s and Mary Cowden Clarke.

[22] As, for instance, in such expressions as this: "The stamp on
newspapers is not like the stamp on universal medicine bottles, which
licenses anything, however false and monstrous."

[23] The last number of _Household Words_ appeared on the 28th of May,
1859, and the first of _All the Year Round_ on the 30th of April,
1859.

[24] There are one or two slight discrepancies between Forster's
narrative and that of Miss Dickens and Miss Hogarth. The latter are
clearly more likely to be right on such a matter.

CHAPTER X.

On his return to England, just after the Christmas of 1853, Dickens
gave his first public readings. He had, as we have seen, read "The
Chimes" some nine years before, to a select few among his literary
friends; and at Lausanne he had similarly read portions of "Dombey and
Son." But the three readings given at Birmingham, on the 27th, 29th,
and 30th December, 1853, were, in every sense, public entertainments,
and, except that the proceeds were devoted entirely to the local
Institute, differed in no way from the famous readings by which he
afterwards realized what may almost be called a fortune. The idea of
coming before the world in this new character had long been in his
mind. As early as 1846, after the private reading at Lausanne, he had
written to Forster: "I was thinking the other day that in these days
of lecturings and readings, a great deal of money might possibly be
made (if it were not _infra dig._) by one's having readings of one's
own books. I think it would take immensely. What do you say?" Forster
said then, and said consistently throughout, that he held the thing to
_be_ "_infra dig._," and unworthy of Dickens' position; and in this I
think one may venture to assert that Forster was wrong. There can
surely be no reason why a popular writer, who happens also to be an
excellent elocutionist, should not afford general pleasure by giving
sound to his prose, and a voice to his imaginary characters. Nor is it
opposed to the fitness of things that he should be paid for his skill.
If, however, one goes further in Dickens' case, and asks whether the
readings did not involve too great an expenditure of time, energy,
and, as we shall see, ultimately of life, and whether he would not, in
the highest sense, have been better employed over his books,--why then
the question becomes more difficult of solution. But, after all, each
man must answer such questions for h