ote
these early sketches he was a reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_.
His naturally acute powers of observation had been trained in this
pursuit to the utmost efficiency, and there always continued to be
about his descriptive writing a reportorial and newspaper air. He had
the eye for effect, the sharp fidelity to detail, the instinct for
rapidly seizing upon and exaggerating the salient point, which are
developed by the requirements of modern journalism. Dickens knew
London as no one else has ever known it, and, in particular, he knew
its hideous and grotesque recesses, with the strange developments of
human nature that abide there; slums like Tom-all-Alone's, in _Bleak
House_; the river-side haunts of Rogue Riderhood, in _Our Mutual
Friend_; as well as the old inns, like the "White Hart," and the "dusky
purlieus of the law." As a man, his favorite occupation was walking
the streets, where, as a child, he had picked up the most valuable part
of his education. His tramps about London--often after {269}
nightfall--sometimes extended to fifteen miles in a day. He knew, too,
the shifts of poverty. His father--some traits of whom are preserved
in Mr. Micawber--was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison,
where his wife took lodging with him, while Charles, then a boy of ten,
was employed at six shillings a week to cover blacking-pots in Warner's
blacking warehouse. The hardships and loneliness of this part of his
life are told under a thin disguise in Dickens's masterpiece, _David
Copperfield_, the most autobiographical of his novels. From these
young experiences he gained that insight into the lives of the lower
classes, and that sympathy with children and with the poor which shine
out in his pathetic sketches of Little Nell, in _The Old Curiosity
Shop_, of Paul Dombey, of Poor Jo, in _Bleak House_, of "the
Marchioness," and a hundred other figures.

In _Oliver Twist_, contributed, during 1837-1838, to _Bentley's
Miscellany_, a monthly magazine of which Dickens was editor, he
produced his first regular novel. In this story of the criminal
classes the author showed a tragic power which he had not hitherto
exhibited. Thenceforward his career was a series of dazzling
successes. It is impossible here to particularize his numerous novels,
sketches, short tales, and "Christmas Stories"--the latter a fashion
which he inaugurated, and which has produced a whole literature in
itself. In _Nicholas Nickleby_, 1839