herself has sheltered under her ample mantle, like St Ursula with her maidens?) but this boldness of fiction, stepping forth alone in tantalising monthly visits, was new to the time. The work itself bears marks of this: it has nothing of the epic in its construction; it is a fresh, witty, brilliant, original jumble of persons and circumstances, a discursive rambling narrative, running aside into constant digressions, and indeed, in so doing, fulfilling its purpose, which is not to evolve one clear dramatic course of events, but to display a store of humorous characters, of odd incidents, and of unvisited corners of the world. In several of Mr Dickens' works we perceive, or fancy we perceive, how the story grows upon its author, and how his original intention gets altered and modified by after-thoughts; and perhaps we may sometimes doubt whether the license of doing this, which is necessarily involved in serial publication, is, strictly speaking, good for the art,-but, at all events, we cannot overlook the good effect it had upon the Pickwick Papers. Beginning in caricature, it is some time before the artist makes up his mind what to do with his characters; and we can see how the great Samuel Pickwick, the Cockney philosopher, who was at first only something to laugh at, steals into the affections of his historian. How gradually the old gentleman's weaknesses are touched with a tender hand-how the events of the tale gather round him-and how his kind heart and simple wisdom, and last, but not least, his man Sam Weller, work for everybody's advantage. If the book can be said to have a hero at all, it is Sam, the universal genius and principal actor in the story, whose adventures, whose witticisms, and whose shrewdness, lend constant animation to the scene, from which he, or some shadow of him, is rarely absent. This admirable type of a class is Mr Dickens' sole and individual property, though, now that he has been made and presented to us, every one can recall to his mind or memory some existing example of a Sam Weller, perhaps not so witty, nor so shrewd, nor so constantly ready as Mr Dickens' great impersonation, but

beyond question the real man on whom this admirable ideal is founded. A Cockney, yet not so by necessityfor what a major-domo would Sam make for a snug house in the country! Sam's weakness in real life is "to tell a bit of his mind;" but Sam's strength is an intuitive good sense, which preserves him, off-handed and careless as he is, from foolish, while his kind heart sufficiently defends from cruel, actions. Few of the characters of Pickwick, save Sam himself, stand upon the common everyday level; except the young ladies and the young gentlemen, who are singularly unimportant in this book, its characters are oddities, outof the way people, crotchety old gentlemen, eccentric rogues-an odd and angular multitude; but Sam stands sturdily upon the common soil, with no eccentricity about him—a complete production of genius, an immediately allowed and recognisable man. His witty criticisms on everything and everybody, his love for his master, his filial anxiety for. the good conduct and dutiful behaviour of Mr Weller senior, his own true love, and the assistance he gives in the advantageous settlement of the true love of others, are all genuine everyday developments of a genuine English character. We can see him in his groom's dress, moving about through these animated pages, never out of temper, always handy, whistling, singing, "chaffing," making love-a spirit not to be dismayed or discouraged; and we know not whether most to admire the truth and reality of the picture, or the admirable idealisation which, while preserving a most perfect likeness, separates from all the lower and coarser features of the class this thoroughly genuine man.

By way of comparison with Sam, who is never offensive, we may instance Mrs Bardell, and her respectable circle of acquaintances, who are always so.

Mr Dickens chooses to show us in such pictures the difference between a thorough Dutch portrait of a scene, and the refined representation which seizes the necessary truth, but rejects the prosaic fact, which is neither agreeable nor edifying. There is great wit, great ability and power, in these famous Pickwick Papers,

which at once, by their name and plan, forestall our criticism of a disjointed and rambling story; but the life of the book is Sam Weller.

When Mr Dickens next appeared before the world, he came with a great and established reputation, and to a public which expected him eagerly such universal access had he gained during the progress of his first work. The prestige of a victory at the beginning of a career has a great chance to dim the achievements immediately succeeding, however meritorious these may be, and Oliver Twist has many features which shut it out from the kindly and familiar place accorded to the other works of its author. The history and natural habits of the genus criminal were a popular study at the time of its publication, and Mr Dickens did not refuse his notable contribution to this phase of literature. We were prepared for the fertility of his inventive powers-for a crowd of individuals, eccentric yet lifelike-for apt and ready caricature of common follies; but we were perhaps scarcely prepared for his intense appreciation of misery, or for the slow accumulation of dismay and terror, the terrible force with which he accomplishes the climax of this book. The career of Sykes, from the time of the murder (feebly repeated afterwards in the case of Jonas Chuzzlewit), is one of the most powerful tragic pictures in our literature. Making use of nothing above the quality of the chief actor, yet by the very greatness of the crime raising out of all vulgarity the circumstances which mark every hour of the ruffian's remaining life, we know of nothing equal in its kind to the representation of this miserable man, vaguely driven about by his fate, fluttering round it, savage, desperate, paralysed, and coming back at last with a dreadful fascination to meet his self-accomplished doom. It is horrible, but it is perfect; and while we recognise in it the highest power, we are glad to shut our eyes on this appalling picture, and keep the ghost of it from our memory

as we can.

