everything I know, made the humorous points much
more humorous; corrected my utterance of certain words; ... I learnt
'Dombey' like the rest, and did it to myself often twice a day, with
exactly the same pains as at night, over, and over, and over again."

The results justified the care and effort bestowed. There are,
speaking generally, two schools of readers: those who dramatize what
they read, and those who read simply, audibly, with every attention to
emphasis and point, but with no effort to do more than slightly
indicate differences of personage or character. To the latter school
Thackeray belonged. He read so as to be perfectly heard, and perfectly
understood, and so that the innate beauty of his literary style might
have full effect. Dickens read quite differently. He read not as a
writer to whom style is everything, but as an actor throwing himself
into the world he wished to bring before his hearers. He was so
careless indeed of pure literature, in this particular matter, that he
altered his books for the readings, eliminating much of the narrative,
and emphasizing the dialogue. He was pre-eminently the dramatic
reader. Carlyle, who had been dragged to "Hanover Rooms," to "the
complete upsetting," as he says, "of my evening habitudes, and
spiritual composure," was yet constrained to declare: "Dickens does it
capitally, such as _it_ is; acts better than any Macready in the
world; a whole tragic, comic, heroic, _theatre_ visible, performing
under one _hat_, and keeping us laughing--in a sorry way, some of us
thought--the whole night. He is a good creature, too, and makes fifty
or sixty pounds by each of these readings." "A whole theatre"--that is
just the right expression minted for us by the great coiner of
phrases. Dickens, by mere play of voice, for the gestures were
comparatively sober, placed before you, on his imaginary stage, the
men and women he had created. There Dr. Marigold pattered his
cheap-jack phrases; and Mrs. Gamp and Betsy Prig, with throats
rendered husky by much gin, had their memorable quarrel; and Sergeant
Buzfuz bamboozled that stupid jury; and Boots at the Swan told his
pretty tale of child-elopement; and Fagin, in his hoarse Jew whisper,
urged Bill Sikes to his last foul deed of murder. Ay me, in the great
hush of the past there are tones of the reader's voice that still
linger in my ears! I seem to hear once more the agonized quick
utterance of poor Nancy, as she pleads for life, and t