English Literature for Boys and Girls Part 80

"He was a cynic! You might read it writ In that broad brow, crowned with its silver hair, In those blue eyes, with childlike candour lit, In the sweet smile his lips were wont to wear.

"He was a cynic! By the love that clung About him from his children, friends, and kin; By the sharp pain, light pen and gossip tongue Wrought in him chafing the soft heart within.

"He was a cynic? Yes--if 'tis the cynic's part To track the serpent's trail with saddened eye, To mark how good and ill divide the heart, How lives in chequered shade and sunshine lie:

"How e'en the best unto the worst is knit By brotherhood of weakness, sin and care; How even in the worst, sparks may be lit To show all is not utter darkness there."

BOOK TO READ

The Rose and the Ring.

NOTE.--The Rose and the Ring can be found in any complete edition of Thackeray's works.

Chapter Lx.x.xIV d.i.c.kENS--SMILES AND TEARS

CHARLES d.i.c.kENS was a novelist who lived and wrote at the same time as Thackeray. He was indeed only six months younger, but he began to make a name much earlier and was known to fame while Thackeray was still a struggling artist. When they both became famous these two great writers were to some extent rivals, and those who read their books were divided into two camps. For though both are men of genius, they are men of widely differing genius.

John d.i.c.kens, the father, was a clerk with a small salary in the Navy Pay Office, and his son Charles was born in 1812 at Portsea.

When Charles was about four his father was moved to Chatham, and here the little boy Charles lived until he was nine. He was a very puny little boy, and not able to join in the games of the other boys of his own age. So he spent most of his time in a small room where there was some books and where no one else besides himself cared to go. He not only read the books, but lived them, and for weeks together he would make believe to himself that he was his favorite character in whatever book he might be reading. All his life he loved acting a part and being somebody else, and at one time thought of becoming an actor.

Then when Charles was seven he went to a school taught by a young Baptist minister. It was not an unhappy life for the "Very queer small boy" as he calls himself. There were fields in which he could play his pretending games, and there was a beautiful house called Gad's Hill near, at which he could go to look and dream that if he were very good and very clever he might some day be a fine gentleman and own that house.

When the very queer small boy was nine he and all his family moved to London. Here they lived in a mean little house in a mean little street. There were now six children, and the father had grown very poor, so instead of being sent to school Charles used to black the boots and make himself useful about the house.

But he still had his books to read, and could still make believe to himself. Things grew worse and worse however, and John d.i.c.kens, who was kind and careless, got into debt deeper and deeper. Everything in the house that could be done without was sold, and one by one the precious books went. At length one day men came and took the father away to prison because he could not pay his debts.

Then began for Charles the most miserable time of his life. The poor, sickly little chap was set to work in a blacking factory.

His work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking, tie them down neatly and paste on the labels. Along with two or three others boys he worked all day long for six or seven shillings a week.

Oh, how the little boy hated it! He felt degraded and ashamed.

He felt that he was forgotten and neglected by every one, and that never never more would he be able to read books and play pretending games, or do anything that he loved. All week he worked hard, ill clad and only half fed, and Sunday he spent with this father at the prison. It was a miserable, sordid, and pitiful beginning to life.

How long this unhappy time lasted we do not know. d.i.c.kens himself could not remember. He seldom spoke of this time, but he never forgot the misery of it. Long afterwards in one of his books called David Copperfield, when he tells of the unhappy childhood of his hero, it is of his own he speaks.

But presently John d.i.c.kens got out of prison, Charles left the blacking factory, and once more went to school. And although in after years he could never bear to think of these miserable days, at the time his spirits were not crushed, and at school he was known as a bright and jolly boy. He was always ready for any mischief, and took delight in getting up theatricals.

At fifteen d.i.c.kens left school and went into a lawyer's office, but he knew that he had learned very little at school, and now set himself to learn more. He went to the British Museum Reading-room, and studied there, and he also with a great deal of labor taught himself shorthand.

He worked hard, determined to get on, and at nineteen he found himself in the Gallery of the House of Commons as reporter for a daily paper. Since the days when Samuel Johnson reported speeches without having heard them things had changed. People were no longer content with such make-believe reporting, and d.i.c.kens proved himself one of the smartest reporters there had ever been. He not only reported the speeches, but told of everything that took place in the House. He had such a keen eye for seeing, and such a vivid way of describing what he saw, that he was able to make people realize the scenes inside the House as none had done before.

Besides reporting in the Houses of Parliament d.i.c.kens dashed about the country in post-chaises gathering news for his paper, writing by flickering candle-light while his carriage rushed along, at what seemed then the tremendous speed of fifteen miles an hour. For those were not the days of railways and motors, and traveling was much slower than it is now.

