seems almost to force itself upon our notice between the writings of Hook and those of a still more popular author, Mr. Charles Dickens. We shall not be tempted to pursue it further than to remark, that their subject-matter being in some measure the same, the former seems to survey society from a level more elevated and more distant than his competitor; his delineations are in consequence genial and sketchy, those of the latter more technical and minute. Hook gives you a landscape, while ‘Boz' is tracing every leaf of a particular tree. The same analogy holds good as regards their moral teaching. Hook is pithy, pointed, and off-hand; the reflections of Mr. Dickens are elaborated with a care that occasionally, perhaps, detracts from their effect. Hook has undoubtedly the advantage of more experience of the world, but the palm of originality must, we should think, be awarded to his rival."BARHAM'S Life of Theodore Hook.

METHODICAL HABITS AND PERSEVERANCE.-One who knew him well says:-"He did not work by fits and starts, but had regular hours for labour, commencing about ten and ending about two. It is an old saying, that easy writing is very difficult reading; Mr. Dickens's works, so easily read, were by no means easily written. He laboured at them prodigiously, both in their conception and execution. During the whole time that he had a

book in hand, he was much more thoughtful and preoccupied than in his leisure moments."

**Another friend has written :-"His hours and days were spent by rule. He rose at a certain time, he retired at another, and, though no precisian, it was not often that his arrangements varied. His hours for writing were between breakfast and luncheon, and when there was any work to be done, no temptation was sufficiently strong to cause it to be neglected. This order and regularity followed him through the day. His mind was essentially methodical, and in his long walks, in his recreations, in his labour, he was governed by rules laid down for himself by himself, rules well studied beforehand, and rarely departed from. The so-called men of business, the people who own exclusive devotion to the science of profit and loss makes them regard doubtfully all to whom that same science is not the main object of life, would have been delighted and amazed at this side of Dickens's character."

"No writer set before himself more laboriously the task of giving the public the very best. A great artist, who once painted his portrait while he was in the act of writing one of the most popular of his stories, relates that he was astonished at the trouble Dickens seemed to take over his work, at the number of forms in which he would write down a thought before he hit out the one which seemed

to his fastidious fancy the best, and at the comparative smallness of manuscript each day's sitting seemed to have produced. Those, too, who have seen the original MSS. of his works, many of which he had bound and kept at his residence at Gad's Hill, describe them as full of interlineations and alterations."

MANNER OF LITERARY COMPOSITION. —A writer in a weekly journal says:-"I remember well one evening, spent with him by appointment, not wasted by intrusion, when I found him, according to his own phrase, 'picking up the threads' of 'Martin Chuzzlewit' from the printed sheets of the half volume that lay before him. This accounts for the seeming incompleteness of some of his plots; in others, the design was too strong and sure to be influenced by any outer consideration. He was only confirmed and invigorated by the growing applause, and marched on, like a successful general, with each victory made easier by the preceding one. It seemed hardly to come within his nature to compose in solitary fashion, and wait the event of a whole work. No doubt, this resulted in part from his character as a journalist; and so did his utter disdain of the shams which it is the express province of journalism to detect and expose.

"His composition, easy as it seems in the reading— indeed, so natural, that it would be difficult to substi

it might fittingly be placed in the British Museum by the side of the MS. of Sterne's "Sentimental Journey."

DICKENS'S BENEVOLENCE.-The late Sheridan Knowles, in a letter to a friend, gave an instance of his generosity:-"Poor Haydn, the author of the 'Dictionary of Dates,' and the Book of Dignities' (I believe I am right in the titles), was working, to my knowledge, under the pressure of extreme destitution, aggravated by wretchedly bad health, and a heart slowly breaking through efforts indefatigable, but vain, to support in comfort a wife and a young family. I could not afford him at the moment any material relief, and I wrote to Charles Dickens, stating his miserable case. My letter was no sooner received than it was answered-and how? By a visit to his suffering brother, and not of condolence only, but of assistance-rescue! Charles Dickens offered his purse to poor Haydn, and subsequently brought the case before the Literary Society, and so appealingly as to produce an immediate supply of £60. I need not say another word. I need not remark that such benevolence is not likely to occur solitarily. The fact I communicate I learned from poor Haydn himself. Dickens never breathed a word to me about it."

HOOK AND DICKENS.-"A comparison

seems almost to force itself upon our notice between the writings of Hook and those of a still more popular author, Mr. Charles Dickens. We shall not be tempted to pursue it further than to remark, that their subject-matter being in some measure the same, the former seems to survey society from a level more elevated and more distant than his competitor; his delineations are in consequence genial and sketchy, those of the latter more technical and minute. Hook gives you a landscape, while 'Boz' is tracing every leaf of a particular tree. The same analogy holds good as regards their moral teaching. Hook is pithy, pointed, and off-hand; the reflections of Mr. Dickens are elaborated with a care that occasionally, perhaps, detracts from their effect. Hook has undoubtedly the advantage of more experience of the world, but the palm of originality must, we should think, be awarded to his rival."BARHAM'S Life of Theodore Hook.

PERSE

METHODICAL HABITS AND VERANCE.-One who knew him well says:-"He did not work by fits and starts, but had regular hours for labour, commencing about ten and ending about two. It is an old saying, that easy writing is very difficult reading; Mr. Dickens's works, so easily read, were by no means easily written. He laboured at them prodigiously, both in their conception and execution. During the whole time that he had a