copyist, and adds fervour to what he borrows. His pictures of Paris in revolution are as fine as the London scenes in "Barnaby Rudge;" and the interweaving of the story with public events is even better managed in the later book than in the earlier story of the Gordon riots. And the story, what does it tell? It tells of a certain Dr. Manette, who, after long years of imprisonment in the Bastille, is restored to his daughter in London; and of a young French noble, who has assumed the name of Darnay, and left France in horror of the doings of his order, and who marries Dr. Manette's daughter; and of a young English barrister, able enough in his profession, but careless of personal success, and much addicted to port wine, and bearing a striking personal resemblance to the young French noble. These persons, and others, being drawn to Paris by various strong inducements, Darnay is condemned to death as a ci-devant noble, and the ne'er-do-well barrister, out of the great pure love he bears to Darnay's wife, succeeds in dying for him. That is the tale's bare outline; and if any one says of the book that it is in parts melodramatic, one may fitly answer that never was any portion of the world's history such a thorough piece of melodrama as the French Revolution.

With "The Tale of Two Cities" Hablot K. Browne's connection with Dickens, as the illustrator of his books, came to an end. The "Sketches" had been illustrated by Cruikshank, who was the great popular illustrator of the time, and it is amusing to read, in the preface to the first edition of the first series, published in 1836, how the trembling young author placed himself, as it were, under the protection of the "well-known individual who had frequently contributed to the success of similar undertakings." Cruikshank also illustrated "Oliver Twist;" and indeed, with an arrogance which unfortunately is not incompatible with genius, afterwards set up a rather preposterous claim to have been the real originator of that book, declaring that he had worked out the story in a series of etchings, and that Dickens had illustrated him, and not he Dickens.[27] But apart from the drawings for the "Sketches" and "Oliver Twist," and the first few drawings by Seymour, and two drawings by Buss,[28] in "Pickwick," and some drawings by Cattermole in Master Humphrey's Clock, and by Samuel Palmer in the "Pictures from Italy," and by various hands in the Christmas stories—apart from these, Browne, or "Phiz," had executed the illustrations to Dickens' novels. Nor, with all my admiration for certain excellent qualities which his work undeniably possessed, do I think that this was altogether a good thing. Such, I know, is not a popular opinion. But I confess I am unable to agree with those critics who, from their remarks on the recent jubilee edition of "Pickwick," seem to think his illustrations so pre-eminently fine that they should be permanently associated with Dickens' stories. The editor of that edition was, in my view, quite right in treating Browne's illustrations as practically obsolete. The value of Dickens' works is perennial, and Browne's illustrations represent the art fashion of a time only. So, too, I am unable to see any great cause to regret that Cruikshank's artistic connection with Dickens came to an end so soon.[29] For both Browne and Cruikshank were pre-eminently caricaturists, and caricaturists of an old school. The latter had no idea of beauty. His art, very great art in its way, was that of grotesqueness and exaggeration. He never drew a lady or gentleman in his life. And though Browne, in my view much the lesser artist, was superior in these respects to Cruikshank, yet he too drew the most hideous Pecksniffs, and Tom Pinches, and Joey B.'s, and a whole host of characters quite unreal and absurd. The mischief of it is, too, that Dickens' humour will not bear caricaturing. The defect of his own art as a writer is that it verges itself too often on caricature. Exaggeration is its bane. When, for instance, he makes the rich alderman in "The Chimes" eat up poor Trotty Veck's little last tit-bit of tripe, we are clearly in the region of broad farce. When Mr. Pancks, in "Little Dorrit," so far abandons the ordinary ways of mature rent collectors as to ask a respectable old accountant to "give him a back," in the Marshalsea court, and leaps over his head, we are obviously in a world of pantomime. Dickens' comic effects are generally quite forced enough, and should never be further forced when translated into the sister art of drawing. Rather, if anything, should they be attenuated. But unfortunately exaggeration happened to be inherent in the draftsmanship of both Cruikshank and Browne. And, having said this, I may as well finish with the subject of the illustrations to Dickens' books. "Our Mutual Friend" was illustrated by Mr. Marcus Stone, R.A., then a rising young artist, and the son of Dickens' old friend, Frank Stone. Here the designs fall into the opposite defect. They are, some of them, pretty enough, but they want character. Mr. Fildes' pictures for "Edwin Drood" are a decided improvement. As to the illustrations for the later Household Edition, they are very inferior. The designs for a great many are clearly bad, and the mechanical execution almost uniformly so. Even Mr. Barnard's skill has had no fair chance against poor woodcutting, careless engraving, and inferior paper. And this is the more to be regretted, in that Mr. Barnard, by natural affinity of talent, has, to my thinking, done some of the best art work that has been done at all in connection with Dickens. His Character Sketches, especially the lithographed series, are admirable. The Jingle is a masterpiece; but all are good, and he even succeeds in making something pictorially acceptable of Little Nell and Little Dorrit.

Just a year, almost to a day, elapsed between the conclusion of "The Tale of Two Cities," and the commencement of "Great Expectations." The last chapter of the former appeared in the number of All the Year Round for the 26th of November, 1859, and the first chapter of the latter in the number of the same periodical for the 1st of December, 1860. Poor Pip—for such is the name of the hero of the book—poor Pip, I think he is to be pitied. Certainly he lays himself open to the charge of snobbishness, and is unduly ashamed of his connections. But then circumstances were decidedly against him. Through some occult means he is removed from his natural sphere, from the care of his "rampageous" sister and of her husband, the good, kind, honest Joe, and taken up to London, and brought up as a gentleman, and started in chambers in Barnard's Inn. All this is done through the instrumentality of Mr. Jaggers, a barrister in highest repute among the criminal brotherhood. But Pip not unnaturally thinks that his unknown benefactress is a certain Miss Havisham, who, having been bitterly wronged in her love affairs, lives in eccentric fashion near his native place, amid the mouldering mementoes of her wedding day. What is his horror when he finds that his education, comfort, and prospects have no more reputable foundation than the bounty of a murderous criminal called Magwitch, who has showered all these benefits upon him from the antipodes, in return for the gift of food and a file when he, Magwitch, was trying to escape from the hulks, and Pip was a little lad. Magwitch, the transported convict, comes back to England, at the peril of his life, to make himself known to Pip, and to have the pleasure of looking at that young gentleman. He is again tracked by the police, and caught, notwithstanding Pip's efforts to get him off, and dies in prison. Pip ultimately, very ultimately, marries a young lady oddly brought up by the queer Miss Havisham, and who turns out to be Magwitch's daughter.

Such, as I have had occasion to say before in speaking of similar analyses, such are the dry bones of the story. Pip's character is well drawn. So is that of Joe. And Mr. Jaggers, the criminal's friend, and his clerk, Wemmick, are striking and full of a grim humour. Miss Havisham and her protegee, Estella, whom she educates to be the scourge of men, belong to what may be called the melodramatic side of Dickens' art. They take their place with Mrs. Dombey and with Miss Dartle in "David Copperfield," and Miss Wade in "Little Dorrit"—female characters of a fantastic and haughty type, and quite devoid, Miss Dartle and Miss Wade especially, of either verisimilitude or the milk of human kindness.

"Great Expectations" was completed in August, 1861, and the first number of "Our Mutual Friend" appeared in May, 1864. This was an unusual interval, but the great writer's faculty of invention was beginning to lose its fresh spring and spontaneity. And besides he had not been idle. Though writing no novel, he had been busy enough with readings, and his work on All the Year Round. He had also written a short, but very graceful paper[30] on Thackeray, whose death, on the Christmas Eve of 1863, had greatly affected him. Now, however, he again braced himself for one of his greater efforts.

Scarcely, I think, as all will agree, with the old success. In "Our Mutual Friend" he is not at his best. It is a strange complicated story that seems to have some difficulty in unravelling itself: the story of a man who pretends to be dead in order that he may, under a changed name, investigate the character and eligibility of the young woman whom an erratic father has destined to be his bride. A golden-hearted old dust contractor, who hides a will that will give him all that erratic father's property, and disinherit the man aforesaid, and who, to crown his virtues, pretends to be a miser in order to teach the young woman, also aforesaid, how bad it is to be mercenary, and to induce her to marry the unrecognized and seemingly penniless son; their marriage accordingly, with ultimate result that the bridegroom turns out to be no poor clerk, but the original heir, who, of course, is not dead, and is the inheritor of thousands; subsidiary groups of characters, of course, one which I think rather uninteresting, of some brand-new people called the Veneerings and their acquaintances, for they have no friends; and some fine sketches of the river-side population; striking and amusing characters too—Silas Wegg, the scoundrelly vendor of songs, who ferrets among the dust for wills in order to confound the good dustman, his benefactor; and the little deformed dolls' dressmaker, with her sot of a father; and Betty Higden, the sturdy old woman who has determined neither in life nor death to suffer the pollution of the workhouse; such, with more added, are the ingredients of the story.

