"OH, potent wizard! painter of great skill
Blending with life's realities the hues

Of a rich fancy: sweetest of all singers!
Charming the public ear, and, at thy will,
Searching the soul of him thou dost amuse,
And the warm heart's recess, where mem'ry lingers,
And child-like love, and sympathy, and truth,

And every blessed feeling which the world
Had frozen or repressed with its stern apathy
For human suffering! Crabbed age and youth,'
And beauty, smiling tearful, turn to thee,

Whose 'Carol' is an allegory fine,

The burden of whose 'Chimes' is holy and benign!"

DOUGLAS JERROLD'S Magazine.

HE following brief Memoir of the late Mr.
Charles Dickens may, perhaps, be accept-

able as filling an intermediate place between the newspaper or review article and the more elaborate biography which may be expected in due course. The writer had some peculiar means of acquiring information for the purpose of his sketch; and to this he has added such particulars as have been already made public in English and foreign publications and other scattered sources.

The common complaints against memoirs of this necessarily hasty and incomplete character will not be repeated by those who are accustomed to test questions in morals by the principles which underlie them. That there is nothing necessarily indelicate or improper in the desire of the public to obtain some personal knowledge of the great and good who have just passed away, is assumed by every daily, weekly, and quarterly journal, which, on occasions

of this kind, furnish their readers with such details as they are able to obtain, and who in no case. confine themselves strictly to the public career of the deceased.

Although some facts in the private life of Mr. Dickens will be found to be touched upon in these pages, the writer is not conscious of having written a line which could give pain to others.

In view of a second edition-should one be called for-the writer will be obliged by the receipt of any additional particulars which may assist in completing the outline memoir which now leaves his hand.

He cannot, however, conclude without acknowledging the kind assistance he has received in furnishing anecdotes and other particulars from Mr. Arthur Locker, Mr. E. S. Dallas, Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, Mr. James Grant, Dr. Charles Mackay, Mr. Mitchell, of Bond St. (for permission to make reductions of Leslie's beautiful picture, and Count D'Orsay's characteristic portrait), Mr. Edmund Ollier, Mr. E. P. Hingston, Mr. Allen, Mr. J. Colam (Secretary to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), the writers of interesting articles in the Daily News and the Observer, and to Mr. Hablot K. Browne, for his admirable study of the chief characters drawn by him for the late Mr. Dickens's works.

It would have been impossible to have given the data contained in this little book, in the rather short time occupied in its preparation, but for the hearty assistance of Mr. H. T. Taverner, an industrious littérateur, who had already gathered some particulars of the great novelist's public career.

LONDON,

29th June, 1870.