CCCXL.

The greatest proof of Charles Dickens's high spirits was the inventive skill he devoted (with no little expenditure of time) to such whimsical jokes as that of pretending an attachment to the Queen. The following letter, written immediately after her Majesty's marriage in 1840, was addressed to his friend, Mr. T. J. Thompson, the father of the painter of the Roll Call.' Mr. Wakley, to whom reference is made in Mr. Dickens's postscript, was coroner at that date.

Charles Dickens to Mr. T. J. Thompson.

Devonshire Terrace: Thursday morning. [1840.]

...

My dear Thompson,-. . . . Maclise and I are raving with love for the Queen, with a hopeless passion whose extent no tongue can tell, nor mind of man conceive. On Tuesday we sallied down to Windsor, prowled about the Castle, saw the corridor and their private rooms, Nay, the very bedchamber (which we know from having been there twice), lighted up with such a ruddy, homely, brilliant glow, bespeaking so much bliss and happiness, that I, your humble servant, lay down in the mud at the top of the Long Walk and refused all comfort to the immeasurable astonishment of a few straggling passengers who had survived the drunkenness of the previous night. After perpetrating sundry other extravagances, we returned home at midnight in a post-chaise, and now we wear marriage medals next our hearts and go about with pockets full of portraits, which we weep over in secret. Forster was with us at Windsor, and (for the joke's sake), counterfeits a passion too, BUT

HE DOES NOT LOVE HER.

Don't mention this unhappy attachment. I am very wretched, and think of leaving my home. My wife makes me miserable, and when I hear the voices of my infant children, I burst into tears. I fear it is too late to ask you to take this house, now that you have made such arrangements of comfort in Pall Mall; but if you will, you shall have it very cheap-furniture at a low valuationmoney not being so much an object as escaping from the family. For God's sake turn this matter over in your mind, and please to ask Captain Kincaide what he asks-his lowest terms, in short, for ready money-for that post of Gentleman-at-Arms. I must be near her, and I see no better way than that--for the present.

I have on hand three numbers of 'Master Humphrey's Clock,'

and the two first chapters of 'Barnaby.' Would you like to buy them? Writing any more in my present state of mind is out of the question. They are written in a pretty fair hand, and when I am in the Serpentine may be considered curious. Name your own terms.

I know you don't like trouble, but I have ventured, notwithstanding, to make you an executor of my will. There won't be a great deal to do, as there is no money. There is a little bequest having reference to HER which you might like to execute. I have heard on the Lord Chamberlain's authority that she reads my books and is very fond of them. I think she will be sorry when I am gone. I should wish to be embalmed, and to be kept (if practicable), on the top of the Triumphal Arch at Buckingham Palace when she is in town, and on the north-east turrets of the Round Tower when she is at Windsor.

. . . From your distracted and blighted friend,

C. D. Don't show this to Mr. Wakley if it ever comes to that.

CCCXLI.

Two days after the birth of his fifth child Charles Dickens received an invitation from three of his intimate friends to dine at Richmond. This is the amusing reply.

Charles Dickens to Messrs. Forster, Maclise, and Stanfield.

Devonshire Lodge: January 17, 1844.

Fellow Countrymen,-The appeal with which you have honoured me, awakens within my breast emotions that are more easily to be imagined than described. Heaven bless you. I shall indeed be proud, my friends, to respond to such a requisition. I had withdrawn from Public Life-I fondly thought for ever-to pass the evening of my days in hydropathical pursuits, and the contemplation of virtue. For which latter purpose, I had bought a looking-glass. But, my friends, private feeling must ever yield to a stern sense of public duty. The Man is lost in the Invited Guest, and I comply. Nurses, wet and dry; apothecaries; mothers-in-law; babbies; with all the sweet (and chaste) delights of private life; these, my countrymen, are hard to leave. But you have called me forth, and I will come. Fellow Countrymen, friend and faithful servant, CHARLES DICKENS.

your

CCCXLII.

Mrs. Cowden Clarke joined Dickens' Amateur Dramatic Company in 1848 and took the part of Dame Quickly with much success. She has recorded with pleasant enthusiasm the gaiety and joyous excitement of this frolic stroll through the provinces of which Dickens was the heart and soul. The troupe returned to London to find ordinary life very dull and humdrum, and it was in the midst of this first natural depression that the 'Implacable Manager' wrote this engaging note. The initials Y.G. and G.L.B. refer to the names Dickens had given himself of Young Gas, and Gas-Light Boy.

Charles Dickens to Mary Cowden Clarke.

