thors, and of the present time, who might equal the best points of humour in any of Mr. Dickens' works, but there is no author who can "keep it up" as he does; no author who can fill page after page with unfailing and irresistible humour, the only "relief" to which, if any, shall be fun, and the exuberance of animal spirits-a surplus vitality like that which makes him, after signing his name to a letter or note, give such a whirl of flourishing, which resembles an immense capering over a thing done, before he is "off" to something else. No other author could have written the whole of chapter twenty-nine of "Martin Chuzzlewit,"-nor perhaps the last two pages. Frequently, the humour is combined with the richest irony—as at the funeral of old Anthony Chuzzlewit, where the doctor and the undertaker affect not to know each other. Frequently the humour takes the appearance of burlesque and farce, as when Mr. Bumble the beadle puts on his cocked hat, and dances round the tea-table; but when it is recollected that he has been courting the mistress of the place, and has just discovered himself to be an accepted man, and that she has left him alone in the room in the first glow of conscious success, the genuine humour of the proceeding becomes manifest. Sometimes the humour not only takes the show of mere animal spirits, but may be said to depend solely upon them, and to set the lack of wit at utter defiance, as by absolute challenge. This is often done in the person of Master Charley Bates,* who usually falls into shouts of merriment at nothing in itself laughable; and of John Browdie,† who once nearly choaks himself, displaying a great red face and round eyes, and coughing and stamping about with immoderate laughter-and all for the poorest jokes. The joke is felt to be nothing, yet the effect upon John Browdie is so palpable, that it is irresistible to the beholder. In like manner, Mr. Mould‡ palates, and relishes, and repeats, one of the very smallest and driest of jokes, because it has a directly professional application that tickles him; and such is his unaffected delight, that at last, witless as it is, the humorous effect is unquestionable. But if such points as these might be equalled by several other authors, there are various scenes in the works of Mr. Dickens which are peculiar to himself,

* See Oliver Twist. + Nicholas Nickleby. See Martin Chuzzlewit..

for their fullness of humour, mingled with subtle irony, and knowledge of life and character, and are in their combinations unlike any other author. No other author, of past or present times, so far as can be judged by their productions, could have written several scenes, or chapters, taken entire, as they stand in the works of " Boz.' For instance, the whole chapter in which Mr. Mould, the undertaker, is discovered in his domestic relations,* where the very nature of the whole man is brought out by the fulsome palavering gossip of the nurse, Mrs. Gamp, who has been "recommended" by Mr. Mould to nurse a certain sick man, and whose permission she comes to ask that she may go and nurse another sick man all night, and thus receive pay from both. Another nurse, recommended by Mr. Mould, was attending upon the latter sick man by day-and it is therefore evident that she also leaves her charge at night to go probably to do duty elsewhere. Hence it appears that four sick people are neglected during twelve hours out of each twenty-four, so that Mr. Mould has good chances of a funeral or two among them. Nothing of this kind is said nothing is thrown up to the surface of the scene, except its racy humour-but are not the inferences palpable in their keen irony? The scene where this horrid nurse, Mrs. Gamp, goes to fill her office by the sick bed for the night † is an unexampled mixture of the humorous, the grotesque, the characteristic, and detestable-to say nothing of the practical service of the "warning." Two other scenes occur to the mind, which, for the richness of their humour and character, and the thorough knowledge the author has of "his men," are, in their way, quite unparalleled and unrivalled in literature. We allude to the scenes where the, two men who, in their circumstances, and the external character they supported, would have been the last voluntarily to lose those wits which were so very necessary always to be kept "about them," did actually lose the same for a time by getting intoxicated-need it be said that these two men are the methodist preacher Mr. Stiggins, called "the Shepherd :" and the plausible, smooth-surfaced, self-possessed hypocrite, Mr. Pecksniff-the character which bids fair to be, when the work is finished, the master-piece of all the author's

* Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. 25.

The Pickwick Papers.

Ibid., chap. 25.

Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. 9.

numerous characters, or rivalled only by the more subtle delineation of young Martin Chuzzlewit. If ever the conflicting proverbs that "liquor disguises a man"and, that "drunkenness exposes a man," were brought to a final issue in favour of the exposition of nature induced by the latter, here may it be witnessed in those two inimitable scenes. They not only display the secret capacities and the habitual bent of the mind, but may also be regarded as physiological studies. A man of genius, to develope and set forth the noble objects of his soul, need not absolutely possess great physical energies, for his work can wait—whether he be above ground or beneath it; but a charlatan, to succeed, must possess a strong physique, for his work cannot wait, and he must reap while he lives, or not at all. In the most humorous and strictly characteristic manner-yet without the least apparent purpose-the physique of the Shepherd, and of Mr. Pecksniff, is displayed in these scenes, and we there discover how much secret strength was necessary to enable them to maintain, at all other times, their bland and unruffled exterior, and to repress and govern so much dangerous "stuff" within them. The grave, oily, most respectable Mr. Pecksniff, after being repeatedly put to bed, yet as repeatedly jumping up again, and appearing at the top of the landing-place in his shirt, discoursing with polite, half-conscious absurdi ty over the banisters, gives a finish to his character, such as no other condition of affairs could accomplish, and no words so exquisitely portray. It is the same man, drunk, who, being sober, had the strength of selfpossession-when his house was filled with confusion, and the last man he wished to see that confusion, was at his door-to settle the dangerous parties in different rooms, and putting on, a gardening hat, open the door himself with a demure face and a spade in his hand! "The force of humour could no further go."

