petuous Charles of Burgundy and his wily suzerain, the courtly Leicester and the witty Rochester, the unhappy Queen of Scots and the brilliant Chevalier, might have delighted the eyes of many generations. Nor would room have been wanting for homelier scenes; and the Antiquary might have discovered the Prætorium, and Caleb Balderstone have rubbed his imaginary plate, and old Mause have preached martyrdom to the unwilling Cuddie, and Dandie Dinmont have mustered the many generations of Peppers and Mustards forever. Dis aliter visum. May future generations recognize their opportunities more wisely, and may Scott's characters and scenes be part of the education of all future Englishmen, as they have been of every educated Englishman hitherto !

18*

THE

XVII.

ON NOVELS. No.

HE enormous popularity which Dickens met with from the outset of his career leaves me the less to say, as you are acquainted with more of his novels than of any other author. There is, perhaps, more mere amusement and less information to be gained from them than from either of the two other great novelists. The lessons which Dickens undoubtedly intended to convey, and to a considerable extent did successfully impart, are now less needed; not a little, we may believe, thanks to his writings. To take but two instances this much is certain, that an improvement in the character and competency of nurses for the sick dates from the introduction of the firm of Mesdames Gamp and Prig to the public; and the fact that some dozen northern private schoolmasters threatened Dickens with legal proceedings is a pretty clear proof that the mysteries of Do

the-boys Hall were most righteously unveiled to the public gaze. I cannot recommend you to study Dickens for style. It is sometimes slipshod and weak, and sometimes strained and artificial. The weaknesses of an author's style are seen most vividly in his admirers and imitators; and you will see Dickens's style unintentionally caricatured, and that to perfection, in many of the second-rate periodicals of the day. Nor is the author to blame for this. Through all time Horace's "imitatores servum pecus" will abound,-men who have neither the taste to perceive nor the sense to avoid the exaggerations of a master. Doubtless Dickens, too, has many a time felt what Horace not only felt but expressed:

"ut mihi sæpe

Bilem, sæpe jocum vestri movere tumultus."

Sometimes you will find an English scene painted in words singularly forcible and appropriate, as the well-known gale at Great Yarmouth in David Copperfield; but from the very first and best of all his works it is unmistakably apparent what his real powers are. Humor rich and rare; the happiest conception, not merely of individual character, but of the funniest circumstances in which

to place them; the most felicitous filling of the canvas by each figure in its right place; a certain extravagance of absurdity which is never out of place in the society in which it occurs,—are characteristics which at once assured and have since secured to him the widest and most lasting popularity of all contemporary novelists.

There is no doubt a certain latent error in this excess of fun; his life is rather that of children than of men; and after the publication of his first and richest display of humor, Dickens felt the truth which Shakspeare has in all his plays persistently maintained, that life is not all joke nor all seriousness. In his most solemn tragedies there is some comedy, in the cheerfulest melodrama some tragedy: the careworn Bolingbroke and his fiery nobles are succeeded in the next scene by Falstaff, and Bardolf, and Mrs. Quickly; the road to battle lies by Justice Shallow's country house; Hamlet does not die until he has "chaffed" the gravedigger in his own quaint vein. You will soon notice for yourself, as you read, where Dickens's superiority lies, and you will probably regret with me that there are not more Pickwicks, and less Bleak Houses, despite the fact that Pickwick is a burlesque throughout.

I shall add no more about Dickens than that I am sure you may spend many an idle hour worse than in the worshipful society of Sam Weller, Mr. Pecksniff, Mrs. Gamp, Mr. Bumble, and Mr. Micawber. How many who were young when Mrs. Gamp first quoted Mrs. Harris would wish that they had no worse-spent hours to look back upon!

It is a remarkable fact that two writers so great and so dissimilar should have been contemporaries as Dickens and Thackeray. I will merely point out to you that they are almost the counterparts of one another, and leave you to conjecture whether, if the powers of both had been united in one person, we should not have had a man great with something of Shakspeare's greatness, that manysidedness which all can admire and none can attain to. In Thackeray you will find the daily life. of London, fashionable and idle, as well as laborious and vulgar, described in language equally lively, nervous, and exact. You may learn many a lesson in self-knowledge, as the critic cruelly lays bare the mixed motives which too often guide our best, and the mean ones which guide the worst, of our actions: "mutato nomine, de me fabula nar