COMPENSATIONS.

The darkening streets about me lie, The shame, the fret, the squalid jars: But swallows' wings go flashing by And in the puddles there are stars.

FREDERICK LANGBRIDge.

HYMN TO DEATH.

And the white souls that need not chain or bar.

Untiring, through its endless corridor Thou rangest, and the clanking of thy key

Is music to the captives who would soar, And only wait for thee

To draw the bolt, and whisper "Liberty!"

main

Knows not the splendor of the awaken

ing sun.

dark,

Patiently stretching forth thy strong right hand

grain,

No lingering glory tells when day is done;

But everywhere is quietness and peace:

A land of shadows as of wings outspread,

Where strife, and hot desire, and anguish cease,

And, regnant in their stead, Broods the unbroken silence of the dead.

Shepherd that leanest pensive on thy crook

In the low valley of the gathered mist, Watching with fixed unfathomable look Yon smiling pastures which the sun hath kissed,

Lo! hither come the stragglers from the flocks

Weary stumbling down the rugged steep, Torn by the briers, bruised by the cruel rocks.

Ah, shepherd, lead thy sheep Gently unto the bourne of rest and sleep.

Healer of heart-ache, when beneath the strain

Of toil and struggle the tired pulse beats low,

Or the racked body writhes in throes of pain,

And weeping, round the house the mourners go,

Calmly thou enterest through the fast closed door,

Smiling on those poor souls who cower and shrink,

Then standing by the sufferer, bendest o'er,

And givest him to drink

A draught fresh-drawn from blessed Lethe's brink.

Warder of this great dungeon-palace built By Him whose footstool is the farthest star,

Here lie thy prisoners-spirits stained with guilt,

bark,

waiting for Christmas, and cheerful without drinking to excess. But these are small points, and it is impossible to imagine a time when Dickens will not be regarded as one of the great masters of English fiction. The late Master of Balliol, a keen and fastidious critic, a refined and delicate scholar, regarded Dickens as beyond comparison the first writer of his time. When the queen came to the throne, "Pickwick" was appearing in monthly parts. The first number was issued in April, 1836, the last in November, 1837. It is a curious coincidence that in June, 1837, when the crown actually passed from William the Fourth to Victoria, the death of the author's sister-in-law suspended the publication. "Pickwick" had burst upon the world as an entire novelty. No other English novelist who was then writing survives now except Disraeli and Bulwer, as different from Dickens, to say nothing of their inferiority, as chalk from cheese.

The imitators of Dickens, so numerous and so tiresome, are apt, illogically enough, to make people forget that he was among the most original of all writers. It is the language of compliment and not of detraction to call him the Cockney's Shakespeare. In Shakespeare he was steeped. His favorite novelist was Smollett. But his art was all his own. He was the Hogarth of literature, painting with a broad brush, never ashamed of caricature, but always an artist, and not a dauber. There is little or no resemblance between Falstaff and Sam Weller. But they are the two comic figures which have most thoroughly seized upon the English mind. Touchstone and Mr. Micawber may be each a finer specimen of his creator's powers. They are not, however, quite so much to the taste of all readers. They require a little more fineness of palate. Sam Weller is, and seems likely to remain, the ideal Londoner. We cannot hear his pronunciation. We get his humor without its drawbacks. The defects are absent from his qualities. He has not even the appalling gluttony which distinguishes Mr. Pickwick and his friends. It seems