But even while d.i.c.kens was leading this hurried, busy life he found time to write other things besides newspaper reports, and little tales and sketches began to appear signed by Boz. Boz was a pet name for d.i.c.kens's youngest brother. His real name was Augustus, but he had been nicknamed Moses after Moses in the Vicar of Wakefield. p.r.o.nounced through the nose it became Boses and then Boz. That is the history of the name under which d.i.c.kens at first wrote and won his earliest fame.

The sketches by Boz were well received, but real fame came to d.i.c.kens with the Pickwick Papers which he now began to write.

This story came out in monthly parts. The first few numbers were not very successful, only about four hundred copies being sold, but by the fifteenth number London was ringing with the fame of it, and forty thousand copies were quickly sold. "Judges on the bench and boys in the street, gravity and folly, the young and the old"* all alike read it and laughed over it. d.i.c.kens above everything is a humorist, and one of the chief features in his humor is caricature, that is exaggerating and distorting one feature or habit or characteristic of a man out of all likeness to nature. This often makes very good fun, but it takes away from the truth and realness of his characters. And yet no story- teller perhaps is remembered so little for his stories and so much for his characters. In Pickwick there is hardly any story, the papers ramble on in unconnected incidents. No one could tell the story of Pickwick for there is really none to tell; it is a series of scenes which hang together anyhow. "Pickwick cannot be cla.s.sed as a novel," it has been said; "it is merely a great book."**

*Forster.

**Gissing.

So in spite of the fact that they are all caricatures it is the persons of the Pickwick club that we remember and not their doings. Like Jonson long before him, d.i.c.kens sees every man in his humor. By his genius he enables us to see these humors too, though at times one quality in a man is shown so strongly that we fail to see any other in him, and so a caricature is produced.

d.i.c.kens himself was full of fun and jollity. His was a florid personality. He loved light and color, and sunshine. He almost covered his walls with looking-gla.s.ses and crowded his garden with blazing geraniums. He loved movement and life, overflowed with it himself and poured it into his creations, making them live in spite of rather than because of their absurdities.

Winkle, one of the Pickwickians, is a mild and foolish boaster, who pretends that he can do things he cannot. He pretends to be able to shoot and succeeds only in hitting one of his friends.

He pretends to skate, and this is how he succeeds:--

"'Now,' said Wardle, after a substantial lunch had been done ample just to, 'what say you to an hour on the ice? We shall have plenty of time.'

"'Capital!' said Mr. Benjamin Allen.

"'Prime!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Bob Sawyer.

"'You skate of course, Winkle?' said Wardle.

"'Ye-yes; oh, yes,' replied Mr. Winkle. 'I--I am rather out of practice.'

"'Oh, do skate, Mr. Winkle,' said Arabella. 'I like to see it so much.'

"'Oh, it is so graceful,' said another young lady. A third young lady said it was elegant, and a fourth expressed her opinion that it was 'swanlike.'

"'I should be very happy, I'm sure,' said Mr. Winkle, reddening, 'but I have no skates.'

"This objection was at once overruled. Trundle had a couple of pair, and the fat boy announced that there were half-a-dozen more, downstairs: whereat Mr. Winkle expressed exquisite delight, and looked exquisitely uncomfortable.

"Old Wardle led the way to a pretty large sheet of ice, and the fat boy and Mr. Weller, having shovelled and swept away the snow which had fallen on it during the night, Mr. Bob Sawyer adjusted his skates with a dexterity which to Mr. Winkle was perfectly marvellous, and described circles with his left leg, and cut figures of eight, and inscribed upon the ice, without once stopping for breath, a great many other pleasant and astonishing devices, to the excessive satisfaction of Mr. Pickwick, Mr.

Tupman, and the ladies: which reached a pitch of positive enthusiasm, when old Wardle and Benjamin Allen, a.s.sisted by the aforesaid Bob Sawyer, performed some mystic evolutions, which they called a reel.

"All this time Mr. Winkle, with his face and hands blue with the cold, had been forcing gimlet into the soles of his boots, and putting his skates on, with the points behind, and getting the straps into a very complicated and entangled state, with the a.s.sistance of Mr. Snodgra.s.s, who knew rather less about skates than a Hindoo. At length, however, with the a.s.sistance of Mr.

Weller, the unfortunate skates were firmly screwed and buckled on, and Mr. Winkle was raised to his feet.

"'Now, then, Sir,' said Sam, in an encouraging tone; 'off with you, and shoe 'em how to do it.'

"'Stop, Sam, stop!' said Mr. Winkle, trembling violently and clutching hold of Sam's arms with the grasp of a drowning man.

'How slippery it is, Sam!'

"'Not a uncommon thing upon ice, Sir,' replied Mr. Weller. 'Hold up, Sir!'

"This last observation of Mr. Weller's bore reference to a demonstration Mr. Winkle made at the instant, of a frantic desire to throw his feet in the air, and dash the back of his head on the ice.

"'These--these--are very awkward skates; ain't they, Sam?'

inquired Mr. Winkle, staggering.

"'I'm afeerd there's an orkard gen'l'm'n in 'em, Sir,' replied Sam.