eses. His sentences are peculiar, and they denounce him in his own tricks of phrase. There can be no greater compliment to any man. The critics catch the contagion of the malady which provokes their surgery. The eagle is aimed at by the archers, but "he nursed the pinion which impelled the steel."* To say that there are faults in the history, is but to say that it is a human production; and they lie on the surface and are patent to the most ordinary observer. That he was a "good haterӠ there can be no question; and Dr. Johnson, the while he called him a vile Whig, and a sacrilegious heretic, would have hugged him for the heartiness with which he lays on his dark shades of color. That he exaggerated rather for effect than for partisanship, may be alleged with great show of reason, and they have ground to stand upon who say that it was his greatest literary sin. There are some movements which he knew not how to estimate, and many complexities of character which he was never born to understand. history, there is no history in the world. history was as the marble statue; he came, and by his genius struck the statue into life.

Still, if his be not Before his entrance,

Biographical and Historical Lectures.

ON MACAULAY'S "LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME."

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (1775-1864).

The dreamy rhymer's measured snore
Falls heavy on our ears no more;
And by long strides are left behind
The dear delights of womankind,
Who wage their battles like their loves,
In satin waistcoats and kid gloves,
And have achieved the crowning work

When they have trussed and skewered a Turk.
Another comes with stouter tread,

And stalks among the statelier dead:
He rushes on, and hails by turns

High-crested Scott, broad-breasted Burns;

And shows the British youth, who ne'er
Will lag behind, what Romans were,
When all the Tuscans and their Lars
Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars.

*The quotation is from Byron's apostrophe to Kirke White in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

66

A phrase of Dr. Johnson's, who declared that he admired a 'good hater."

MR. PICKWICK'S SPEECH AT THE CLUB.

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870).

A casual observer, adds the secretary, to whose notes we are indebted for the following account-a casual observer might possibly have remarked nothing extraordinary in the bald head and circular spectacles; but to those who knew that the gigantic brain of Pickwick was working beneath that forehead, and that the beaming eyes of Pickwick were twinkling behind those glasses, the sight was indeed an interesting one. There sat the

man who had traced to their source the mighty ponds of Hampstead, and agitated the scientific world with his Theory of Tittlebats, as calm and unmoved as the deep waters of the one on a frosty day, or as a solitary specimen of the other in the inmost recesses of an earthen jar. And how much more interesting did the spectacle become when, starting into full life and animation, as a simultaneous call for "Pickwick" burst from his followers, that illustrious man slowly mounted into the Windsor chair, on which he had been previously seated, and addressed the club himself had founded! What a study for an artist did that exciting scene present! The eloquent Pickwick, with one hand gracefully concealed behind his coat-tails, and the other waving in air, to assist his glowing declamation; his elevated position revealing those tights and gaiters which, had they clothed an ordinary man, might have passed without observation, but which, when Pickwick clothed them—if we may use the expression-inspired voluntary awe and respect; surrounded by the men who had volunteered to share the perils of his travels, and who were destined to participate in the glories of his discoveries.

“Mr. Pickwick observed" (says the secretary) "that fame was dear to the heart of every man. Poetic fame was dear to the heart of his friend Snodgrass; the fame of conquest was equally dear to his friend Tupman; and the desire of earning fame in the sports of the field, the air, and the water was uppermost in the breast of his friend Winkle. He (Mr. Pickwick) would not deny that he was influenced by human passions and human feelings [cheers] possibly by human weaknesses [loud cries of "No"]; but this he would say, that if ever the fire of selfimportance broke out in his bosom, the desire to benefit the human race in preference effectually quenched it. The praise

