te of his admiration, and
Jeffrey, the hard-headed old judge and editor of _The Edinburgh
Review_, the tribute of his tears. Landor volleyed forth his
thunderous praises over her grave, likening her to Juliet and
Desdemona. Nay, Dickens himself sadly bewailed her fate, described
himself as being the "wretchedest of the wretched" when it drew near,
and shut himself from all society as if he had suffered a real
bereavement. While as to the feeling which she has excited in the
breasts of the illiterate, we may take Mr. Bret Harte's account of the
haggard golddiggers by the roaring Californian camp fire, who throw
down their cards to listen to her story, and, for the nonce, are
softened and humanized.[14]--Such is the sympathy she has created. And
for the description of her death and burial, as a superb piece of
pathetic writing, there has been a perfect chorus of praise broken
here and there no doubt by a discordant voice, but still of the
loudest and most heartfelt. Did not Horne, a poet better known to the
last generation than to this, point out that though printed as prose,
these passages were, perhaps as "the result of harmonious accident,"
essentially poetry, and "written in blank verse of irregular metres
and rhythms, which Southey and Shelley and some other poets have
occasionally adopted"? Did he not print part of the passages in this
form, substituting only, as a concession to the conventionalities of
verse, the word "grandames" for "grandmothers"; and did he not declare
of one of the extracts so printed that it was "worthy of the best
passages in Wordsworth"?

If it "argues an insensibility" to stand somewhat unmoved among all
these tears and admiration, I am afraid I must be rather
pebble-hearted. To tell the whole damaging truth, I am, and always
have been, only slightly affected by the story of Little Nell; have
never felt any particular inclination to shed a tear over it, and
consider the closing chapters as failing of their due effect, on me at
least, because they are pitched in a key that is altogether too high
and unnatural. Of course one makes a confession of this kind with
diffidence. It is no light thing to stem the current of a popular
opinion. But one can only go with the stream when one thinks the
stream is flowing in a right channel. And here I think the stream is
meandering out of its course. For me, Little Nell is scarcely more
than a figure in cloudland. Possibly part of the reason why I do not