One episode, however, deserves longer comment. It is briefly this: Eugene Wrayburn is a young barrister of good family and education, and of excellent abilities and address, all gifts that he has turned to no creditable purpose whatever. He falls in with a girl, Lizzie Hexham, of more than humble rank, but of great beauty and good character. She interests him, and in mere wanton carelessness, for he certainly has no idea of offering marriage, he gains her affection, neither meaning, in any definite way, to do anything good nor anything bad with it. There is another man who loves Lizzie, a schoolmaster, who, in his dull, plodding way, has made the best of his intellect, and risen in life. He naturally, and we may say properly, for no good can come of them, resents Wrayburn's attentions, as does the girl's brother. Wrayburn uses the superior advantages of his position to insult them in the most offensive and brutal manner, and to torture the schoolmaster, just as he has used those advantages to win the girl's heart. Whereupon, after being goaded to heart's desire for a considerable time, the schoolmaster as nearly as possible beats out Wrayburn's life, and commits suicide. Wrayburn is rescued by Lizzie as he lies by the river bank sweltering in blood, and tended by her, and they are married and live happy ever afterwards.

Now the amazing part of this story is, that Dickens' sympathies throughout are with Wrayburn. How this comes to be so I confess I do not know. To me Wrayburn's conduct appears to be heartless, cruel, unmanly, and the use of his superior social position against the schoolmaster to be like a foul blow, and quite unworthy of a gentleman. Schoolmasters ought not to beat people about the head, decidedly. But if Wrayburn's thoughts took a right course during convalescence, I think he may have reflected that he deserved his beating, and also that the woman whose affection he had won was a great deal too good for him.

Dickens' misplaced sympathy in this particular story has, I repeat, always struck me with amazement. Usually his sympathies are so entirely right. Nothing is more common than to hear the accusation of vulgarity made against his books. A certain class of people seem to think, most mistakenly, that because he so often wrote about vulgar people, uneducated people, people in the lower ranks of society, therefore his writing was vulgar, nay more, he himself vulgar too. Such an opinion can only be based on a strange confusion between subject and treatment. There is scarcely any subject not tainted by impurity, that cannot be treated with entire refinement. Washington Irving wrote to Dickens, most justly, of "that exquisite tact that enabled him to carry his reader through the veriest dens of vice and villainy without a breath to shock the ear or a stain to sully the robe of the most shrinking delicacy;" and added: "It is a rare gift to be able to paint low life without being low, and to be comic without the least taint of vulgarity." This is well said; and if we look for the main secret of the inherent refinement of Dickens' books, we shall find it, I think, in this: that he never intentionally paltered with right and wrong. He would make allowance for evil, would take pleasure in showing that there were streaks of lingering good in its blackness, would treat it kindly, gently, humanly. But it always stood for evil, and nothing else. He made no attempt by cunning jugglery to change its seeming. He had no sneaking affection for it. And therefore, I say again, his attachment to Eugene Wrayburn has always struck me with surprise. As regards Dickens' own refinement, I cannot perhaps do better than quote the words of Sir Arthur Helps, an excellent judge. "He was very refined in his conversation—at least, what I call refined—for he was one of those persons in whose society one is comfortable from the certainty that they will never say anything which can shock other people, or hurt their feelings, be they ever so fastidious or sensitive."

FOOTNOTES:

[26] His foolish quarrel with Bradbury and Evans had necessitated the abandonment of Household Words.

[27] See his pamphlet, "The Artist and the Author." The matter is fully discussed in his life by Mr. Blanchard Jerrold.

[28] Buss's illustrations were executed under great disadvantages, and are bad. Those of Seymour are excellent.

[29] I am always sorry, however, that Cruikshank did not illustrate the Christmas stories.

[30] See Cornhill Magazine for February, 1864.



CHAPTER XIII.

But we are now, alas, nearing the point where the "rapid" of Dickens' life began to "shoot to its fall." The year 1865, during which he partly wrote "Our Mutual Friend," was a fatal one in his career. In the month of February he had been very ill, with an affection of the left foot, at first thought to be merely local, but which really pointed to serious mischief, and never afterwards wholly left him. Then, on June 9th, when returning from France, where he had gone to recruit, he as nearly as possible lost his life in a railway accident at Staplehurst. A bridge had broken in; some of the carriages fell through, and were smashed; that in which Dickens was, hung down the side of the chasm. Of courage and presence of mind he never showed any lack. They were evinced, on one occasion, at the readings, when an alarm of fire arose. They shone conspicuous here. He quieted two ladies who were in the same compartment of the carriage; helped to extricate them and others from their perilous position; gave such help as he could to the wounded and dying; probably was the means of saving the life of one man, whom he was the first to hear faintly groaning under a heap of wreckage; and then, as he tells in the "postscript" to the book, scrambled back into the carriage to find the crumpled MS. of a portion of "Our Mutual Friend."[31] But even pluck is powerless to prevent a ruinous shock to the nerves. Though Dickens had done so manfully what he had to do at the time, he never fully recovered from the blow. His daughter tells us how he would often, "when travelling home from London, suddenly fall into a paroxysm of fear, tremble all over, clutch the arms of the railway carriage, large beads of perspiration standing on his face, and suffer agonies of terror.... He had ... apparently no idea of our presence." And Mr. Dolby tells us also how in travelling it was often necessary for him to ward off such attacks by taking brandy. Dickens had been failing before only too surely; and this accident, like a coward's blow, struck him heavily as he fell.

But whether failing or stricken, he bated no jot of energy or courage; nay, rather, as his health grew weaker, did he redouble the pressure of his work. I think there is a grandeur in the story of the last five years of his life, that dwarfs even the tale of his rapid and splendid rise. It reads like some antique myth of the Titans defying Jove's thunder. There is about the man something indomitable and heroic. He had, as we have seen, given a series of readings in 1858-59; and he gave another in the years 1861 to 1863—successful enough in a pecuniary sense, but through failure of business capacity on the part of the manager, entailing on the reader himself a great deal of anxiety and worry.[32] Now, in the spring of 1866, with his left foot giving him unceasing trouble, and his nerves shattered, and his heart in an abnormal state, he accepted an offer from Messrs. Chappell to read "in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Paris," for L1,500, and the payment of all expenses, and then to give forty-two more readings for L2,500. Mr. Dolby, who accompanied Dickens as business manager in this and the remaining tours, has told their story in an interesting volume.[33] Of course the wear was immense. The readings themselves involved enormous fatigue to one who so identified himself with what he read, and whose whole being seemed to vibrate not only with the emotions of the characters in his stories, but of the audience. Then there was the weariness of long railway journeys in all seasons and weathers—journeys that at first must have been rendered doubly tedious, as he could not bear to travel by express trains. Yet, notwithstanding failure of strength, notwithstanding fatigue, his native gaiety and good spirits smile like a gleam of winter sunlight over the narrative. As he had been the brightest and most genial of companions in the old holiday days when strolling about the country with his actor-troupe, so now he was occasionally as frolic as a boy, dancing a hornpipe in the train for the amusement of his companions, compounding bowls of punch in which he shared but sparingly—for he was really convivial only in idea—and always considerate and kindly towards his companions and dependents. And mingled pathetically with all this are confessions of pain, weariness, illness, faintness, sleeplessness, internal bleeding,—all bravely borne, and never for an instant suffered to interfere with any business arrangement.

But if the strain of the readings was too heavy here at home, what was it likely to be during a winter in America? Nevertheless he determined, against all remonstrances, to go thither. It would almost seem as if he felt that the day of his life was waning, and that it was his duty to gather in a golden harvest for those he loved ere the night came on. So he sailed for Boston once more on the 9th of November, 1867. The Americans, it must be said, behaved nobly. All the old grudges connected with "The American Notes," and "Martin Chuzzlewit," sank into oblivion. The reception was everywhere enthusiastic, the success of the readings immense. Again and again people waited all night, amid the rigours of an almost arctic winter, in order to secure an opportunity of purchasing tickets as soon as the ticket office opened. There were enormous and intelligent audiences at Boston, New York, Washington, Philadelphia—everywhere. The sum which Dickens realized by the tour, amounted to the splendid total of nearly L19,000. Nor, in this money triumph, did he fail to excite his usual charm of personal fascination, though the public affection and admiration were manifested in forms less objectionable and offensive than of old. On his birthday, the 7th of February, 1868, he says, "I couldn't help laughing at myself ...; it was observed so much as though I were a little boy." Flowers, garlands were set about his room; there were presents on his dinner-table, and in the evening the hall where he read was decorated by kindly unknown hands. Of public and private entertainment he might have had just as much as he chose.

