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DICKENS, CHARLES. 



many years afterward Phiz and Boz were 

 associated with the monthly appearance of 

 those serial novels, in green-paper covers, which 

 set all England and America laughing and weep- 

 ing by turns. As for Pickwick, its success was 

 almost unparalleled. " In less than six months 

 from the appearance of the first number of the 

 Pickwick Papers," says The Quarterly Review, 

 " the whole reading public were talking about 

 them the names of Winkle, Wardle, Weller, 

 Snodgrass, Dodson and Fogg, had become fa- 

 miliar in our mouths as household terras ; and 

 Mr. Dickens was the grand object of interest 

 to the whole tribe of ' Leo-hunters,' male and 

 female, of the metropolis. Nay, Pickwick 

 chintzes figured in linen-drapers' windows, and 

 Weller corduroys in breeches-makers' adver- 

 tisements ; Boz cabs might be seen rattling 

 through the streets, and the portrait of the 

 author of ' Pelham ' or ' Crichton,' was scraped 

 down or pasted over to make room for that of 

 the new popular favorite, in the omnibuses. 

 This is only to be accounted for on the suppo- 

 sition that a fresh vein of humor had been 

 opened ; that a new and decidedly original 

 genius had sprung up ; and the most cursory 

 reference to preceding English writers of the 

 comic order will show that, in his own peculiar 

 walk, Mr. Dickens was not simply the most 

 distinguished, but the first." Pickwick was 

 still under way when Bentley made an offer to 

 the young novelist to become editor of his mag- 

 azine, and to furnish a serial novel for its pages. 

 The proposal was accepted, and the result was 

 " Oliver Twist," the two novels being actually 

 written together, month by month, and neither 

 ever getting more than a day ahead of the print- 

 er's demand for manuscript. The suit of Bar- 

 dell vs. Pickwick, with the plaintiff's conse- 

 quent incarceration in the Fleet, did more per- 

 haps than any other one thing to break down 

 the bars of the loathsome debtor's prison ; the 

 story of Oliver Twist, as an American critic 

 has well said, "turned the cold poor-house 

 inside out, and warmed it with the sun of 

 human charity ; " " Nicholas Nickleby," which 

 came next, at an interval of only a few months, 

 swept away the barbarities of Yorkshire schools, 

 and, as we well remember, called down upon 

 the writer the direst threats from at least a score 

 of real scnool-masters who recognized their own 

 lineaments in the portrait of Mr. Squeers. In 

 this work, Mr. Dickens manifested, more fully 

 than in any of his previous ones, his wonder- 

 ful power of individualizing common types of 

 character, of whose humor the world has been 

 unaware, though it lay open at every turn. 

 Mr. Pickwick, Sam Weller, Mr. Bumble, the 

 Fat Boy, were creations : Mrs. Nickleby was 

 a discovery. " Mrs. Nickleby," exclaims Thack- 

 eray, " lay undescribed until Boz seized upon 

 her and brought that great truth to light, and 

 yet every man possesses her in the bosom of 

 his family." The same power of seizing upon 

 common but neglected types appears in all his 

 subsequent novels, though in the next of the 



series, " The Old Curiosity Shop," it is less 

 conspicuous than the development of his rare 

 power of pathos in the character of Little Nell. 

 " The Old Curiosity Shop," and its successor, 

 " Barnaby Rudge," were published originally 

 under the title of " Master Humphrey's Clock," 

 as stories j-ead or told at meetings of the re- 

 vived Pickwick Club. It was just after the 

 completion of "Barnaby Rudge" that Mr. 

 Dickens made his first visit to America, landing 

 with his wife in Boston on the 22d of January, 

 1842. Everybody who understood English had, 

 as Thackeray used to say, a corner in his heart 

 for him, and his tour through the principal cities 

 of the Union was a triumphal progress. He 

 visited several of the larger cities, and was re- 

 ceived with so much adulation, and sometimes 

 such pertinacious and annoying attentions, 

 that it was not surprising that a young man of 

 thirty should have been, by turns, amused and 

 disgusted, and disposed to ridicule the fail- 

 ings, while he failed to discern the good quali- 

 ties, of a people who on this occasion gave him 

 very little opportunity of seeing their best side. 

 He was, moreover, by nature and training, a 

 humorist, and the oddities, eccentricities, and 

 impertinences of many of those who crowded 

 to see him were fair game for him. He said 

 nothing more severe of America than he had 

 said before and afterward of Englishmen; but 

 his ridicule, in his "American Notes for General 

 Circulation," and his "Martin Chuzzlewit," of 

 pretentious Congressmen, sharp speculators, 

 and inquisitive Yankees, gave great offence for 

 years. His own manly and generous apology 

 for the unintentional pain he had caused, made 

 during his second visit here in 1868, and after 

 his return home, was sufficient to extinguish 

 the last spark of animosity which had been felt 

 on this account. He spoke of his surprise at 

 the physical and social changes which a quarter 

 of a century had wrought in a country of Avhich 

 his first impressions he confessed to have been 

 extreme, and, whatever he might have said in 

 the past, he pledged himself that, in every fu- 

 ture copy of the two offending books, a record 

 of his later impressions should be printed as an 

 appendix, " not in mere love and thankfulness, 

 but because I regard it as an act of plain justice 

 and honor." He closed his remarks with these 

 generous and noble words, which should efface 

 all remembrance of his youthful indiscretions 

 of language, if they deserve that name: "It 

 is a duty with which I henceforth charge my- 

 self, not only here but on every suitable occa- 

 sion whatsoever and wheresoever, to express 

 my high and grateful sense of my second recep- 

 tion in America, and to bear my honest testi- 

 mony to the national generosity and magna- 

 nimity." Before the appearance of "Martin 

 Chuzzlewit," Mr. Dickens began a new series 

 of works of which but little need be said, for 

 who is there that knows them not by heart? 

 "The Christmas Carol," in 1843, was the fore- 

 runner of a little bundle of annual books, which 

 chanted the hymn of thankfulness, of generos- 