strange to realize that "Pickwick” and "Oliver Twist" were actually coming out at the same time. "Oliver Twist" began to run in January, 1837, and continued till March, 1839. "Oliver Twist," again, was overlapped by "Nicholas Nickleby," which lasted from April, 1838, to October, 1839. Three such books in little more than three years is a feat which no other British novelist has achieved, except Sir Walter Scott. They proved to the benighted "Early Victorians" that in the days of effete Whiggery and Bedchamber plots a genius of the highest order had appeared. Miss Martineau could never forgive Dickens for having in "Oliver Twist" confounded the new Poor-law with the old. That is not literary criticism. But it must be admitted that Dickens, though not intellectually a Socialist, was a very sentimental politician. He hated political economy, and he coupled with it the name of Sir Robert Peel. A gushing and impulsive benevolence, which in Dickens's case was thoroughly genuine, is often offended by the cold-blooded temper and cautious methods of parliamentary statesmanship. When Dickens began to write, public affairs were on rather a low level, and were conducted on rather a small scale. Dickens's early work was a more or less conscious revolt against fashionable lethargy and conventional shams. His novels, unlike Thackeray's, were in a sense a part of politics. They were meant to affect, and they did affect, the political temper of the nation. I sometimes wonder that the Independent Labor Party do not make more of Dickens. For Dickens, though he did not trouble himself much about abstract propositions, was possessed with the idea that both political parties were engaged in preying upon the public.

To Dickens as an historical novelist imperfect justice has been done. The "Tale of Two Cities" is said to be most admired by those who admire Dickens the least. A similar remark has been made of "Esmond." The "Tale of Two Cities" is founded upon Carlyle's "Frenci. Revolution." It has no humor,

Of

or next to none. But it is a marvellous piece of writing; the plot, though simple, is excellent, and, whatever may be thought about the genuineness of the pathos in "Dombey and Son," or the "Old Curiosity Shop," the tragedy of Sidney Carton is a tragedy indeed. The use of Christ's words, especially of words which occur in the Burial Service of the Church of England, is always a dangerous experiment. But at the end of the "Tale of Two Cities," Dickens has justified it by the reverence and the dignity of his tone. "Barnaby Rudge," the story of Lord George Gordon and his riots, is, I cannot help thinking, an underrated book. The execution of the executioner may be melodramatic. But nobody who has read the passage can ever forget it, and the rant of Sim Tappertit deserves immortality as much as the name of Dolly Varden. course Dickens's historical knowledge was neither wide nor deep. His most popular history is "David Copperfield," the history of himself, his own favorite among his own books, and a remarkable exception to the rule that an author is the worst judge of his own performances. I take it that the key to a proper understanding of Dickens and his work is to be found in the master-passion of the man. Dickens was a born actor. When he was not performing in private theatricals himself, he liked best to be at the play. The famous soliloquy of Jaques expressed his philosophy of life ar more thoroughly than it expressed Shakespeare's. To Dickens all the world was a stage, and all the men and women merely players. When he wrote, he had in his mind not so much the way in which things would have happened as the way in which they would act. There is no "realism" in Dickens, if realism means the worship of the literal. He drew, no doubt, as everybody must draw, from his own experience. He had the keenest eye for outward facts. Nothing on the surface eluded his observation or escaped his memory. He made ample use of his early opportunities as a reporter in the House of Commons and the courts of law. The famous debate in the Pick

wickian Club, when Mr. Pickwick in his controversy with Mr. Blotton of Aldgate would not put up to be put down by clamor, was taken from a parliamentary duel between Canning and Peel. Bardell v. Pickwick is a travesty of Norton v. Norton and Lord Melbourne. I am afraid there is some truth in the tradition that Mr. Pecksniff was intended to express the sentiments of the illustrious Sir Robert. The family of the Tite Barnacles might be easily identified, if the process were worth the trouble. But Dickens's dramatic instinct was the strongest of his qualities, so strong that it overmastered all the others, except his humor, which was, perhaps, a part of it. For his humor hardly any praise can be too high. It has every merit except the depth and subtlety which are found only in the greatest masters of all. About his pathos there always have been, and probably there always will be, two opinions. It differs in different books, and even in the same book. It differs, I should say, in kind as well as in degree. Little Nell and Sidney Carton scarcely seem to have a common origin. When the old washerwoman denied that one person could have written the whole of "Dombey and Son," she perhaps only meant to express enthusiastic admiration. But people sometimes mean more than they know. If any one will compare the death of Mrs. Dombey with the death of little Paul, he must be struck by the impressive beauty of the one scene and the harrowing extenuation of the other. It is hardly strange that there should be controversy when evidence can be produced on both sides. Dickens had a singularly simple and straightforward character. When he meant to be funny he was rollicking. He was irresistible even to Sydney Smith, who held out against the new humorist as long as he could. When he meant to be pathetic he piled up the agony with vigor. He kept the two things apart. There is no humorous element in his pathos, and no pathetic element in his humor. He could not have drawn a Mercutio if he had tried, and he knew better than to try. He has been