But to this medal there was a terrible reverse. Travelling from New York to Boston just before Christmas, he took a most disastrous cold, which never left him so long as he remained in the country. He was constantly faint. He ate scarcely anything. He slept very little. Latterly he was so lame, as scarcely to be able to walk. Again and again it seemed impossible that he should fulfil his night's engagement. He was constantly so exhausted at the conclusion of the reading, that he had to lie down for twenty minutes or half an hour, "before he could undergo the fatigue even of dressing." Mr. Dolby lived in daily fear lest he should break down altogether. "I used to steal into his room," he says, "at all hours of the night and early morning, to see if he were awake, or in want of anything; always though to find him wide awake, and as cheerful and jovial as circumstances would admit—never in the least complaining, and only reproaching me for not taking my night's rest." "Only a man of iron will could have accomplished what he did," says Mr. Fields, who knew him well, and saw him often during the tour.

In the first week of May, 1868, Dickens was back in England, and soon again in the thick of his work and play. Mr. Wills, the sub-editor of All the Year Round, had met with an accident. Dickens supplied his place. Chauncy Hare Townshend had asked him to edit a chaotic mass of religious lucubrations. He toilfully edited them. Then, with the autumn, the readings began again;—for it marks the indomitable energy of the man that, even amid the terrible physical trials incident to his tour in America, he had agreed with Messrs. Chappell, for a sum of L8,000, to give one hundred more readings after his return. So in October the old work began again, and he was here, there, and everywhere, now reading at Manchester and Liverpool, now at Edinburgh and Glasgow, anon coming back to read fitfully in London, then off again to Ireland, or the West of England. Nor is it necessary to say that he spared himself not one whit. In order to give novelty to these readings, which were to be positively the last, he had laboriously got up the scene of Nancy's murder, in "Oliver Twist," and persisted in giving it night after night, though of all his readings it was the one that exhausted him most terribly.[34] But of course this could not last. The pain in his foot "was always recurring at inconvenient and unexpected moments," says Mr. Dolby, and occasionally the American cold came back too. In February, in London, the foot was worse than it had ever been, so bad that Sir Henry Thompson, and Mr. Beard, his medical adviser, compelled him to postpone a reading. At Edinburgh, a few days afterwards, Mr. Syme, the eminent surgeon, strongly recommended perfect rest. Still he battled on, but "with great personal suffering such as few men could have endured." Sleeplessness was on him too. And still he fought on, determined, if it were physically possible, to fulfil his engagement with Messrs. Chappell, and complete the hundred nights. But it was not to be. Symptoms set in that pointed alarmingly towards paralysis of the left side. At Preston, on the 22nd of April, Mr. Beard, who had come post-haste from London, put a stop to the readings, and afterwards decided, in consultation with Sir Thomas Watson, that they ought to be suspended entirely for the time, and never resumed in connection with any railway travelling.

Even this, however, was not quite the end; for a summer of comparative rest, or what Dickens considered rest, seemed so far to have set him up that he gave a final series of twelve readings in London between the 11th of January and 15th of March, 1870, thus bringing to its real conclusion an enterprise by which, at whatever cost to himself, he had made a sum of about L45,000.

Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1869, he had gone back to the old work, and was writing a novel, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." It is a good novel unquestionably. Without going so far as Longfellow, who had doubts whether it was not "the most beautiful of all" Dickens' works, one may admit that there is about it a singular freshness, and no sign at all of mental decay. As for the "mystery," I do not think that need baffle us altogether. But then I see no particular reason to believe that Dickens had wished to baffle us, or specially to rival Edgar Allan Poe or Mr. Wilkie Collins in the construction of criminal puzzles. Even though only half the case is presented to us, and the book remains for ever unfinished, we need have, I think, no difficulty in working out its conclusion. The course pursued by Mr. Jasper, Lay Precentor of the Cathedral at Cloisterham, is really too suspicious. No intelligent British jury, seeing the facts as they are presented to us, the readers, could for a moment think of acquitting him of the murder of his nephew, Edwin Drood. Take those facts seriatim. First, we have the motive: he is passionately in love with the girl to whom his nephew is engaged. Then we have a terrible coil of compromising circumstances: his extravagant profession of devotion to his nephew, his attempts to establish a hidden influence over the girl's mind to his nephew's detriment and his own advantage, his gropings amid the dark recesses of the Cathedral and inquiries into the action of quicklime, his endeavours to foment a quarrel between Edwin Drood and a fiery young gentleman from Ceylon, on the night of the murder, and his undoubted doctoring of the latter's drink. Then, after the murder, how damaging is his conduct. He falls into a kind of fit on discovering that his nephew's engagement had been broken off, which he might well do if his crime turned out to be not only a crime but also a blunder. And his conduct to the girl is, to say the least of it, strange. Nor will his character help him. He frequents the opium dens of the East-end of London. Guilty, guilty, most certainly guilty. There is nothing to be said in arrest of judgment. Let the judge put on the black cap, and Jasper be devoted to his merited doom.

Such was the story that Dickens was unravelling in the spring and early summer of 1870. And fortune smiled upon it. He had sold the copyright for the large sum of L7,500, and a half share of the profits after a sale of twenty-five thousand copies, plus L1,000 for the advance sheets sent to America; and the sale was more than answering his expectations. Nor did prosperity look favourably on the book alone. It also, in one sense, showered benefits on the author. He was worth, as the evidence of the Probate Court was to show only too soon, a sum of over L80,000. He was happy in his children. He was universally loved, honoured, courted. "Troops of friends," though, alas! death had made havoc among the oldest, were still his. Never had man exhibited less inclination to pay fawning court to greatness and social rank. Yet when the Queen expressed a desire to see him, as she did in March, 1870, he felt not only pride, but a gentleman's pleasure in acceding to her wish, and came away charmed from a long chatting interview. But, while prosperity was smiling thus, the shadows of his day of life were lengthening, lengthening, and the night was at hand.

On Wednesday, June 8th, he seemed in excellent spirits; worked all the morning in the Chalet[35] as was his wont, returned to the house for lunch and a cigar, and then, being anxious to get on with "Edwin Drood," went back to his desk once more. The weather was superb. All round the landscape lay in fullest beauty of leafage and flower, and the air rang musically with the song of birds. What were his thoughts that summer day as he sat there at his work? Writing many years before, he had asked whether the "subtle liquor of the blood" may not "perceive, by properties within itself," when danger is imminent, and so "run cold and dull"? Did any such monitor within, one wonders, warn him at all that the hand of death was uplifted to strike, and that its shadow lay upon him? Judging from the words that fell from his pen that day we might almost think that it was so—we might almost go further, and guess with what hopes and fears he looked into the darkness beyond. Never at any time does he appear to have been greatly troubled by speculative doubt. There is no evidence in his life, no evidence in his letters, no evidence in his books, that he had ever seen any cause to question the truth of the reply which Christianity gives to the world-old problems of man's origin and destiny. For abstract speculation he had not the slightest turn or taste. In no single one of his characters does he exhibit any fierce mental struggle as between truth and error. All that side of human experience, with its anguish of battle, its despairs, and its triumphs, seems to have been unknown to him. Perhaps he had the stronger grasp of other matters in consequence—who knows? But the fact remains. With a trust quite simple and untroubled, he held through life to the faith of Christ. When his children were little, he had written prayers for them, had put the Bible into simpler language for their use. In his will, dated May 12, 1869, he had said, "I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the broad teaching of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow construction of its letter here or there." And now, on this last day of his life, in probably the last letter that left his pen, he wrote to one who had objected to some passage in "Edwin Drood" as irreverent: "I have always striven in my writings to express veneration for the life and lessons of our Saviour—because I feel it." And with a significance, of which, as I have said, he may himself have been dimly half-conscious, among the last words of his unfinished story, written that very afternoon, are words that tell of glorious summer sunshine transfiguring the city of his imagination, and of the changing lights, and the song of birds, and the incense from garden and meadow that "penetrate into the cathedral" of Cloisterham, "subdue its earthy odour, and preach the Resurrection and the Life."

