counter evidence, treat statements made in a
fictitious or half-fictitious narrative as if made in what professed
to be a sober autobiography. Dickens, I repeat, seems to have acquired
a very scant amount of classic lore while under the instruction of Mr.
Jones, and not too much lore of any kind. But if he learned little, he
observed much. He thoroughly mastered the humours of the place, just
as he had mastered the humours of the Marshalsea. He had got to know
all about the masters, and all about the boys, and all about the white
mice--of which there were many in various stages of civilization. He
acquired, in short, a fund of school knowledge that seemed
inexhaustible, and on which he drew again and again, with the most
excellent results, in "David Copperfield," in "Dombey," in such
inimitable short papers as "Old Cheeseman." And while thus, half
unconsciously perhaps, assimilating the very life of the school, he
was himself a thorough schoolboy, bright, alert, intelligent; taking
part in all fun and frolic; amply indemnifying himself for his
enforced abstinence from childish games during the dreary warehouse
days; good at recitations and mimic plays; and already possessed of a
reputation among his peers as a writer of tales.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] L200 a year "without extras" from 1815 to 1820, and then L350. See
"Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens," by Robert Langton, a very
valuable monograph.

[2] Mr. Langton appears to doubt whether John Dickens was not
imprisoned in the King's Bench. But this seems scarcely a point on
which Dickens himself can have been mistaken.

[3] According to Mr. Langton's dates, he would still be drawing his
pay.

[4] See paper entitled "Our School."

CHAPTER II.

Dickens cannot have been very long at Wellington House Academy, for
before May, 1827, he had been at another school near Brunswick Square,
and had also obtained, and quitted, some employment in the office of a
solicitor in New Square, Lincoln's Inn Fields. It seems clear,
therefore, that the whole of his school life might easily be computed
in months; and in May, 1827, it will be remembered, he was still but a
lad of fifteen. At that date he entered the office of a second
solicitor, in Gray's Inn this time, on a salary of thirteen shillings
and sixpence a week, afterwards increased to fifteen shillings. Here
he remained till November, 1828, again picking up a good deal of
information that cannot perhaps be regar