reproached with not understanding the upper classes, or uppermost class, or whatever the proper term may be. The point is not very important, though a man of genius ought, perhaps, to know everything and everybody. Lord Frederick Verisopht and Sir Mulberry Hawk are not creations worthy of the master. I remember a discussion in which it was said broadly that Dickens could not draw a gentleman, and the negative instance of Sir Leicester Dedlock was produced from "Bleak House." The reply was, "You forget Joe Gargery in 'Great Expectations,'" and to my mind the answer is conclusive.

Dickens has been called the favorite novelist of the middle classes. If the statement be true, it is creditable to their good taste and freedom from prejudice. He certainly did not flatter them. He disliked Dissenters quite as much as Matthew Arnold, whereas Thackeray gave them the Clapham Sect, to which they are not entitled. But the popularity of Dickens in his lifetime was in fact universal. Everybody read his books, because nobody could help reading them. They required no education except a knowledge of the alphabet, and they amused scholars as much as crossing-sweepers. No man ever made a more thorough conquest of his generation. Indeed he was only too successful. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery. It is the most dangerous form of admiration. And if ever there was an exemplar vitiis imitabile, it was Dickens. His influence upon literature, apart from his contributions to it, has been disastrous. The school of Dickens, for which he cannot be held responsible, is happily at last dying out. Their dreary mechanical jokes, their hideous unmeaning caricatures, their descriptions that describe nothing, their spasms of false sentiment, their tears of gin and water, have ceased to excite even amusement, and provoke only unmitigated disgust. With their disappearance from the stage, and consignment to oblivion, the reputation of the great man they injured is relieved from a temporary strain. The position of Dickens himself is unassailed and unas

sailable. In this or that generation he may be less read or more. He must always remain an acknowledged master of fiction and a prince of English humorists.

The great glory of Thackeray is that the spread of education has continually widened the circle of his readers. Dickens wrote for every one. Thackeray wrote for the lettered class. He cannot quite be said to have made the novel literary. Fielding, with his ripe scholarship and his magnificent sweep of diction, was beforehand with him. But he is essentially and beyond everything else a literary novelist. He was also a popular preacher. He preached many sermons on the same text, and that a text much older than the Christian religion. Not being in holy orders, he could not, like Sterne, incorporate one of his own professional discourses in a secular narrative, though indeed Bulwer Lytton was guilty of the interpolation without the excuse. The constant appearance of the novelist in person, the showman in charge of his puppets, is intolerable unless it be managed with consummate tact. Thackeray, of course, had tact in perfection. He was every inch an artist, and he justly felt that he was incapable of boring his readers. His alleged cynicism is only skin-deep. It is chiefly the mask of sentiment or the revolt against insincerity. Thackeray was a moralist to the backbone. He was no votary of art for art's sake, no disinterested chronicler of human folly or crime. He had, or thought he had, a mission to redeem the world from cant. Unless melancholy and indignation are synicism, there never was a less cynical writer.

It was said of Charles the Second that he believed most people to be scoundrels, but that he thought none the worse of them for being so. Thackeray, like La Rochefoucauld, had a very high standard, and was shocked at the contrast of worldly practice with religious theory. The shipwrecked mariner on an unknown shore who, at the sight of a gallows, thanked God he was in a Christian country, is a typical example of the satire running through all Thack