But if Mr. Dickens does not display anything of what is recognized as sheer wit in his writings, he frequently indulges in irony, and sometimes in sarcasm. To his great credit, these instances are never of a morbid misanthropical kind, and in the shape of transient side hits and stabs at human nature; they will almost invariably be found directed against social wrongs, "the insolence of office," against false notions of honour, against mere external respectability, and with a view to defend the poor

against injustice and oppression. His favourite method, however, of exposing and attacking wrongs, and “abating nuisances," is through the humorous display of characters actively engrossed with their own objects and designs. With theories, or systems of philosophy which are not to his mind, he also deals in a similar style of pleasantry. The opening pages of Chapter XIII. of "Oliver Twist," are an admirable instance.

If it be an interesting thing to trace the cause and means of a man's rise to fame, and the various methods by which he mastered obscurity amidst all the crowd struggling for the same narrow door, and fairly won the sympathy, the admiration, and the gold of contemporaneous multitudes, it is no less curious and interesting to observe the failures of successful men, their miscalculations at the very height of the game, and the redoubled energy and skill with which they recovered their position. Few are perhaps aware that Mr. Dickens once wrote an Opera; not very many perhaps know that he wrote a Farce for the theatre, which was acted; and the great majority of his readers do not at all care to remember that he wrote a "Life of Grimaldi," in two volumes. The opera was set to music very prettily by Hullah, and was produced at the St. James' theatre; but, somehow, it vanished into space; albeit, at dusty old book-stalls, pale-faced near-sighted men, poking over the broken box or tea-chest that usually contains the cheap sweepings of the stock within, avouch that once or twice they have caught a glimpse of the aforesaid lyrics, labelled price three pence. As for the theatrical piece, it "went off" in a smoke, with Harley wringing his hands at the top of the cloud; and for the "Life of Grimaldi," everybody was disappointed with it, because, although Joseph was certainly in private "no fool," yet as the only hold he had upon our sympathies was with reference to his merry-makings at Christmas-tide, the public certainly did not expect to find most of that set aside, and in its place a somewhat melancholy narrative hopeless of all joyous result from the first, yet endeav ouring to be pleasant "on the wrong side of the mouth." It was like the rehearsal of a pantomime, the poor clown being of course in "plain clothes," and having pains in his limbs, from a fall. It was a sad antithesis to expectation, and all old associations.

Leaving these failures behind him with so light a pace

that no one heard him moving off, and never once turning back his head,—which might have attracted the public attention to his ill-luck-our author started forward on his way, as if nothing had happened.

The slowness, and dogged grudging with which the English public are brought to admit of great merit, except in cases where their admiration is suddenly carried off unawares from them, is only to be equalled by the prodigality of disposition towards a favourite once highly established. And this influences all classes, more or less. A recent instance must have caused our author great merriment. At a public dinner a short time since, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, regretting the absence of his friend Mr. Dickens, paid an appropriate and well-merited compliment to the breadth of surface over which the life, character, and general knowledge contained in his works, extended. The reporter not rightly hearing this, or not attending_to it, but probably saying to himself, Oh-it's about Dickens-one can't go wrong,' gave a version of the learned Serjeant's speech in the next morning's paper, to the effect that Mr. Dickens' genius comprised that of all the greatest minds of the time, put together, and that his works represented all their works. The high ideal and imaginative-the improvements in the steam-engine and machinery-all the new discoveries in anatomy, geology, and electricity, with the prize cartoons, and history and philosophy thrown into the bargain,-search from the "Sketches by Boz" to Martin Chuzzlewit inclusive, and you shall find, in some shape or other "properly understood," everything valuable which the world of letters elsewhere contains. The gratuitous gift of this confused accumulation, is only to be equalled by the corresponding gift of "madness,” with which our most amusing, and, in his turn, most amused author was obligingly favoured by an absurd report, extensively circulated, some year or two ago.

The true characteristics of Mr. Dickens' mind are strongly and definitively marked-they are objective, and always have a practical tendency. His universality does not extend beyond the verge of the actual and concrete. The ideal and the elementary are not his region. Having won trophies over so large a portion of the intellectual and plastic world, Mr. Dickens projected a flight into the ideal hemisphere. Accordingly he gave us Master Humphrey, and his Clock. The design had