ot so greatly impressed by class distinctions as Dickens was.

Dickens had the art of making insupportable bores most interesting. This
was an art in which the delicate Miss Austen excelled, too; but
Dickens's methods compared to hers are like those of a scene painter
when compared to those of an etcher in colours. There are times when
Dickens is consciously "common," and then he is almost unbearable; but
this objection cannot be made to the "Pickwick Papers." This book is
inartistic; it is made up of unrelated parts; the characters do not
grow; they change. But all this makes no difference. They are
spontaneous. You feel that for once Dickens is doing the thing he likes
to do--and all the world loves a lover who loves his work.

There are doubtless some people still living who can tolerate the
romantic quality in "Nicholas Nickleby." There are no really romantic
qualities in the "Pickwick Papers"--thank heaven!--no stick of a hero,
no weeping willow of a heroine. The heroic sticks of Dickens never bloom
suddenly as the branch in "Tannh[:a]user" bloomed. Even Dickens can work no
miracle there.

It increases our admiration of him to examine the works of those
gentlemen who are set down in the textbooks of literature as his
predecessors. Some of these learned authors mention Sterne's "Tristram
Shandy," a very dull and tiresome narrative; and "Tom Jones," very
tiresome, too, in spite of its fidelity to certain phases of
eighteenth-century life. And later, Pierce Egan's "Tom and Jerry." I was
brought up to consider the renown of the two Pierce Egans with reverence
and permitted to read "Tom and Jerry; or The Adventures of Corinthian
Bob" as part of the family pedigree, but it requires the meticulous
analysis of a German research-worker to find any real resemblance
between the artificial dissipations of "Tom and Jerry" and the
adventures of the peerless Pickwick.

If the elder Pierce Egan had the power of influencing disciples, he
ought to have induced his son to produce something better than "The Poor
Boy; or, The Betrayed Baffled," "The Fair Lilias," and others too
numerous to mention.

The voracious reader of Dickens, as he grows older, perhaps becomes a
student of Dickens, and is surprised to find that the development of
Dickens is much more marked and easily noted than the development of
Thackeray. In fact, Thackeray, like his mild reflector, Du Maurier,
sprang into the public light fully equipped and fully armed.