For now the end had come. When he went in to dinner Miss Hogarth noticed that he looked very ill, and wished at once to send for a doctor. But he refused, struggled for a short space against the impending fit, and tried to talk, at last very incoherently. Then, when urged to go up to his bed, he rose, and, almost immediately, slid from her supporting arm, and fell on the floor. Nor did consciousness return. He passed from the unrest of life into the peace of eternity on the following day, June 9, 1870, at ten minutes past six in the evening.

And now he lies in Westminster Abbey, among the men who have most helped, by deed or thought, to make this England of ours what it is. Dean Stanley only gave effect to the national voice when he assigned to him that place of sepulture. The most popular, and in most respects the greatest novelist of his time; the lord over the laughter and tears of a whole generation; the writer, in his own field of fiction, whose like we shall probably not see again for many a long, long year, if ever; where could he be laid more fittingly for his last long sleep than in the hallowed resting-place which the country sets apart for the most honoured of her children?

So he lies there among his peers in the Southern Transept. Close beside him sleep Dr. Johnson, the puissant literary autocrat of his own time; and Garrick, who was that time's greatest actor; and Handel, who may fittingly claim to have been one of the mightiest musicians of all time. There sleeps, too, after the fitful fever of his troubled life, the witty, the eloquent Sheridan. In close proximity rests Macaulay, the artist-historian and essayist. Within the radius of a few yards lies all that will ever die of Chaucer, who five hundred years ago sounded the spring note of English literature, and gave to all after-time the best, brightest glimpse into mediaeval England; and all that is mortal also of Spenser of the honey'd verse; and of Beaumont, who had caught an echo of Shakespeare's sweetness if not his power; and of sturdy Ben Jonson, held in his own day a not unworthy rival of Shakespeare's self; and of "glorious" and most masculine John Dryden. From his monument Shakespeare looks upon the place with his kindly eyes, and Addison too, and Goldsmith; and one can almost imagine a smile of fellowship upon the marble faces of those later dead—Burns, Coleridge, Southey, and Thackeray.

Nor in that great place of the dead does Dickens enjoy cold barren honour alone. Nearly seventeen years have gone by since he was laid there—yes, nearly seventeen years, though it seems only yesterday that I was listening to the funeral sermon in which Dean Stanley spoke of the simple and sufficient faith in which he had lived and died. But though seventeen years have gone by, yet are outward signs not wanting of the peculiar love that clings to him still. As I strolled through the Abbey this last Christmas Eve I found his grave, and his grave alone, made gay with the season's hollies. "Lord, keep my memory green,"—in another sense than he used the words, that prayer is answered.

And of the future what shall we say? His fame had a brilliant day while he lived; it has a brilliant day now. Will it fade into twilight, without even an after-glow; will it pass altogether into the night of oblivion? I cannot think so. The vitality of Dickens' works is singularly great. They are all a-throb, as it were, with hot human blood. They are popular in the highest sense because their appeal is universal, to the uneducated as well as the educated. The humour is superb, and most of it, so far as one can judge, of no ephemeral kind. The pathos is more questionable, but that too, at its simplest and best; and especially when the humour is shot with it—is worthy of a better epithet than excellent. It is supremely touching. Imagination, fancy, wit, eloquence, the keenest observation, the most strenuous endeavour to reach the highest artistic excellence, the largest kindliness,—all these he brought to his life-work. And that work, as I think, will live, I had almost dared to prophesy for ever. Of course fashions change. Of course no writer of fiction, writing for his own little day, can permanently meet the needs of all after times. Some loss of immediate vital interest is inevitable. Nevertheless, in Dickens' case, all will not die. Half a century, a century hence, he will still be read; not perhaps as he was read when his words flashed upon the world in their first glory and freshness, nor as he is read now in the noon of his fame. But he will be read much more than we read the novelists of the last century—be read as much, shall I say, as we still read Scott. And so long as he is read, there will be one gentle and humanizing influence the more at work among men.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] For his own graphic account of the accident, see his "Letters."

[32] He computed that he had made L12,000 by the two first series of readings.

[33] "Charles Dickens as I Knew Him." By George Dolby. Miss Dickens considers this "the best and truest picture of her father yet written."

[34] Mr. Dolby remonstrated on this, and it was in connection with a very slight show of temper on the occasion that he says: "In all my experiences with the Chief that was the only time I ever heard him address angry words to any one."

[35] The Chalet, since sold and removed, stood at the edge of a kind of "wilderness," which is separated from Gad's Hill Place by the high road. A tunnel, constructed by Dickens, connects the "wilderness" and the garden of the house. Close to the road, in the "wilderness," and fronting the house, are two fine cedars.



INDEX.

A.

"Administrative Reform" agitation, 129

All the Year Round, 114, 115

America, Dickens' first visit to United States in 1842, 71, 74-82, 94, 95; second visit in 1867-8, 152-153

"American Notes," 68, 79-81

B.

"Barnaby Rudge," 52, 69-70, 108

Barnard, Mr., his illustrations to Dickens' works, 143

"Battle of Life," 104

Bentley's Miscellany edited by Dickens, 49, 51

"Bleak House," 116-119

Boulogne, 119, 120

Bret Harte, Mr., on Little Nell, 64

Browne, or "Phiz," his illustrations to Dickens' works, 140-142

C.

Carlyle, his description of Dickens quoted, 35; and of Dickens' reading, 124; his influence on Dickens, 126, 127; see also 98 and 139

Chapman and Hall, 40, 41, 42, 51, 61

Chatham, 13

Childhood, Dickens' feeling for its pathos, 12, 63

"Child's History of England," 115

"Chimes," 55, 96-99, 142

"Christmas Carol," 91-92, 125

"Christopher North," 72

Cowden Clarke, Mrs., quoted, 110

Cruikshank, his illustrations to "Sketches" and "Oliver Twist," 140-142

D.

Daily News, started with Dickens as editor, 99, 100, 103, 114 "David Copperfield"—in many respects autobiographical, 14-16, 21, 133; analysis of, 63, 68, 111-113

Dick, Mr., 107, 108

Dickens, Charles, birth, 12; childhood and boyhood, 12-26; school experiences, 25, 26; law experiences, 27, 28; experiences as reporter for the press, 28-30; first attempts at authorship, 31-33; marriage, 34; his personal appearance in early manhood, 35, 36; influence of his early training, 36-39; pecuniary position after publication of "Pickwick," 51, 52; habits of work and relaxation, 54-56; reception at Edinburgh, 71, 72; American experiences, 74-81; affection for his children, 82, 83; Italian experiences, 93-99; appointed editor of Daily News, 99, 100; efficiency in practical matters, 102, 103; his charm as a holiday companion, 110; first public readings in 1853, 121; character of his reading, 124, 125; purchase of Gad's Hill Place, 131, 132; separation from his wife, 132-138; general love in which he was held, 135, 136; tendency to caricature in his art, 142; essential refinement in his writing and in himself, 147, 148; his presence of mind, 149; his brave battle against failing strength, 149-155; with what thoughts he faced death, 158, 159; his death, 159; resting-place in Westminster Abbey, 159-161; love that clings to his memory, 161; future of his fame, 161, 162

Dickens, John, his character, 16, 17; his imprisonment, 22, 23, 28; his death, 115

Dickens, Miss, biography of her father, quoted, 50, 83, 150

Dickens, Mrs. (Dickens' mother), 24, 25

Dickens, Mrs., 82; separated from her husband, 132-138

Dolby, Mr., manager for the readings, 150, 151, 153

"Dombey and Son," 63, 103-107, 110

Dombey, Paul, 63, 65-66, 68, 105

E.

Edinburgh, Dickens' reception there, 71, 72

"Edwin Drood," 143, 155-157

F.

Fildes, Mr. L., A.R.A., illustrates "Edwin Drood," 143

Flite, Miss, 108, 109

Forster, John, 19, 38, 99, 116; his opinion on the advisability of public readings, 121, 122

G.

Gad's Hill Place, 13; purchase of, 131, 132

Genoa, 54, 55, 95-96, 98, 99

Grant, Mr. James, 42

"Great Expectations," 63, 143-145

H.

"Hard Times," 126-129

"Haunted Man," The, 110-111

Helps, Sir Arthur, on Dickens' powers of observation, 32; on his essential refinement, 148

Hogarth, Mary, her death and character, 52-53

Horne, on description of Little Nell's death and burial, 64, 66-67

Household Words, 113-115, 134

Humour of Dickens, 32, 33, 45, 46, 142, 161

I.

