THE MENAD'S GRAVE. The girl who once, on Lydian heights, Where no moon shines, Whose pipe of lotos featly blown Who, crowned with buds of ivy dark, Three times drained deep with amorous lips, Nor sank, nor ceased, but shouted still She lies at last where poplars wave Their sad gray foliage all day long; RONDEAU. E. W. GOSSE O scorn me not, although my worth be slight, The proud stars will not bend from their Nor will the wind thy faithfulness re- Thy mirror gives thee but a cold embrace. My lamp is feeble, but by day or night I would so serve and guard thee if I might. Academy. THE BATH. With rosy palms against her bosom pressed, Rifles the roses that her tresses hold: Of draperies curtaining her shrine of rest. Where, while the whole arena shrieks for blood, E. W. GOSSE, From The Fortnightly Review. THE LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS. Dickens as a defect in his private character that he was self-conscious, that he was always behaving as if the eye of the world were upon him, that he was never natural, but always posing for effect, showing himself aware that his smallest action would be handed down to posterity. His expression to Mr. Forster, "Put that in my biography,". after telling him how he jumped out of bed one night to practise a step which he had been learning in view of festivities on the birthday of one of his children, — has often been quoted in proof of this unbecoming immodesty. folly talked, without feeling inclined to repeat Charles Lamb's frantic pantomime of surprise when a respectable gentleman asked him whether he did not after all consider that Milton was a poet. How could Dickens have been otherwise than conscious of what was proclaimed by the universal voice? How could he have ignored the fact that his smallest action was noted with interest, when he had seen an audience scrambling for the petals of a flower which had dropped from his button-hole? Probably no human being was ever put in so trying a THE saying of the French lady about the philosopher Hume, whose conversation had disappointed her, “Le pauvre homme! il a mis tout dans ses livres," could not be applied to Charles Dickens. Wherever he went, thousands pressed forward to shake him by the hand, and thank him for the rays of brightness which his books had shed into their lives, but he was in his own person as much a centre of joyful radiance as his books. It is not in man to be always radiant; even Macaulay had his flashes of silence, and Dickens I must say that I can never hear such in mixed society where he was not altogether at his ease may sometimes have been dull and disappointing as Hume was to the gay admirer of his philosophy. But among his intimates he was the very soul of mirth, the incarnation of high spirits, the leader of high jinks when high jinks were going forward, the man whose entrance could raise the temperature of a company and make every pulse beat quicker. How inspiring a presence he must have been, the world already knows from Mr. Forster's biography, where we learn how gleefully he threw off the yoke of work - no man ever worked harder-position as Charles Dickens, when he how breezy was his challenge to friends was suddenly lifted from drudging obto spend an idle interval; how boylike he scurity into an unparallelled, absolutely was in his earnestness as a master of the unparallelled, blaze of fame, and found revels among his children. We get a still | himself received everywhere with the more vivid sense of this buoyancy and exuberance of temperament from the two volumes of letters which have just been published, edited with pious care by his eldest daughter and sister-in-law, Miss Hogarth, of whom he makes mention in his will as "the best and truest friend man ever had." The editors have wisely refrained from burdening the text with commentary and explanation. Their great desire, they say, has been "to give to the public another book from Charles Dickens's own hands as it were a portrait of himself by himself." No formal portrait could be half so vivid. In this book, which was never intended to be a book, we come nearer to the man as he was than any biographer could have brought us. It has sometimes been imputed to honors usually reserved for royal personages, popular ministers, or great generals after glorious victory. He could not take refuge in state ceremonial, for no awe was mingled with the enthusiasm of the multitude; the creator of Pickwick and Sam Weller was not a being to be gazed at with distant respect, but a man and a brother to be mobbed, huzzaed, welcomed with affectionate smiles and broad grins of sympathy. It was a trying position, and no man could have borne his honors with more manly and unaffected simplicity than Dickens did. He frankly accepted the situation, and never sought to disguise his delight in his fame. He did not allow it to overpower him into a preposterous affectation of humility, or stiffen him into a frigid assumption of dignity, but he gloried in it and made a joke of it MY DEAR STANFIELD, -- among his familiar friends. In public he | from Albaro, during his residence in Italy took applause and attention as his natural in 1844:right; in his private letters, in which he gave unrestrained vent to his sense of fun, we find many scenes and dialogues where he figures under such nicknames as "The Inimitable, ""The Sparkler of Albion," and the rest. I love you so truly, and have such pride and joy of heart in your friendship, that I don't know how to begin writing to you. When I think how you are walking up and down London in that portly surtout, and can't receive proposals from Dick to go to the theatre, I fall into a state between laughing and crying, and want some friendly back to smite. "Je-im!" "Aye, aye, your honor," is in my ears every time I walk upon the seashore here; and the number of expeditions I make into Cornwall in my sleep, the springs of flys I break, the songs I sing, and the bowls of punch I drink, would soften a heart of stone. There was, perhaps, some foundation for the charge of posturing, though by no means in the ill-natured sense in which the charge has sometimes been made. It was one of his humors to posture, one of his relaxations to cast himself and his friends in fantastic parts, and write imaginary dialogues in imitation of plays which they had seen together. There is nothWe have had weather here, since five o'clock ing more striking