of mankind was his swing; philanthropy was his insurance office. [Vehement cheering.] He had felt some pride-he acknowledged it freely, and let his enemies make the most of it -he had felt some pride when he presented his Tittlebatian Theory to the world; it might be celebrated or it might not. [A cry of "It is," and great cheering.] He would take the assertion of that honorable Pickwickian whose voice he had just heard it was celebrated; but if the fame of that treatise were to extend to the farthest confines of the known world, the pride with which he should reflect on the authorship of that production would be as nothing compared with the pride with which he looked around him on this, the proudest moment of his existence. [Cheers.] He was a humble individual. ["No, no."] Still, he could not but feel that they had selected him for a service of great honor and of some danger. Travelling was in a troubled state, and the minds of coachmen were unsettled. Let them look abroad, and contemplate the scenes which were enacting around them. Stage-coaches were upsetting in all directions, horses were bolting, boats were overturning, and boilers were bursting. [Cheers-a voice, "No."] No! [Cheers.] Let that honorable Pickwickian who cried "No" so loudly come forward and deny it, if he could. [Cheers.] Who was it that cried 'No?' [Enthusiastic cheering.] Was it some vain and disappointed man-he would not say haberdasher-[loud cheers]— who, jealous of the praise which had been-perhaps undeservedly -bestowed on his (Mr. Pickwick's) researches, and smarting under the censure which had been heaped upon his own feeble attempts at rivalry, now took this vile and calumnious mode of-"

Did the honorable

"Mr. Blotton (of Aldgate) rose to order. Pickwickian allude to him? [Cries of "Order," "Chair," "Yes," "No," "Go on,' ""Leave off," etc.]

"Mr. Pickwick would not put up to be put down by clamor. He had alluded to the honorable gentleman. [Great excitement.]

"Mr. Blotton would only say, then, that he repelled the honorable gentleman's false and scurrilous accusation with profound contempt. [Great cheering.] The honorable gentleman was a humbug. [Immense confusion, and loud cries of "Chair" and "Order."]

"Mr. A. Snodgrass rose to order. He threw himself upon the chair. ["Hear."] He wished to know whether this dis

graceful contest between two members of that club should be allowed to continue. ["Hear, hear."]

"The chairman was quite sure the honorable Pickwickian would withdraw the expression he had just made use of.

"Mr. Blotton, with all possible respect for the chair, was quite sure he would not.

"The chairman felt it his imperative duty to demand of the honorable gentleman whether he had used the expression which had just escaped him in a common sense.

"Mr. Blotton had no hesitation in saying that he had nothe had used the term in its Pickwickian sense. ["Hear, hear."] He was bound to acknowledge that, personally, he entertained the highest regard and esteem for the honorable gentleman; he had merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view. ["Hear, hear."]

"Mr. Pickwick felt much gratified by the fair, candid, and full explanation of his honorable friend. He begged it to be at once understood that his own observations had been merely intended to bear a Pickwickian construction. ["Cheers."]"

Pickwick Papers (1836-37).

TO CHARLES DICKENS ON HIS "OLIVER TWIST."
THOMAS NOON TALFOURD (1795-1854).

Not only with the author's happiest praise
Thy work should be rewarded; 'tis akin
To deeds of men who, scorning ease, to win
A blessing for the wretched, pierce the maze
Which heedless ages spread around the ways
Where fruitful Sorrow tracks its parent Sin;
Content to listen to the wildest din

Of passion, and on fellest shapes to gaze,
So they may earn the power which intercedes
With the bright world and melts it for within
Wan childhood's squalid haunts, where basest needs
Make tyranny more bitter, at thy call

An angel face with patient sweetness pleads
For infant suffering to the heart of all.

DICKENS IN CAMP.*

FRANCIS BRET HARTE (b. 1839).

Above the pines, the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;

The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow.

The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health

On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;

Till one arose, and, from his pack's scant treasure,
A hoarded volume drew,

And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
To hear the tale anew;

And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
And as the firelight fell,

He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of "Little Nell."+

Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,-for the reader
Was youngest of them all,-

But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall:

The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray;

While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows,
Wandered and lost their way.

And

So, in mountain solitudes, o'ertaken
As by some spell divine-

Their cares dropped from them, like the needles shaken
From out the gusty pine.

:-

Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire :

And he who wrought that spell?

Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!

Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills

With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.

And on that grave§ where English oak and holly
And laurel wreaths entwine,

Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,-
This spray of Western pine!

* Camp of the gold miners of California.

+ Dickens's story of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop.

Dickens's residence was at Gadshill, near Rochester, England.

§ Dickens died June 9, 1870, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.