Italy in 1844, 94-95

J.

Jeffrey, his opinion of Little Nell, 63, 71, 72

L.

Landor, his admiration for Little Nell, 64; his likeness to Mr. Boythorn, 119

Lausanne, 103, 104

Leigh Hunt, 118

"Little Dorrit," 22, 129-131, 142-143

Little Nell, criticism on her character and story, 63-67, 71, 72, 73

London, Dickens' knowledge of, and walks in, 32, 54-56

M.

Macaulay, 80, 128, 160

Macready, the tragic actor, 73, 76, 82, 83

Marshalsea Prison, Dickens' father imprisoned there, 16, 20, 21-23; made the chief scene of "Little Dorrit," 130

"Martin Chuzzlewit," 84, 85, 88-90

Master Humphrey's Clock, 61, 62, 90, 141

Micawber, Mr., 15, 16, 22

N.

Nickleby, Mrs., 25

"Nicholas Nickleby," 50, 59-61, 90

O.

"Old Curiosity Shop," 61, 62-69

"Oliver Twist," 49, 51, 57-59, 63, 141

"Our Mutual Friend," 86, 143, 145-147

P.

Paris, 109, 131

Pathos of Dickens, 32, 33, 67-69, 161

"Pickwick," 40-48, 49, 51, 90, 141

"Pictures from Italy," 99, 100-101

Pipchin, Mrs., 20, 23

Plots, Dickens', 85-88

Q.

Quarterly Review foretells Dickens' speedy downfall, 50, 51

R.

Readings, Dickens', 121-125, 139, 150-155

Ruskin, Mr., his opinion of "Hard Times," 128

S.

Sam Weller, 46, 47

Scott, Sir Walter, 43, 87, 162

Seymour, his connection with "Pickwick," 40-42, 141

"Sketches by Boz," 31-33, 52, 140, 141

Stanley, Dean, 159, 161

Stone, Mr. Marcus, R.A., illustrates "Our Mutual Friend," 143

T.

Taine, M., his criticism criticised, 107-109

"Tale of Two Cities," 139-140

Thackeray, 53, 135, 145; as a reader, 124, 125

Tiny Tim, 68, 125

Toots, Mr., 107, 108, 109

W.

Washington Irving, 73, 148

Westminster Abbey, Dickens place of burial, 159-161

Y.

Yates, Edmund, Mr., quoted, 38



BIBLIOGRAPHY.

BY

JOHN P. ANDERSON

(British Museum).

* * * * *

I. WORKS.

II. SELECTIONS.

III. SINGLE WORKS.

IV. MISCELLANEOUS WORKS.

V. APPENDIX—

Biographical, Critical, etc. Dramatic. Musical. Parodies and Imitations. Poetical. Magazine and Newspaper Articles.

VI. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS.

* * * * *

I. WORKS.

FIRST CHEAP EDITION. 19 vols. London, 1847-67, 8vo.

This edition was in three series, the first and third being published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall, the second by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans. It was printed in double columns, with frontispieces by Leslie, Hablot K. Browne, Cruikshank, etc.

LIBRARY EDITION. 22 vols. London, 1858-59, 8vo.

LIBRARY EDITION. Illustrated. 30 vols. London, 1861-1873.

The original illustrations were added to the later issues of the Library Edition, and the series completed in 30 vols.

THE PEOPLE'S EDITION. 25 vols. London, 1865-1867, 8vo.

A re-issue of the Cheap Edition.

THE CHARLES DICKENS EDITION. Illustrated. 21 vols. London, 1867-1873, 8vo.

THE HOUSEHOLD EDITION. Illustrated. 22 vols. London, 1871-1879, 4to.

ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY EDITION. 30 vols. London, 1873-1876, 8vo.

THE POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION. Illustrated. 30 vols. London, 1878-1880, 8vo.

THE POCKET EDITION. 30 vols. London, 1880, 16mo.

THE DIAMOND EDITION. Illustrated. 14 vols. London, 1880, 16mo.

EDITION DE LUXE. Illustrated. 30 vols. London, 1881, 4to.

One thousand copies only of this Edition de Luxe were printed for sale, each numbered, and it was dedicated to Her Majesty the Queen.

THE CABINET EDITION. Illustrated. London, 1885, etc., 16mo.

A re-issue of the Pocket Edition.

II. SELECTIONS.

The Beauties of Pickwick. Collected and arranged by Sam Weller. London, 1838, 8vo.

The Story Teller. A collection of tales, stories, and novels. By Walter Scott, Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, etc. Edited by Hermann Schuetz. Siegen, 1850, 8vo.

Immortelles from C.D. By Ich. London, 1856, 8vo.

Novels and Tales reprinted from Household Words. 11 vols. (Tauchnitz Edition). Leipzig, 1856-59, 16mo.

Christmas Stories from the Household Words. Conducted by C.D. London [1860], 8vo.

The Poor Traveller: Boots at the Holly-Tree Inn; and Mrs. Gamp, by C.D. London, 1858, 8vo.

Arranged by Dickens for his Readings.

Dialogues from Dickens. Arranged by W.E. Fette. Two Series. Boston, 1870-71, 8vo.

A Cyclopaedia of the best thoughts of C.D. Compiled and alphabetically arranged by F.G. De Fontaine. New York, 1873, 8vo.

A Series of Character Sketches from Dickens. Being fac-similes of original drawings by F. Barnard [with extracts from some of D.'s works]. 2 pts. London [1879]-85, folio.

——Another Edition. London, 1884, folio.

The Dickens Reader. Character Readings from the stories of Charles Dickens. Selected, adapted, and arranged by Nathan Sheppard, with numerous illustrations by F. Barnard, New York, 1881, 4to.

The Charles Dickens Birthday Book. Compiled and edited by his eldest daughter (Mary Dickens). With illustrations by his youngest daughter (Kate Perugini). London, 1882, 8vo.

Readings from the works of C.D. Condensed and adapted by J.A. Jennings. Dublin [1882], 8vo.

The Readings of C.D. as arranged and read by himself. With illustrations. London, 1883, 8vo.

Chips from Dickens selected by Thomas Mason. Glasgow [1884], 32mo.

Tales from Charles Dickens's Works. London [1884], 8vo.

The Humour and Pathos of Charles Dickens. Selected by Chas. Kent. London, 1884, 8vo.

Child-Pictures from Dickens. [Illustrated.] London, 1885, 4to.

Wellerisms from "Pickwick" and "Master Humphrey's Clock." Selected by Charles F. Rideal, and Edited, with an Introduction, by Charles Kent, author of "The Humour and Pathos of Charles Dickens." London, 1886, 8vo.

III. SINGLE WORKS.

American Notes for general circulation. 2 vols. London, 1842, 8vo.

——[Other Editions. London, 1850, 8vo.; London, 1884, 8vo].

Bleak House. With illustrations, by H.K. Browne. London, 1853, 8vo.

Boots at the Holly-Tree Inn, by Charles Dickens, as condensed by himself for his readings. Boston, 1868, 8vo.

The Holly-Tree Inn was the Christmas Number of "Household Words" for 1855. Dickens contributed "The Guest," "The Boots," and "The Bill."

A Child's History of England. With a frontispiece by F.W. Topham. 3 vols. London, 1852-54, 16mo.

The Chimes: a Goblin Story of some bells that rang an old year out and a new year in. By Charles Dickens. [Illustrated by Maclise, Doyle, Leech, and Clarkson Stanfield.] London, 1845, 8vo.

An edition with notes and elucidations by K. ten Bruggencate was published at Groningen in 1883.

Christmas Books. London, 1852, 8vo.

Christmas Books. With illustrations by Sir E. Landseer, Maclise, Stanfield, F. Stone, Doyle, Leech, and Tenniel. London, 1869, 8vo.

A Christmas Carol in Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. By C.D. With illustrations by John Leech. London, 1843, 8vo.

——Condensed by himself, for his readings. Boston [U.S.], 1868, 8vo.

The Cricket on the Hearth. A Fairy Tale of Home. By C.D. [Illustrated by Maclise, Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield, Leech, and Landseer.] London, 1846, 16mo.

The Battle of Life: A Love Story. [Illustrated by Maclise, Stanfield, Doyle, and Leech.] London, 1846, 16mo.

The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain. A Fancy for Christmas Time. [Illustrated by Stanfield, John Tenniel, Frank Stone, and John Leech.] London, 1848, 16mo.

Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, wholesale, retail, and for exportation. With illustrations by H.K. Browne. London, 1848, 8vo.

The Story of Little Dombey. By C.D. London, 1858, 8vo.

Revised by Dickens for his Readings.

The Story of Little Dombey. By C.D., as condensed by himself for his readings. Boston [U.S.], 1868, 8vo.

Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions. (Tauchnitz Edition, vol. 894.) Leipzig, 1867, 16mo.

The Christmas Number of "All the Year Round" for 1865. Dickens contributed chap. i., "To be Taken Immediately;" chap. vi., "To be Taken With a Grain of Salt;" and the concluding chapter, "To be Taken for Life."

Doctor Marigold. By C.D., as condensed by himself for his readings. Boston [U.S.], 1868, 8vo.

Great Expectations. By C.D. In three volumes. London, 1861, 8vo.

Appeared originally in All the Year Round, December 1, 1860, to August 3, 1861. An American edition was published the same year with illustrations by J. McLenan.

Hard Times. For these Times. By C.D. London, 1854, 8vo.

Appeared originally in Household Words, April 1 to August 12, 1854.

Hunted Down. (Tauchnitz Edition, vol. 536.) Leipzig, 1860, 16mo.

Appeared originally in the New York Ledger, August 20, 27, Sept. 3, 1859, and All the Year Round, Aug. 4 and 11, 1860.

Hunted Down. A Story. By C.D. With some account of T.G. Wainewright, the poisoner [by John Camden Hotten]. London [1870], 8vo.

Is She his Wife? or, Something Singular. A comic burletta in one act. Boston [U.S.], 1877, 16mo.

First produced at the St. James's Theatre, March 6, 1837. Mr. Shepherd says that this was first printed in 1837, but no copy is known to exist.

The Lamplighter: A Farce. By C.D. (1838).

Only 250 copies were privately printed in 1879 from the MS. copy in the Forster Collection at South Kensington; each copy numbered.

The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. With illustrations by Phiz [i.e., H.K. Browne]. London, 1844, 8vo.

Mrs. Gamp [extracted from "The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit"]. By C.D., as condensed by himself, for his readings. Boston [U.S.], 1868, 8vo.

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. With illustrations by Phiz. London, 1839, 8vo.

Contains a portrait of Dickens, and 39 illustrations.

Nicholas Nickleby at the Yorkshire School [extracted from "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby"]. By C.D., as condensed by himself, for his readings. (Four Chapters). Boston [U.S.], 1868, 8vo.

Another edition in three chapters was published at Boston the same year.

Little Dorrit. With illustrations, by H.K. Browne. London [1855]-57, 8vo.

Master Humphrey's Clock. With illustrations by George Cattermole and H.K. Browne. 3 vols. London, 1840-41, 8vo.

Comprises two stories, "The Old Curiosity Shop" and "Barnaby Rudge," both subsequently issued as independent works, the first in 1848, and the second in 1849.

The Old Curiosity Shop. London, 1848, 8vo.

Barnaby Rudge. A Tale of the Riots of Eighty. London, 1849, 8vo.

Mr. Nightingale's Diary: a Farce, in one act. London, 1851, 8vo.

Privately printed and extremely scarce. There is a copy in the Forster Collection at South Kensington.

——Another edition. Boston [U.S.], 1877, 16mo.

This edition is now scarce.

The Mudfog Papers. Now first collected. London, 1880, 8vo.

Reprinted from Bentley's Miscellany.

——Second edition. London, 1880, 8vo.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood. With twelve illustrations by S.L. Fildes, and a portrait. London, 1870, 8vo.

Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. By "Boz." In three volumes. [With illustrations by George Cruikshank.] London, 1838, 8vo.

The second edition, with the title-page reading "Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens," appeared the following year; the third edition, with a new preface, was published in 1841. The edition of 1846, in one volume, bears the following title-page:—"The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. By Charles Dickens. With twenty-four illustrations on Steel, by George Cruikshank."

Our Mutual Friend. With illustrations by Marcus Stone. 2 vols. London, 1865, 8vo.

The Personal History of David Copperfield. With illustrations, by H.K. Browne. London, 1850, 8vo.

David Copperfield. By C.D., as condensed by himself, for his readings. Boston [U.S.], 1868, 8vo.

Pictures from Italy. By C.D. The vignette illustrations on wood, by Samuel Palmer. London, 1846, 8vo.

Appeared originally in the Daily News, from January to March 1846, with the title of "Travelling Letters written on the Road. By Charles Dickens."

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Being a faithful record of the Perambulations, Perils, Travels, Adventures, and Sporting Transactions of the Corresponding Members. Edited by "Boz." With forty-three illustrations by R. Seymour, R.W. Buss, and Phiz [H.K. Browne], London, 1837, 8vo.

In twenty monthly parts, commencing April 1836, and ending November 1837, no number being issued for June 1837.

——Another edition. V.D. Land, Launceston, 1838, 8vo.

This edition of Pickwick is interesting from the fact that it was published in Van Dieman's Land, the illustrations being exact copies of the originals executed in lithography. There is an additional title-page, engraved, bearing date 1836.

——The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, with notes and illustrations. Edited by C. Dickens the younger, (Jubilee Edition.) 2 vols. London, 1886, 8vo.

Mr. Bob. Sawyer's Party [extracted from "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"] by C.D., as condensed by himself, for his readings. Boston [U.S.], 1868, 8vo.

Bardell and Pickwick [extracted from "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"] by C.D., as condensed by himself, for his readings. Boston [U.S.], 1868, 8vo.

Sketches by "Boz," illustrative of every-day life and every-day people. In two volumes. Illustrations by George Cruikshank. London, 1836, 12mo.

——Second edition. London, 1836, 12mo.

Sketches by "Boz." Third edition. London, 1837, 12mo.

——Second Series. London, 1837, 12mo.

——First complete edition of the two series. With forty illustrations by George Cruikshank. London, 1839, 8vo.

——Sketches and Tales of London Life. [Selections from "Sketches by Boz."] London [1877], 8vo.

——The Tuggs's at Ramsgate [from "Sketches by Boz"]. London [1870], 8vo.

Sketches of Young Gentlemen. Dedicated to the Young Ladies. With six illustrations by "Phiz" (H.K. Browne). London, 1838, 8vo.

Sketches of Young Couples; with an urgent Remonstrance to the Gentlemen of England (being Bachelors or Widowers) on the present alarming Crisis. With six illustrations by "Phiz" [H.K. Browne]. London, 1840, 8vo.

An edition was published in 1869 with the title "Sketches of Young Couples, Young Ladies, Young Gentlemen. By Quiz. Illustrated by Phiz." Only the first and third of these sketches were written by Charles Dickens. "The Sketches of Young Ladies" were by an anonymous author, who also assumed the pseudonym of Quiz.

Somebody's Luggage. (Tauchnitz Edition, vol. 888.) Leipzig, 1867, 16mo.

The Christmas Number of All the Year Round for 1862. Dickens contributed "His leaving it till called for"; "His Boots"; "His Brown-paper Parcel" and "His Wonderful End."

The Strange Gentleman: A Comic Burletta. In two acts. By "Boz." First performed at the St. James's Theatre, on Thursday, September 29, 1836. London, 1837, 8vo.

Sunday under Three Heads. As it is; as Sabbath bills would make it; as it might be made. By Timothy Sparks. London, 1836, 12mo.

Reproduced in fac-simile, London, 1884, and in Pearson's Manchester Series of Fac-simile Reprints, Manchester, same date.

A Tale of Two Cities. With illustrations by H.K. Browne. London, 1859, 8vo.

Originally issued in All the Year Round, between April 30 and November 26, 1859.

The Uncommercial Traveller. By C.D. London, 1861, 8vo.

Consists of seventeen papers which originally appeared in All the Year Round with this title between January 28 and October 13, 1860. The impression which was issued in 1868 in the Charles Dickens Edition contains eleven fresh papers.

The Village Coquettes: A Comic Opera. In two acts. By C.D. The music by John Hullah. London, 1836, 8vo.

——Songs, choruses, and concerted pieces in the Operatic Burletta of The Village Coquettes as produced at St. James's Theatre. The drama and words of the songs by "Boz." The music by John Hullah. London, 1837, 8vo.

Editions of "The Village Coquettes" were published at Leipzig, 1845, and at Amsterdam, 1868, in English, and it was reprinted in 1878. See also under Music.

IV.

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS.