in the two volumes of this morning, after your own heart. Suppose letters than the evidence that they furnish | yourself the admiral in "Black-eyed Susan' of the persistence with which his thoughts after the acquittal of William, and when it was ran upon the stage. His passion for act-possible to be on friendly terms with him. I ing was of very early date. He has told us how as a boy he used to stalk about his father's house acting out the various characters in Smollett's novels. He or ganized private theatricals at school, and played as an amateur when he was a clerk in a solicitor's office. He seems to have had a complete knowledge of stage business down to its smallest detail. In the famous amateur company of literary men and artists which was organized in 1845, Dickens, Mr. Forster says, was "the life and soul of the entire affair, stage-director, very often stage-carpenter, scenearranger, property-man, prompter, and band-master." And it was not only among amateurs that he could venture to assume authority. When one of his Christmas tales was dramatized, he not only drilled the actors, but made suggestions to the master carpenter about the scenery. According to his own story, a master carpenter to whom he developed some wonderful mechanical contrivance of his, shook his head with a mournful air and said, "Ah, sir, it's a universal observation in the profession, sir, that it was a great loss to the public when you took to writing books!" am T.P. My trousers are very full at the weather as would set all hands to the pumps and casks full of blue water as would come powering in over the gunnel! The dirtiest night, your honor, as ever you see 'atween Spithead at gun-fire and the Bay of Biscay! The wind sou'-west, and your house dead in the wind's eye; the breakers running up high upon the rocky beads, the light'us no more looking through the fog than Davy Jones's sarser eye through the blue sky of heaven in a calm, or the blue toplights of your honor's catheads: avast! (whistling) my dear eyes; lady cast down in a modest overhauling of her Here is an example of the kind of posturing in which Dickens's theatrical passion prompted him to indulge, a letter to T. P. Cooke, the celebrated actor of "William" his friend Clarkson Stanfield, written in Douglas Jerrold's play of “ Black-eyed Susan." here am I a-goin' head on to the breakers (bowing). Admiral (smiling). No, William! I admire plain speaking, as you know, and so does old England, William, and old England's queen. But you were saying William. Aye, ave, your honor (scratching his head). I've lost my reckoning. Damme! - I ast pardon - but won't your honor throw a hencoop or any old end of towline to a man as is overboard? Admiral (smiling still). You were saying, William, that the wind William (again cocking his leg, and slapping the thighs very hard). Avast heaving, your honor!... And so on, in a lively parody of the nautical drama which he knew that his friend would appreciate. Whether he was travelling for business or for pleasure, he always thought fondly of home, and, however busy he was, found time to send something for the entertainment of those whom he had left behind him. Here is another example of his posturing, a document forwarded to his wife after he had delivered a speech for a charitable object at Liverpool: OUT OF THE COMMON-PLEASE. did create a strong sensation, and that during The letters now published are full of such spurts of affectionate fun as the above. They contain only the most cas ual references to the writer's works. Perhaps the most interesting of these is an apology written to his future wife in 1835, pleading business engagements as an excuse for his not going to see her. He has had a visit, he says, from his publishers, and he describes as follows a proposal which they have made to him: They (Chapman and Hall) have made me an offer of fourteen pounds a month, to write and edit a new publication they contemplate, entirely by myself, to be published monthly, and each number to contain four woodcuts. I am to make my estimate and calculation, and to give them a decisive answer on Friday morning. The work will be no joke, but the emolument is too tempting to resist. The work which was to be "no joke " was the "Pickwick Papers." It was no doubt less of a joke to him than to other people, in one respect. From the first he had too much respect for his readers to write without effort. In his counsels to which Dickens laid more stress than the young writers, there was no topic on necessity of taking pains with their work. When Mr. Wilkie Collins published "Basil," he received a letter of encouraging praise, of which the following sentence was the climax : DICKENS against THE WORLD. CHARLES DICKENS, of No. 1, Devonshire Terrace, York Gate, Regent's Park, in the county of Middlesex, gentleman, the successful plaintiff in the above cause, maketh oath and saith That on the day and date hereof, to wit at seven o'clock in the evening, he, this deponent, took the chair at a large assembly of the Mechanics' Institution at Liverpool, and that having been received with tremendous and enthusiastic plaudits, he, this deponent, did immediately dash into a vigorous, brilliant, humorous, pathetic, eloquent, fervid, and impassioned speech. That the said speech was enlivened by thirteen hundred persons, with frequent, vehement, uproarious, and deafening cheers, and to the best of this deponent's knowledge and belief, he, this deponent, did speak up like a man, and did, to the best of his knowledge and belief, considerably distinguish himself. That after the proceedings of the evening were over, and vote of thanks was proposed to this deponent, he, this deponent, did again distinguish himself, and that the cheering at that time, accompanied with clapping of hands and stamping of feet, was in this deponent's case thundering and awful. And this deponent further saith, We know on the best authority that in that his white-and-black or magpie waistcoat this matter Dickens "recked his own a It is delightful to find throughout that you have taken great pains with it besides, and have "gone at it" with perfect knowledge of the jolter-headedness of the conceited idiots who suppose that volumes can be tossed off like pancakes, and that any writing can be done without the utmost application, the greatest patience, and the steadiest energy of which the writer is capable. |