And there is little else to soften or endear to us the book which contains such a revelation of human misery and crime. Fagin and his promising young associates are very much more

prominent in its pages than the milkand-water good people-than the tame originalities of Mr Brownlow and Mr Grimwig, or the mild loves of Harry Maylie and Rose. About these respectable personages we are so perfectly indifferent, that, in looking back on the book, we only recollect that Oliver was rescued by certain benevolent lay figures, very much less entertaining than his objectionable friends. Nor is our interest greater in Oliver himself, though he is so very emphatically a good boy. The plot of the novel, too, is very slight and carelessly compacted; and all the machinations of the spasmodic Monks, and the relationship between Oliver and Rose, seem so purely unnecessary that we can hardly tell what they were invented for. The dramatic force and interest of the story centre in the figures which give to its incidents a close so tragical. The heroine of the book is not Rose, but Nancy; and not even Mrs Maylie's passionate and impetuous doctor, nor the somewhat tedious humour of her servants, suffices to lead our interest from the robber's household to the gentleman's. As a development of new and unexpected powers, Oliver Twist will always hold its place among the writings of Mr Dickens, and in right of some of its scenes must remain remarkable in the literature of its time. But wonderful as is the power of art, and extraordinary the force of reality in the conclusion of this story, few of us will voluntarily, and without a shudder, go over the fate of Sykes again.

With the publication of Nicholas Nickleby the world recovered_permanently the author of the Pickwick Papers. Mr Dickens has never forgotten his memorable experiment in the tragic vein; with more or less success he returns to the field in almost every subsequent novel, but, we are bound to testify, does it discreetly, without inflicting upon us unnecessary horror. His crowd of odd and quaint and out-of-the-way characters, his careful pictures of eccentric benevolence, his descriptions, which exhaust the landscape, and leave nothing suggestive in it, nothing that you cannot see-have gone on from that time to this, improving in execution without dimi

nishing in vitality and freshness. But it is somewhat singular to remark in these volumes-which are perhaps the most universally read of any books existing at this day, which deal in the common circumstances, the most usual belongings of everyday life-how little of the common and everyday character finds a place in their pages. As a matter of personal experience, we do not find the world abound very greatly in oddities-one or two in the circle of his acquaintance is generally as much as an ordinary member of society is gifted with. But the wonderful thing in these books is, that here are no ordinary members of society-that, save the hero himself, the spectator and chronicler of the whole, every man is an "original." If we do "rub each other's angles down" in the world, we certainly do not find it so in Mr Dickens' novels. That pleasant, vivid picture of the Cheeryble Brothers is a faithful portrait, we believe, and too true to the life to come within the range of our comment; but is not Tim Linkinwater sufficiently odd and out of the way to supply in his own person a full amount of eccentricity for one three volumes? No. Tim Linkinwater has an odd little wife allotted to him, as little commonplace as himself; and wherever it pleases Mr Nicholas Nickleby to go, odd friends and assistants start up to succour him. Newman Noggs, Crummles, Miss La Creevy, the benevolent twin merchants and their wonderful clerk-not to speak of the Kenwigs family and connections, or the honest John Browdie, a true Yorkshire original-combine to form a list of oddities such as few could equal. In Pickwick and Oliver Twist this propensity is still more remarkable. Is it necessary, then, before we can interest a kindly and familiar audience in an Englishman of the most respectable middle class, to endow him with some exaggerated peculiarity to make him a "character?" It may be so; yet the art which works its results by means of common men and women, the ordinary everyday creatures, who are neither odd nor eccentric, is certainly the highest art.