Devonshire Terrace: July 22, 1848.

My dear Mrs. Clarke,-I have no energy whatever, I am very miserable. I loathe domestic hearths. I yearn to be a vagabond. Why can't I marry Mary? Why have I seven children-not engaged at sixpence a-night a-piece, and dismissible for ever, if they tumble down, not taken on for an indefinite time at a vast expense, and never,-— -no never, never,-wearing lighted candles round their heads. I am deeply miserable. A real house like this is insupportable, after that canvas farm wherein I was so happy. What is a humdrum dinner at half-past five, with nobody (but John) to see me eat it, compared with that soup, and the hundreds of pairs of eyes that watched its disappearance? Forgive this tear. It is weak and foolish, I know.

Pray let me divide the little excursional excesses of the journey among the gentlemen, as I have always done before, and pray believe that I have had the sincerest pleasure and gratification in your co-operation and society, valuable and interesting on all public accounts, and personally of no mean worth nor held in slight regard.

You had a sister once when we were young and happy-1 think they called her Emma. If she remember a bright being who once flitted like a vision before her, entreat her to bestow a thought upon the 'Gas' of departed joys. I can write no more. 'Y. G.' The (darkened) G. L. B.'

CCCXLIII.

Written on the occasion of the youngest child of Charles Dickens leaving home to join his brother in Australia. Mr. Forster, in his Life of this most widely popular of modern writers, says of this letter, 'Those who most intimately knew Dickens will know best that every word is written from his heart, and is radiant with the truth of his nature.'

Charles Dickens to his Youngest Child.

September, 1868.

:

I write this note to-day because your going away is much upon my mind, and because I want you to have a few parting words from me, to think of now and then at quiet times. I need not tell you that I love you dearly, and am very, very sorry in my heart to part with you. But this life is half made up of partings, and these pains must be borne. It is my comfort and my sincere conviction that you are going to try the life for which you are best fitted. I think its freedom and wildness more suited to you than any experiment in a study or office would have been and without that training, you could have followed no other suitable occupation. What you have always wanted until now, has been a set, steady, constant purpose. I therefore exhort you to persevere in a thorough determination to do whatever you have to do, as well as you can do it. I was not so old as you are now, when I first bad to win my food, and to do it out of this determination; and I have never slackened in it since. Never take a mean advantage of any one in any transaction, and never be hard upon people who are in your power. Try to do to others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better for you that they should fail in obeying the greatest rule laid down by Our Saviour than that you should. I put a New Testament among your books for the very same reasons, and with the very same hopes, that made me write an easy account of it for you, when you were a little child. Because it is the best book that ever was, or will be, known in the world; and because it teaches you the best lessons by which any human creature, who tries to be truthful and faithful to duty, can possibly be guided. As your brothers have gone away, one by one, I have written to

each such words as I am now writing to you, and have entreated them all to guide themselves by this Book, putting aside the interpretations and inventions of man. You will remember that you

have never at home been harassed about religious observances, or mere formalities. I have always been anxious not to weary my children with such things, before they are old enough to form opinions respecting them. You will therefore understand the better that I now most solemnly impress upon you the truth and beauty of the Christian Religion, as it came from Christ Himself, and the impossibility of your going far wrong if you humbly but heartily respect it. Only one thing more on this head. The more we are in earnest as to feeling it, the less we are disposed to hold forth about it. Never abandon the wholesome practice of saying your own private prayers, night and morning. I have never abandoned it myself, and I know the comfort of it. I hope you will always be able to say in after life, that you had a kind father. You cannot show your affection for him so well, or make him so happy, as by doing your duty.

CCCXLIV.

So many of the Rev. F. W. Robertson's letters are characteristic of their writer, and the writer himself was so great and good a man that even in this book of specimens one hesitates to intrude such fragmentary recognition of him without apology. No man in our day has exercised greater self-denial in the pursuit of the high function of influencing men for good. The bodily disease which afflicted and troubled him so poignantly might have been cured had he taken needful rest; but he never seems to have relaxed for a single moment the fascinating grasp which his strong liberalism, his devout earnestness, and particularly his fearlessness of purpose enabled him to retain over his congregation and his personal friends.

As Mr. Stopford Brooke, his biographer, remarks, 'He seems to have been rather felt than seen by men.'

The Rev. F. W. Robertson to

July, 1851.

I wish I did not hate preaching so much, but the degradation of being a Brighton preacher is almost intolerable. I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed;' but I think there is not a hard-working artisan whose work does not seem to me a worthier and higher