ttle profit to be worth
anybody's writing, and here there is no call even to regret how great
an actor was in Dickens lost. He took to a higher calling, but it
included the lower. There was no character created by him into which
life and reality were not thrown with such vividness, that the thing
written did not seem to his readers the thing actually done, whether the
form of disguise put on by the enchanter was Mrs. Gamp, Tom Pinch, Mr.
Squeers, or Fagin the Jew. He had the power of projecting himself into
shapes and suggestions of his fancy which is one of the marvels of
creative imagination, and what he desired to express he became. The
assumptions of the theatre have the same method at a lower pitch,
depending greatly on personal accident; but the accident as much as the
genius favoured Dickens, and another man's conception underwent in his
acting the process which in writing he applied to his own. Into both he
flung himself with the passionate fullness of his nature; and though the
theatre had limits for him that may be named hereafter, and he was
always greater in quickness of assumption than in steadiness of
delineation, there was no limit to his delight and enjoyment in the
adventures of our theatrical holiday.

In less than three weeks after his return we had selected our play, cast
our parts, and all but engaged our theatre; as I find by a note from my
friend of the 22nd of July, in which the good natured laugh can give now
no offence, since all who might have objected to it have long gone from
us. Fanny Kelly, the friend of Charles Lamb, and a genuine successor to
the old school of actresses in which the Mrs. Orgers and Miss Popes were
bred, was not more delightful on the stage than impracticable when off,
and the little theatre in Dean-street which the Duke of Devonshire's
munificence had enabled her to build, and which with any ordinary good
sense might handsomely have realized both its uses, as a private school
for young actresses and a place of public amusement, was made useless
for both by her mere whims and fancies. "Heavens! Such a scene as I have
had with Miss Kelly here, this morning! She wanted us put off until the
theatre should be cleaned and brushed up a bit, and she would and she
would not, for she is eager to have us and alarmed when she thinks of
us. By the foot of Pharaoh, it was a great scene! Especially when she
choked, and had the glass of water brought. She exaggerates the
importance of o