All the Year Round. A weekly journal conducted by Charles Dickens. London, 1859-1870, 8vo.

Commenced on the 30th of April 1859.

Bentley's Miscellany. [Successively edited by Boz, Ainsworth, Albert Smith, etc.] Vol. 1-64. London, 1837-68, 8vo.

Evenings of a Working Man, being the occupation of his scanty leisure. By John Overs. With a preface relative to the author, by C.D. London, 1844, 16mo.

Household Words: a weekly journal. Conducted by C.D. 19 vols. London, 1850-59, 8vo.

This Journal commenced on the 30th March 1850, and was continued to the 28th of May 1859, when it was incorporated with All the Year Round. A cheap edition of Household Words, in 19 vols. was published in 1868-73.

——Christmas Stories from Household Words (1850-58). Conducted by C.D. London, [1860], 8vo.

Legends and Lyrics, by Adelaide Anne Procter. With an introduction by C.D. New edition, illustrated by Dobson, Palmer, Tenniel, etc. London, 1866, 4to.

The Letters of C.D. Edited by his sister-in-law (G. Hogarth) and his eldest daughter (M. Dickens). 3 vols. London, 1880-1882, 8vo.

——Another edition. 2 vols. London, 1882, 8vo.

The Library of Fiction; or Family Story-Teller. [Edited by C.D.] London, 1836-37, 8vo.

The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London, 1839, 8vo.

The notes and preface were written by Dickens.

Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. Edited by "Boz." With illustrations by G. Cruikshank. 2 vols. London, 1838, 12mo.

Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi. Another edition. Revised by C. Whitehead. London, 1846, 8vo.

——Another edition. London, 1853, 8vo.

——Another edition. London, 1866, 8vo.

Two other editions were published in 1884 by G. Routledge and Sons, and J. Dicks.

The Newsvendors' Benevolent and Provident Institution. Speeches on behalf of the Institution by C.D. London, 1871, 8vo.

The Pic-Nic Papers by various hands. Edited by C.D. With illustrations by George Cruikshank. 3 vols. London, 1841, 8vo.

Dickens contributed a preface and the opening tale, "The Lamplighter's Story."

The Plays and Poems of Charles Dickens. With a few Miscellanies in prose. Now first collected, edited, prefaced, and annotated by R.H. Shepherd. 2 vols. London, 1882, 8vo.

This work was almost immediately suppressed, as it contained copyright matter. A new edition appeared in 1885, without the copyright play of "No Thoroughfare."

Religious Opinions of Chauncy Hare Townshend. Published as directed in his Will, by his literary executor [Charles Dickens]. London, 1869, 8vo.

Royal Literary Fund. A summary of facts in answer to allegations contained in "The Case of the Reformers of the Literary Fund," stated by C.D., etc. [London, 1858], 8vo.

Speech delivered at the meeting of the Administrative Reform Association. London, 1855, 8vo.

Speech of C.D. as Chairman of the Anniversary Festival Dinner of the Royal Free Hospital, 1863. [London, 1870], 12mo.

The Speeches of C.D., 1841-1870, edited and prefaced by R.H. Shepherd. With a new bibliography, revised and enlarged. London, 1884, 8vo.

Speeches, letters, and sayings of C.D. To which is added a Sketch of the author by G.A. Sala, and Dean Stanley's sermon. New York, 1870, 8vo.

Speeches: Literary and Social. London [1870], 8vo.

A Wonderful Ghost Story. With letters of C.D. to the author respecting it. By Thomas Heaphy. London, 1882, 8vo.

V. APPENDIX.

BIOGRAPHICAL, CRITICAL, ETC.

Adshead, Joseph.—Prisons and Prisoners. London, 1845, 8vo.

The Fictions of Dickens upon solitary confinement, pp. 95-121.

Allbut, Robert.—London Rambles "En Zigzag," with Charles Dickens. London [1886], 8vo.

Atlantic Almanac.—The Atlantic Almanac for 1871. Boston, 1871, 8vo.

A short biographical notice of Dickens, with portrait and view of Gad's Hill, pp. 20-21.

Bagehot, Walter.—Literary Studies, by the late Walter Bagehot. 2 vols. London, 1879, 8vo.

Charles Dickens (1858), vol. 2, pp. 184-220.

Bayne, Peter.—Essays in Biography and Criticism. By Peter Bayne. First series. Boston, 1857, 8vo.

The modern novel: Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, pp. 363-392.

Behn-Eschenburg, H.—Charles Dickens. Von H. Behn-Eschenburg. Basel, 1872, 8vo.

Hft. 6, of "Oeffentliche Vortraege gehalten in der Schweiz."

Brimley, George.—Essays by the late George Brimley. Edited by William George Clark. Cambridge, 1858, 8vo.

"Bleak House," pp. 289-301. Reprinted from the Spectator, September 24th, 1853.

Browne, Hablot K.—Dombey and Son. The four portraits of Edith, Florence, Alice, and Little Paul. London, 1848, 8vo.

——Dombey and Son. Full-length portraits of Dombey and Carker, Miss Tox, Mrs. Skewton, etc. London, 1848, 8vo.

——Six illustrations to The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Engraved from original drawings by Phiz. London [1854], 8vo.

Buchanan, Robert.—A Poet's Sketch-Book; selections from the prose writings of Robert Buchanan. London, 1883, 8vo.

The Good Genie of Fiction. Charles Dickens, pp. 119-140. (Reprinted from St. Paul's Magazine, 1872, pp. 130-148.)

Calverley, C.S.—Fly Leaves. Second Edition. By C.S. Calverley. Cambridge, 1872, 8vo.

An Examination Paper. "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club," pp. 121-124.

Canning, S.G.—Philosophy of Charles Dickens. By the Hon. Albert S.G. Canning. London, 1880, 8vo.

Cary, Thomas G.—Letter to a lady in France on the supposed failure of a national bank ... with answers to enquiries concerning the books of Captain Marryat and Mr. Dickens. [By Thomas G. Cary.] Boston [U.S.], 1843, 8vo.

——Second Edition. Boston, [U.S.], 1844, 8vo.

Chambers, Robert.—Cyclopaedia of English Literature. Edited by Robert Chambers. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1844, 8vo.

Charles Dickens, vol. ii., pp. 630-633.

——Another Edition. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1860, 8vo.

Charles Dickens, with a portrait, vol. ii., pp. 644-650.

——Third Edition, 2 vols. London, 1876, 8vo.

Charles Dickens, with a portrait, vol. ii., pp. 515-521.

Chapman, T.J.—Schools and Schoolmasters; from the works of Charles Dickens. New York, 1871, 8vo.

Clarke, Charles and Mary Cowden.—Recollections of Writers. By Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke. With letters of Charles Lamb ... and Charles Dickens, etc. London, 1878, 8vo.

Cleveland, Charles Dexter.—English Literature of the Nineteenth Century. A new edition. Philadelphia, 1867, 8vo.

Charles Dickens, pp. 718-730.

Cochrane, Robert.—Risen by Perseverance; or, lives of self-made men. By Robert Cochrane. Edinburgh, 1879, 8vo.

Charles Dickens, pp. 172-223.

Cook, James.—Bibliography of the writings of Charles Dickens, with many curious and interesting particulars relating to his works. By James Cook. London, 1879, 8vo.

Cruikshank, George.—George Cruikshank's Magazine. London, 1854, 8vo.

February 1854, pp. 74-80, "A letter from Hop-o'-My-Thumb to Charles Dickens, Esq., upon 'Frauds on the Fairies,' 'Whole Hogs,' etc."

D., H.W.—Ward and Lock's Penny Books for the People. Biographical series. The Life of Charles Dickens. By H.W.D. Pp. 513-528. London, 1882, 8vo.

Davey, Samuel.—Darwin, Carlyle and Dickens, with other essays. By Samuel Davey. London, [1876], 8vo.

Denman, Lord.—Uncle Tom's Cabin, Bleak House, Slavery and Slave Trade. Six articles by Lord Denman. London, 1853, 8vo.

——Second Edition. London, 1853, 8vo.

Depret, Louis.—Chez les Anglais. Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Longfellow, etc. Paris, 1879.

Charles Dickens, 1812-1870, occupies pp. 71-130.

Dickens, Charles.—Chas. Dickens. A critical biography. London, 1858, 8vo.

No. 1 of a series entitled "Our Contemporaries," etc.

——The Life and Times of Charles Dickens. With a portrait. (Police News edition.) London. [1870], 8vo.

