Vale of Chamouni," "Youth and Age,"
Edition of J. D. Campbell.

Midnight.'

1893.

"Frost at

London:

7. DE QUINCEY: "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," "Revolt of the Tartars," "Biographical Sketches."

8. SCOTT: "Waverley," "Heart of Midlothian," "Bride of Lammermoor," "Rob Roy," "Antiquary,' "Marmion," "Lady of the Lake."

9. KEATS: "Hyperion," "Eve of St. Agnes," "Lyrical Pieces." Boston: 1871.

CHAPTER VIII.

FROM THE DEATH OF SCOTT TO THE PRESENT
TIME, 1832-1898.

THE literature of the past fifty years is too close to our eyes to enable the critic to pronounce a final judgment, or the literary historian to get a true perspective. Many of the principal writers of the time are still living, and many others have been dead but a few years. This concluding chapter, therefore, will be devoted to the consideration of the few who stand forth, incontestably, as the leaders of literary thought, and who seem likely, under all future changes of fashion and taste, to remain representatives of their generation. As regards form, the most striking fact in the history of the period under review is the immense preponderance in its imaginative literature of prose fiction, of the novel of real life. The novel has become to the solitary Age of the reader of to-day what the stage play was to the audiences of Elizabeth's reign, or the periodical essay, like the Tatler and Spectator, to the clubs and breakfast tables of Queen Anne's. And if its criticism of life is less concentrated and brilliant than the drama gives, it is far more searching and minute. No period has ever left in its literary records so complete a picture of its whole society as the period which is just closing. At any other time than the present, the names of authors like Charlotte Bronté, Charles Kingsley, and Charles Reade names which are here merely mentioned in passing-besides many others which want of space for

novel.

Charles
Dickens.

"Pickwick."

bids us
even to mention, would be of capital im-
portance. As it is, we must limit our review to the
three acknowledged masters of modern English fiction,
Charles Dickens (1812-1870), William Makepeace
Thackeray (1811-1863), and "George Eliot" (Mary
Ann Evans, 1819-1880).

It is sometimes helpful to reduce a great writer to his
lowest term, in order to see what the prevailing bent of
his genius is. This lowest term may often be found in
his early work, before experience of the world has
overlaid his original impulse with foreign accretions.
Dickens was much more than a humorist, Thackeray
than a satirist, and George Eliot than a moralist; but
they had their starting-points respectively in humor, in
burlesque, and in strong ethical and religious feeling.
Dickens began with a broadly comic series of papers,
contributed to the Old Magazine and the Evening
Chronicle, and reprinted in book form, in 1836, as
The success of these suggested
"Sketches by Boz."
to a firm of publishers the preparation of a number of
similar sketches of the misadventures of cockney sports-
men, to accompany plates by the comic draughtsman
Mr. R. Seymour. This suggestion resulted in the
"Pickwick Papers," published in monthly instalments
in 1836-37. The series grew, under Dickens's hand,
into a continuous though rather loosely strung narrative
of the doings of a set of characters, conceived with
such exuberant and novel humor that it took the public
once to fame.
by storm and raised its author at
"Pickwick" is by no means Dickens's best, but it is
his most characteristic and most popular book.

At the time that he wrote these early sketches he was a reporter for the Morning Chronicle. His naturally acute powers of observation had been trained in

knowledge of

this pursuit to the utmost efficiency, and there always continued to be about his descriptive writing a reportorial and newspaper air. He had the eye for effect, the sharp fidelity to detail, the instinct for rapidly seizing upon and exaggerating the salient point, which are developed by the requirements of modern journalism. Dickens knew London as no one else has ever known it, and, in particular, he knew its hideous and Dickens's grotesque recesses, with the strange developments of London. human nature that abide there; slums like Tom-allAlone's, in "Bleak House"; the river-side haunts of Rogue Riderhood, in "Our Mutual Friend"; as well as the old inns, like the "White Hart," and the "dusky purlieus of the law." As a man, his favorite occupation was walking the streets, where, as a child, he had picked up the most valuable part of his education. His tramps about London-often after nightfall -sometimes extended to fifteen miles in a day. He knew, too, the shifts of poverty. His father—some traits of whom are preserved in Mr. Micawber-was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison, where his wife took lodging with him, while Charles, then a boy of ten, was employed at six shillings a week to cover blacking-pots in Warner's blacking warehouse. The hardships and loneliness of this part of his life are told under a thin disguise in Dickens's masterpiece, David Copperfield," the most autobiographical of his novels. From these young experiences he gained that insight into the lives of the lower classes and that sympathy with children and with the poor which shine out in his pathetic sketches of Little Nell in "The Old Curiosity Shop," of Paul Dombey, of poor Jo in "Bleak House," of "the Marchioness," and a hundred other figures.

"David Copperfield."

"Bleak House."

In "Oliver Twist," contributed, during 1837-38, to Bentley's Miscellany, a monthly magazine of which Dickens was editor, he produced his first regular novel. In this story of the criminal classes the author showed a tragic power which he had not hitherto exhibited. Thenceforward his career was a series of dazzling successes. It is impossible here to particularize his numerous novels, sketches, short tales, and "Christmas Stories"-the latter a fashion which he inaugurated, and which has produced a whole literature in itself. In "Nicholas Nickleby," 1839, "Master Humphrey's Clock," 1840, "Martin Chuzzlewit," 1844, "Dombey and Son," 1848, "David Copperfield," 1850, and "Bleak House," 1853, there is 1853, there is no falling off in strength. The last named was, in some respects, and especially in the skilful construction of the plot, his best novel. In some of his latest books, as "Great Expectations," 1861, and "Our Mutual Friend,” 1865, there are signs of a decline. This showed itself in an unnatural exaggeration of characters and motives, and a painful straining after humorous effects; faults, indeed, from which Dickens was never wholly free. There was a histrionic side to him, which came out in his fondness for private theatricals, in which he exhibited remarkable talent, and in the dramatic action which he introduced into the delightful public readings from his works that he gave before vast audiences all over the United Kingdom, and in his two visits to America. It is not surprising, either, to learn that upon the stage his preference was for melodrama and Faults of taste. farce. His own serious writing was always dangerously close to the melodramatic, and his humor to the farcical. There is much false art, bad taste, and even vulgarity in Dickens. He was never quite a gentle