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Charles Dickens, from a recent daguerreotype by Mayall, 1 December, 1855. Memoir of Charles Dickens. The lives of men of genius when happy, are ordinarily uneventful. It may, perhaps, be one of the reaspms for the paucity of materials available for the life of him who was "not for an age but for all time," that our Shakespeare went through life a prosperous gentlemen, that he had shares, and rents, and messages, and tenements, and that he died at last in affluence, in his bed, in his own house, near the pleasant town he loved so well. But the most moving and most copious literary memoirs are merely records of miseries. The blindness of Milton, the weary life-struggle of Dryden, the deformity of Pope, the persecution of Defoe, and the melancholy of Swift; the stern woe of Dante, the heart-sickness of Petrarch, the despair of Butler; Tasso's fetters, Cervantes' neglect, Camoens' hospital pallet, Guilbert's starvation, and Chatterton's suicide; all these are bold and jutting headlands in the seascape of life - stern and rugged rocks, all beaten by the tempests of time, and seamed and furrowed by the salt waters of sorrow. These the painter can seize and transfer to canvas, giving force and variety to his picture. He can paint the surging billows and the angry sky; but what scope has he for display when the sea is smooth as glass, calm as a good man's bossom, when the bark glides placidly along, when the log of the mariner may be summed up in two words: Genius or Success?. These two words are really the summary of the career of the famous writer whose portrait graces our page. There are no moving accidents by flood or field in his life to tell; his life has been one of uniform industry and prosperity. Yet, as our readers must naturally be anxious to learn even the minutest particulars concerning one who possesses such remarkable talents, and has occupied for so long so conspicuous a position in society, we will proceed, to the best of our ability, to tell how Mr. Dickens won that fame he preserves so staunchly and wears so gently.. Charles Dickens was born in February, 1812, at Landport, Portsmouth. His father, Mr. John Dickensm, had been, in the earlier part of his life, a clerk in the Navy Pay department, and his duties rendered it necessary that he should make frequent changes of residence from one naval dockyard to another - moving from Portsmouth to Plymouth, and from Portsmouth again to Sheerness and Chatham. The future novelist received his education in a school in or near Rochester; and it is to his youthful peregrinations in the county of Kent, and his Kentish schoolboy experiences, that we may ascribe much of the minute knowledge he displays in his writings on the topography and scenery of the county of "hops, apples, and pretty girls," and of the fondness he evinces for recurrence to Kentish scenes and Kentish people. "On revient toujours à ses premières amours." The memorable equestrian expedition of Mr. Pickwick (as noteworthy, surely, as the expedition of "Humphrey Clinker") started from the Mitre, at Rochester; Dingley Dell was near Cobham; the catastrophe of the Tubbs family took place ar Ramsgate; it was in the Theatre Royal, Portsmouth, that Nicholas Nickleby played Romeo to poor Smike's Apothecary; it was to Dover, through Rochester, Chatham, and Maidstone, that little David Copperfield travelled, weary and footsore, to his aunt Trotwood; it was at Canterbury he went to school to Doctor Strong; and, finally, it was in the keeping room of Master Richard Watt's charity, at Rochester, that the "seven poor travellers," "not being rogues or proctors," told their Christmas stories.. We have no means of judging how far, or to what age, the scholastic curriculum of Charles Dickens extended. We learn, however, that at the peace, Mr. John Dickens retired, with a pension, from the Government service, and, removing to London, found lucrative employment for his talents, as a reporter for the public press. It is therefore probable that his son completed his education in the metropolis. The fact of his father being a newspaper reporter, would, it has been somewhat flippantly remarked, have "familiarised him with 'copy'" from an early age; yet such implied familiarity did not, on his entrance into authorship, exempt him from the delightful tremour, that anguish of delight, incidental to all tyros in printers' ink, and that moved him, as he himself graphically describes, after reading in a magazine his first effusion, "dropped stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and trembling, into a dark letter box, up a dark court in Fleet Street," to walk down to Westminster Hall, and turn into it for half an hour, because his eyes "were so dimmed with joy and pride that they could not