Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/195

Rh tale for 1844, making a brief visit to England to read it to a party of friends and arrange for its publication. He visited the principal towns of Italy in the first months of 1845, returning to England by way of Switzerland in June.

His first work on returning to London was to project a new weekly, to be called the Cricket, "price three halfpence, if possible—partly original, partly select, notices of books, notices of theatres, notices of all good things, notices of all bad ones; carol philosophy, cheerful views, sharp anatomization of humbug, jolly good temper, papers always in season, pat to the time of year; and a vein of glowing, hearty, generous, mirthful, beaming reference in everything to home and friends." The scheme for the time fell through. About the same time he "opened communications with a leading member of the Government to ascertain what chances there might be for his appointment, upon due qualification, to the paid magistracy of London; but the reply did not give him encouragement to entertain the notion farther." Soon after he was asked to undertake the editorship of a new daily paper, the Daily News, and consented. But a fortnight's experience (from January 21 to February 9, 1846) satisfied him that he was out of his element. He then resolved to go abroad again, and write another novel in shilling monthly numbers. The fruit of this resolution was Dombey and Son, the first number of which was issued in October 1846, and the last in April 1848. On resigning the editorship of the Daily News, he did not wholly part connection with it; he continued in it from January to March 1846 a series of descriptive letters, which he afterwards published under the title of Pictures from Italy. The sale of Dombey, which reached 32,000. reassured him in the pursuit of his special calling. He followed it up in 1849 and 1850 with David Copperfield.

There is not much room for variety of incident in the life of a novelist securely established in popular favour, working hard, and happy in the exercise of his art. When we have mentioned that Bleak House appeared in monthly numbers, from March 1852 to September 1853, Little Dorrit from December 1855 to June 1857, Our Mutual Friend from May 1864 to November 1865, we have given the chief incidents in the later half of the literary life of Dickens. He was much too restless a man, however, to settle down into a steady routine of work. He was not content to appear before the public only in monthly numbers. He stuck steadily enough to work in which he had proved his mastery, but yet he had always a craving for new experiences, and was always planning new enterprises. While David Copperfield was still upon his hands he returned to his old notion of a weekly periodical. At first he thought of calling it The Shadow, making it contain, as it were, the observations of "a kind of semi-omniscient, omnipresent, intangible creature," "which should go into any place, by sunlight, moonlight, starlight, firelight, candlelight, and be in all houses, and all nooks and corners, and be supposed to be cognizant of everything, and go everywhere, without the least difficulty; which might be in the theatre, the palace, the House of Commons, the prisons, the unions, the churches, on the railroad, on the sea, abroad, and at home." But on consideration he abandoned this idea, and chose the title Household Words. The first number appeared in March 30, 1850. In Household Words, besides contributing short stories to the annual Christmas number, Dickens wrote Hard Times between April 1 and August 12, 1854. In 1859, in consequence of a quarrel between the editor and the publishers, Household Words was discontinued, and All the Year Round, practically the same periodical under a new title, took its place. In All the Year Round, besides Christmas contributions, Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities between April 30 and November 26, 1859; the Uncommercial Traveller, between January 28 and October 13, 1860; and Great Expectations between December 1, 1860, and August 3, 1861. It is often made a question whether there was any falling off of power in the later works of Dickens. David Copperfield would generally be named as the novel in which his power was at its zenith. The question is not one that can be answered by an unqualified yes or no. There is certainly no falling off in descriptive power. The idiom of his dialogue is finer; the wit is perhaps keener and more swift. His characters are more sharply defined; the force with which they are drawn is more delicate. In no point of the novelist's art, whether in the general construction or in the execution of details, is there any sign of failing power; on the contrary the power seems to have become firmer and more sure from practice. Does the fault then lie with the reader? Is it that we have grown tired of his manner? This is probably part of the reason, but yet it is not to be denied that we miss something in the later works. We laugh less over the pages. There are longer "intervallums" of seriousness. Humorous characters are still there in abundance; Joe Gargery, Old Boffin, Silas Wegg, Rumty Wilfer, Septimus Crisparkle, Durdles, Mr Sapsea, are as irresistible as any of their predecessors. But on the whole there is less exuberance of animal spirits. The fun is not so unflagging. It is even less hearty, for there is mixed with our laughter something of contempt or pity for the object of it. Not that it is all laughter and undesigning diversion in any of the earlier works. Dickens belonged to a serious and moralizing generation; he came in with the Reform Bill, and partook largely of the moral spirit of its framers. Even in the joyous Pickwick Papers there is a serious blow at prison abuses. Oliver Twist is almost as didactic as one of Harriet Martineau's tales. Before writing Nicholas Nickleby he went down to Yorkshire like a Government commissioner to inquire into the abuses of the Yorkshire schools. Through all the fresh and boisterous fun of his earlier works, there was an almost declared doctrine that it is our duty to laugh, a sort of protest in favour of laughter, and a denunciation of the dismal as a crime. The same genial doctrine runs also through his later works, but it is urged with a trace of bitterness, and with a greater sensitiveness to the evil principles that oppose it. Dickens was not written out, but he was growing old, and the animal spirits which fed the flame of his marvellous humour began to show symptoms of exhaustion. The quality of his humour was unimpaired, but the quantity had suffered diminution.

Dickens established his first weekly periodical from a desire to draw closer the relations between himself and his readers. He drew those relations still closer in 1858, by beginning a series of public readings of his own works. He had long hungered for this way of giving body and substance to his feeling of success. He had always been eager for the immediate and palpable triumphs of the stage. The idea of taking a hall or theatre and reading from his own books was first mentioned by him in 1844, after he had read the Chimes to a small company in Mr Forster's rooms, and he often returned to it, but was obliged to hold it in abeyance for fourteen years, his friends urging that it would be beneath his dignity. In 1858 his resolution was taken in spite of all discouragements, partly, he said, to escape from uneasiness at home, though it may well be believed that his own temper—restless, irritable, and exacting in the midst of his work—was largely to blame for the discomfort from which he suffered. He gave four series of readings, in 1858-59, 1861-63, 1866-67, and 1868-70, appearing in nearly every town of any size in the United Kingdom; and in 1867-68 renewing in this way his acquaintance with the Americans. The success of VII. — 23