——The Life of Charles Dickens. London [1881], 8vo.

——The Life of Charles Dickens. London [1882], 8vo.

Part of Haughton's Popular Illustrated Biographies.

——Some Notes on America to be re-written, suggested with respect to Charles Dickens. Philadelphia, 1868, 8vo.

——Catalogue of the beautiful collection of modern pictures, etc., of Charles Dickens, which will be sold by auction by Messrs. Christie, Manson and Woods ... July 9, 1870. London [1870], 4to.

——Dickens Memento, with introduction by F. Phillimore, and "Hints to Dickens Collectors," by J.F. Dexter. Catalogue with purchasers' names, etc. London [1884], 4to.

——Mary.—Charles Dickens. By his eldest daughter (Mary Dickens). London, 1885, 8vo.

Part of the series "The World's Workers," etc.

Dilke, Charles W.—The Papers of a Critic, etc. 2 vols. London, 1875, 8vo.

Reference to the Literary Fund Controversy, with a letter from C.D. to C.W. Dilke. Vol. i., pp. 79, 80.

Dolby, George.—Charles Dickens as I knew him. The story of the Reading Tours in Great Britain and America (1866-1870). By George Dolby. London, 1885, 8vo.

Drake, Samuel Adams.—Our Great Benefactors; short biographies, etc. Boston, 1884, 8vo.

Charles Dickens, pp. 102-111, illustrated.

Dulcken, A.—Scenes from "The Pickwick Papers," designed by A. Dulcken. London [1861], obl. fol.

——H.W.—Worthies of the World, a series of historical and critical sketches, etc. Edited by H.W. Dulcken. London [1881], 8vo.

Biography of Charles Dickens, with a portrait, pp. 513-528.

Essays.—English Essays. 4 vols. Hamburg, 1870, 8vo.

Vol. iv. contains an article reprinted from the Illustrated London News, June 18, 1870, on Charles Dickens.

Field, Kate.—Pen Photographs of Charles Dickens's Readings. Taken from life. By Kate Field. Boston, [U.S.], [1868], 8vo.

——Another edition. Illustrated. Boston (U.S.), 1871, 8vo.

Fields, James T.—In and out of doors with Charles Dickens. By James T. Fields. Boston, (U.S.), 1876, 16mo.

——James T. Fields. Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches. Boston [U.S.], 1881, 8vo.

Pp. 152-160 relate to Dickens.

Fitzgerald, Percy.—Two English Essayists. C. Lamb and C. Dickens. By Percy Fitzgerald. London, 1864, 8vo.

Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art, series 2.

——Recreations of a Literary Man. By Percy Fitzgerald. 2 vols. London, 1882, 8vo.

Charles Dickens as an editor, vol. i., pp. 48-96; Charles Dickens at Home, vol. i., pp. 97-171.

Forster, John.—The Life of Charles Dickens. (With portraits.) 3 vols. London, 1872-4, 8vo.

Numerous editions.

Friswell, J. Hain.—Modern Men of Letters honestly criticised. By J. Hain Friswell. London, 1870, 8vo.

Charles Dickens, pp. 1-45.

Frost, Thomas.—In Kent with Charles Dickens. By Thomas Frost. London, 1880, 8vo.

Gill, T.—Report of the Dinner given to C.D. in Boston. Reported by T. Gill and W. English. Boston [U.S.], 1842, 8vo.

Hall, Samuel Carter.—A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women of the Age, etc. By S.C. Hall. London, 1871, 4to.

Charles Dickens, pp. 449-452.

——Second edition. London, 1877, 4to.

Charles Dickens, pp. 454-458.

Ham, James Panton.—Parables of Fiction: a memorial discourse on C. Dickens. By James Panton Ham. London, 1870, 8vo.

Hanaford, P.A.—Life and Writings of C. Dickens. New York, 1882, 8vo.

Hassard, John R.G.—A Pickwickian Pilgrimage. (Letters on "the London of Charles Dickens.") By John R.G. Hassard. Boston (U.S.), 1881, 8vo.

Heavisides, Edward Marsh.—The Poetical and Prose Remains of Edward Marsh Heavisides. London, 1850, 8vo.

The Essay on Dickens's writings, pp. 1-27.

Hollingshead, John.—To-Day; Essays and Miscellanies. 2 vols. London, 1865, 8vo.

Mr. Dickens and his Critics, vol. ii., pp. 277-283; Mr. Dickens as a Reader, vol. ii., pp. 284-296.

Hollingshead, John.—Miscellanies. Stories and Essays by John Hollingshead. 3 vols. London, 1874, 8vo.

Mr. Dickens and his critics, vol. iii., pp. 270-274; Mr. Dickens as a Reader, vol. iii., pp. 275-283.

Horne, Richard H.—A New Spirit of the Age. Edited by R.H. Horne. 2 vols. London, 1844, 12mo.

Charles Dickens, with portrait, vol. i., pp. 1-76.

Hotten, John Camden.—Charles Dickens, the Story of his Life. By the Author of the Life of Thackeray (J.C. Hotten). With illustrations and fac-similes. London (1870), 8vo.

——Popular edition. London (1873), 12mo.

Hume, A.B.—A Christmas Memorial of Charles Dickens. By A.B. Hume. 1870, 8vo.

Contains a fac-simile of Charles Dickens's letter to Mr. J.W. Makeham, dated June 8, 1870, and an Ode to his memory.

Hutton, Laurence.—Literary Landmarks of London. By Laurence Hutton. London [1885], 8vo.

Charles Dickens, 1812-1870, pp. 79-86.

Irving, Walter.—Charles Dickens. [An essay.] By Walter Irving. Edinburgh, 1874, 8vo.

Jeaffreson, J. Cordy.—Novels and Novelists from Elizabeth to Victoria. By J. Cordy Jeaffreson. 2 vols. London, 1858, 8vo.

Charles Dickens, vol. ii., pp. 303-334.

Jerrold, Blanchard.—The Best of All Good Company. Edited by Blanchard Jerrold. Pt. 1., A Day with Charles Dickens. London, 1871, 8vo.

Reprinted in 1872, 8 vo.

Johnson, Charles Plumptre.—Hints to Collectors of original editions of the works of Charles Dickens. By Charles Plumptre Johnson. London, 1885, 8vo.

Johnson, Joseph.—Clever Boys of our Time, and how they became famous men. Edinburgh [1878], 8vo.

Charles Dickens, pp. 40-63.

Jones, Charles H.—Appleton's New Handy-volume Series. A short life of Charles Dickens, etc. By Charles H. Jones. New York, 1880, 8vo.

Joubert, Andre.—Andre Joubert. Charles Dickens, sa vie et ses oeuvres. Paris, 1872, 8vo.

Kent, Charles.—The Charles Dickens Dinner. An authentic record of the public banquet given to Mr Charles Dickens ... prior to his departure for the United States. [With a preface signed C.K. i.e., Charles Kent.] London, 1867, 8vo.

Kent, Charles.—Charles Dickens as a Reader. By Charles Kent. London, 1872, 8vo.

Kitton, Fred. G.—"Phiz" (Hablot Knight Browne.) A Memoir. Including a selection from his Correspondence and Notes on his principal works. By Fred. G. Kitton. With a portrait and numerous illustrations. London, 1882, 8vo.

An account is given of the relationship that existed between Dickens and Phiz.

——Dickensiana. A Bibliography of the literature relating to Charles Dickens and his writings. Compiled by Fred. G. Kitton. London, 1880, 8vo.

Langton, Robert.—Charles Dickens and Rochester, etc. By Robert Langton. London, 1886, 8vo.

Langton, Robert.—The Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens, etc. By Robert Langton. Manchester, 1883, 8vo.

L'Estrange, A.G.—History of English Humour, etc. By the Rev. A.G. L'Estrange. 2 vols. London, 1878, 8vo.

Chapter 18 of vol. ii. is devoted to Dickens.

Lynch, Judge.—Judge Lynch (of America), his two letters to Charles Dickens (of England) upon the subject of the Court of Chancery. London, 1859, 8vo.

McCarthy, Justin.—A History of Our Own Times. A new edition. 4 vols. London, 1882, 8vo.

Dickens and Thackeray, vol. ii., pp. 255-259.

McKenzie, Charles H.—The Religious Sentiments of C.D., collected from his writings. By Charles H. McKenzie. Newcastle, 1884, 8vo.

Mackenzie, R. Shelton.—Life of Charles Dickens, etc. By R. Shelton Mackenzie. Philadelphia [1870], 8vo.