Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 31.djvu/14

vi confessed his own delight, familiar from his letters, in his skill as a brewer of punch. To him punch was rather a symbol than a beverage, and he regretted that Mr. Forster had no taste for this modern Graal-cup. It meant Christmas—meant the whole of "Carol philosophy." His only other contribution was the pleasing sentimental history of Richard Doubledick, with its fine admiration of true soldier-like qualities, and the character of "The Happy Warrior," This sympathy again finds expression in the "Perils of Certain English Prisoners." The events are of a kind which Dickens rarely handled. "The moving incident"" was his "trade," though disclaimed by Wordsworth. But military incident, the fighting with pirates in a Treasure Island, was more congenial to Mr. Stevenson. The plot is cunningly laid, and Christian George King is a pleasant kind of villain, and an opportune invention. But Dickens left other hands to get his prisoners out of their quandary: in real life they would not so easily have escaped destruction. It is perhaps an error to show us so little of the tyranny of Sergeant Drooce. The same loyal sympathy, with seamen in place of soldiers, declares itself in the " Wreck of the Golden Mary."

The Holly-Tree Inn, not to dwell on the delightful fancy of the eloping children, connects itself with several of the other Christmas sketches in illustrating what we may call "the night-side" of Dickens—his strong interest in exceptional psychical experiences. Thus he alludes to his many repeated, indeed nightly, dreams of his wife's dead sister, Miss Mary Hogarth, to whom he was tenderly attached. He tells how the visions ceased, when he recorded them in a letter, and speaks of a dream of her in Italy, apparently uncertain whether it was a sleeping or a waking vision. It occurred in September, 1844, at Genoa, and is described as a vision of