aid more accurately, no writer has ever enjoyed _so_ wide
a popularity among his own immediate contemporaries. And it was a
popularity in many ways exceptional.

It knew no fluctuation. It lasted without fading or faltering during
thirty-four years altogether, that is to say, throughout the whole of
Dickens's career as a novelist. It began with his very first book, when,
as Thackeray put it, "the young man came and took his place calmly at
the head of the whole tribe, as the master of all the English humorists
of his generation." It showed no sign whatever of abatement, when, in
the middle of writing his last book, the pen fell from his hand on that
bright summer's day, and through his death a pang of grief was brought
home to millions of English-speaking people in both hemispheres. For
his popularity had, among other distinctive characteristics, certainly
this,--it was so peculiarly personal a popularity, his name being
endeared to the vast majority who read his books with nothing less than
affectionate admiration.

Besides all this, it was his privilege throughout the whole of his
literary career to address not one class, or two or three classes, but
all classes of the reading public indiscriminately--the most highly
educated and the least educated, young and old, rich and poor. His
writings obtained the widest circulation, of course, among those who
were the most numerous, such as among the middle classes and the better
portion of the artisan population, but they found at the same time the
keenest and cordialest appreciation among those who were necessarily the
best qualified to pronounce an opinion upon their merits, among critics
as gifted as Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, and among rivals as-illustrious
as Lytton and Thackeray. It seems appropriate, therefore, that we should
be enabled to add now, in regard to the possession of this exceptional
reputation, and of a popularity in itself so instant, sustained,
personal, and comprehensive, that, thanks entirely to these Readings,
he was brought into more intimate relations individually with a
considerable portion at least of the vast circle of his own readers,
than have ever been established between any other author who could be
named and _his_ readers, since literature became a profession.

Strictly speaking, the very first Reading given by Charles Dickens
anywhere, even privately, was that which took place in the midst of a
little home-group, assembled one evening in