In the early part of Nickleby we find one of those singular pictures of social evil-just sufficiently overdrawn to suit the story and the style of its author-for which Mr Dickens has become remarkable. A strange and most miserable picture is that of Do-the-Boys Hall. The faminestricken children, the wretched little despot Squeers, the vulgar spite of mother and daughter, and the unhappy poor usher, with his handsome face and look of gentility, are sadly real in their misery. How has it fared with the Yorkshire schools since the era of Nickleby? Did these promising seminaries give up the ghost forthwith? or do they remain in undiminished efficiency, to prove how little we are influenced by the presentments of fiction, though they move us to laughter or to tears? We cannot tell; but we think few fathers or mothers could summon sufficient fortitude to intrust their boys knowingly to any representative of the redoubtable Squeers. In contrast to this wretched house, whose squalor and brutality and mean vice we see and feel only too oppressively, how pleasant is John Browdie's Yorkshire kitchen, with its roaring fire and sanded floor, its overladen table, and its pretty mistress! What a hearty Englishman he is-who will see fair play even to Mrs Squeers, and will not suffer a man to be kicked when he is down, though that man be the schoolmaster; and how pathetic is that picture of the utter forlornness and desolation of childhood, when the poor little victims caged in Do-the-boys Hall are let loose to be carried away like straws before the wind, or to flutter about the miserable shelter, which is the only one they know of. Mr Dickens makes some remarkable, but, we think, rather fanciful sketches of this phase of childish suffering. Is it real? Is a child ever so thoroughly broken in spirit by any amount of ill usage? We doubt it greatly. It is the privilege of childhood to live in the present moment, to be diverted by every chance interruption, and its inheritance is a boundless and indescribable hope. The more we are acquainted with children-with the simplicity which takes everything as it

comes, and with that vivid interest and curiosity which is caught by every novel sight or thought-the less we are prepared to receive such plaintive little martyrs as little Dick in Oliver Twist, or the host of saintly little Dicks which abound in less able books than those of Mr Dickens.

One of the things which make this book remarkable is its astonishing representation of a fool. Fools are a difficult class of people to deal with if they are often impracticable in ordinary life, they are always very hard to manage in a novel. Insanity may be picturesque and grand in its revelations, and is always sure to touch some of the stronger emotions of the heart, if it be only fear, horror, and wonder; even idiotcy appeals to our compassion and our tears with its wistful eyes of no meaning: but folly

save the mark!— folly, complacent, bustling, impertinent, with its mind closed against reason, and its ears deaf to counsel, blind and pertinacious beyond all argument, is precisely the thing of all others most difficult of portraiture. It is so hard to prevent some ray of sense striking in

so difficult to preserve the maundering from an occasional gleam of understanding! Mr Dickens has triumphed over these difficulties in making Mrs Nickleby. If she is often very tiresome, and sometimes disgusting, what is that to say, but simply that she is a fool, and an admirably real one? Miss Austin, who excels in twaddlers, cannot equal Mrs Nickleby -her folly has either redeeming qualities, or distinctly offensive ones; but the fool proper wants no better revelation than in this good lady, who has quite made a conquest of the public in her capacity as representative of her class. The troubles of her children have very little effect on Mrs Nickleby she cries, but only feels herself ill-used when she believes her son a ruffian at the bidding of Ralph; and poor pretty Kate's dangers and pangs are not half so important to this exemplary mother as the assiduities of Messrs Pyke and Pluck. Mr Dickens here has executed his first conception remorselessly; he has allowed no tenderness nor redeeming affection to mar the natural proportions of his perfect fool.

And in this book the story hangs together with much more coherency than in either of its predecessors, though there is a shadow of resemblance, more than seems desirable at the first glance, between poor Smike and the mysterious man who occasionally appears to him-and that other forsaken child, Oliver Twist, with his spectre Monks; but there is a great deal more art in the knitting together of the narrative, in the connection between Smike and Nicholas, and the poetic justice executed upon Ralph; and despite of the miserable Squeers and his household-despite the disgusting Snawley, a species of reptile which Mr Dickens will indulge in, abominable as it is; and despite the roues and jackals of Mr Ralph Nickleby's acquaintance, there are many delightful pictures in this book, and much that entitles it to an affectionate remembrance. Nicholas Nickleby! Somewhere in our possession we have an abridgment of a great part of this book, written nearly sixteen years ago, at the time of its publication, by a young man of two-andtwenty for a little girl a long way distant from him, to whom he was the kindest brother in the world; and the pages we have once read in so careful a transcript, charm us always with a remembrance of this old story, which sister and brother, till we recall it to their remembrance, perhaps have equally forgot.

Is there after that a long interval in the labours of Mr Dickens? We think so, looking back upon our faithful recollection of his monthly appearances; and then we are called upon to rejoice over Kit Nubbles and Dick Swiveller, to hate the frightful little Quilp, and to sympathise with poor Nell. Poor little Nell! who has ever been able to read the last chapter of her history with an even voice or a clear eye? Poor little Nell! how we defied augury, and clung to hope for her-how we refused to believe that Kit and the strange gentleman, when they alighted amid the snow at the cottage door, could not do some miracle for her recovery! Mr Dickens acted cruelly to his youthful readers in this conclusion. Does he not confess to a host of letters begging him to spare the child? Yet there is the