bear the street and were not fit to be seen there.". Like many other future celebrities thrust into lawyers' dens to engross deeds instead of penning stanzas, the youthful Charles Dickens was for some time in an attorney's office. We were turning over a biographical notice of the author of "Pickwick" the other day, where, in reference to this portion of his career, it was stated that "his father took the preliminary steps to make him an attorney;" but this we think to have been no more the case than the appointment of a youth to a Clerkship in the Stamp Office is a "preliminary step" towards making him Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue. However, in the sojourn in the domains of Themis, Charles Dickens became intimately acquainted with the mysteries of legal penetralia, and the intricacies of legal chicane, both of which he has so admirably depicted and exposed in his novels. But the literary vocation, the cacoethes scribendi, was not to be kept down by pounce and green "ferret." To use a French idiom, it "pierced," and doubtless after the irretrievable ruin of many skins of parchment and blotting of office foolscap, it asserted and made itself recognised. Charles Dickens's literary début took place, like those of Talfourd and Campbell, in the Reporters' Gallery. He became a member of the parliamentary corps of the "True Sun," an ultra liberal paper. He was subsequently one of the reporters on the "Mirror of Parliament," a journal whose avowed object was to give in extenso, word for word, all the speeches of every member of the Legislature. It was splendidly printed, produced at an enormous expense, and after a session or two fell to the ground in the true heroic style. Mr. Dickens, about 1835-6, passed to the staff of the "Morning Chronicle," and in its succursal, the "Evening Chronicle," appeared serially those delightful daguerreotypes of life and character, the "Sketches of Boz." After a lapse of twenty years' cheap literature, these "sketches" seem at the first glance to be very slight performances indeed. There is probably not a number of Mr. Dickens's own periodical, "Household Words," that does not contain an article on London life or manners, either from his own or a coadjutor's pen, possessing more thought, and observation, and graphic truth than can be found in a dozen of the "Sketches." But they were the first of their class. Dickens was the first to unite the delicately playful thread of Charles Lambe's street musings, half experiences, half bookish phantasies, with vigorous wit, and humour, and observation of Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," his "Indigent Philosopher," and "Man in Black," and twine them together into that golden cord of essay which combines literature with philosophy, humour with morality, amusement with instruction. The Sketches by "Boz," (the pseudonym originated with one given to a pet brother, who, rechristened "Moses," in honour of the "Vicar of Wakefield," facetiously pronounced the name through the nose, "Bozes," and at last corrupted it to "Boz"), made a great sensation at the time. They were afterwards collected into one volume, with numerous etchings by George Cruikshank, then in the zenith of his fame, and were published by Mr. Macrone, of St. James's Square, a young and enterprising bookseller. We are not aware of the exact sum paid to Mr. Dickens for the copyright of the "Sketches," but it is patent that, a few months afterwards, the publisher, falling into difficulties, sold his copyright in the work either to Mr. Bentley or to Messrs. Chapman and Hall, for eleven hundred pounds. Poor Macrone was unfortunate, fell into ill health, and died, leaving a widow and young children, for whose benefit Mr. Dickens, with the assistance of some literary friends, edited and published a work composed of "voluntary contributions," called the "Pic-Nic Papers.". The "Sketches by Boz," were, as all the world knows, succeeded by the "Pickwick Papers". Originally intended as a mere vehicle to Robert Seymour's admirable caricatures, a foil to his redundant humour, they became, after he lamented the inexplicable death of the artist, attractions in themselves. The wit and genius of the author soon elevated Mr. Pickwick from a burlesque elderly Cockney to the rank of the hero of a comic epic. It would be useless, impertinent were there indeed space, to descant on the merits of this glorious book. Many more has Dickens written since the last number of "Pickwick" has been given to the world. Thousands and thousands have since laughed and wept at the bidding of this kindly magician, but no work of his has ever created, will ever create, the excitement, excite the curiosity, compel the attention, give half the genial pleasure, felt by the whole public when they perused the "Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club." As when a man is blet with many children, and looks around and knows not which he loves the most, but yet remembers the first little child that died, the "baby" - there have been many "babies" since then, but this was "baby" par excellence - so we, gratefully and pleasurably calling in review the many good books, which, in the familiar green covers, have delighted us from year to year, can never forget or conceal our preference for the first-born - the book of books. We put him not first because he was the best, but we like him best because he was the first. "Pickwick" brought about the same result with Dickens as "Childe Harold" with Byron. He awoke one morning and found himself famous. From the ranks of the great army of literary martyrs, he came calmly and smilingly to take the bàton of field-marshal as of right. That is very nearly twenty years ago, and bravely has he kept his high command. Reader, remember, when Charles Dickens was an unknown newspaper reporter, William Makepeace Thackeray was a "crack" writer on "Fraser's Magazine," and lo! it is but four or five years since the author of "Vanity Fair" attained an equally elevated seat on the literary daisas the author of the "Pickwick Papers".. The history of Mr. Dickens, from the publication of "Pickwick" to the present time, is little more than a history of his successive works - "Oliver Twist," "Nicholas Nickleby," "The Olde Curiosity Shop," "Martin Chuzzlewit," "Barnaby Rudge," "Dombey and Son," "David Copperfield," and "Bleak House,"; the Christmas books - the "Christmas Carol," the "Chimes," the "Cricket on the Hearth," the "Battle of Life," and the "Haunted Man". Beyond the fact that he has produced these good works, that he has made journeys to the United States and to Italy, and embodied his travelling experience in "American Notes" and "Pictures from Italy," that he has been since 1850 the conductor and (we believe) the proprietor of "Household Words," and that he has avowed himself lately to be a thoroughgoing Administrative Reformer, and made an eloquent speech at the great meeting at Drury Lane Theatre, very little more can be said of Mr. Dickens's public career. Of him, in his private capacity, a few more words remain to be written. Our fair readers will be glad to learn that he married, in the morning of his fame, Miss Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of Mr. George Hogarth, a well-known musical critic and writer, and that he is blessed in having a quiver full of arrows - male and female. For his personal appearance, we must refer our readers to the portrait; and to those who would wish to form an idea of his more youthful semblance, we may commend the engraving from Mr. Maclise's picture, prefixed to the first edition of "Nicholas Nickleby". To yet more curious amateurs of sayings and doings, we may add that Charles Dickens is an early riser and worker, an indefatigable pedestrian, averaging, we have heard, ten miles a day; that he is a vivacious companion, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished amateur actor. Were the writer of this notice in the habit of eating toads or hunting tufts, he could add a great deal more concerning Mr. Dickens's private character, and of certain things he does with his right hand, letting not his left hand know that he does them. Some women that are widows, and same children that are fatherless, and, we regret to say, too many members of the ingenious confraternity of begging-letter writers, will understand our meaning. Of course, Mr. Dickens has had his detractors: of course, Sir Benjamin Backbite has shaken his head, and said "It could not last"; of course, Mrs. Sneerwell has smiled sarcastically and whispered "overrated, my dear". What else could be expected? Some charitable people even circulated a report a few years ago, that he had gone raving mad! Some even set afloat a joke (good, but stolen from an honester wit) that Dickens had "gone up like a rocket, and would come down like the stick." Somehow, he has not come down yet. Then the army of detractors took refuge in the safe insinuation, "that he had written himself out." Somehow, "Bleak House," his last work had a larger sale than any of its predecessors.. This is not the place to criticise the writings of Charles Dickens. The best criticisms, perhaps will be spontaneously evoked from the hearts of thousands of our readers, when they glance at this portrait, and remember how many smiles they have given to young Bailey - how many tears to Little Nell. Criticism! - if such were indeed needed - the noblest, would be found in the admission of William Thackeray, that he had wept for the death of Tiny Tim, and sung a paean of triumph when he found that Bob Cratchit's little child did not really die.
DC
