of the law.”  As a man, his favorite occupation was walking the streets, where, as a child, he had picked up the most valuable part of his education.  His tramps about London—­often after nightfall—­sometimes extended to fifteen miles in a day.  He knew, too, the shifts of poverty.  His father—­some traits of whom are preserved in Mr. Micawber—­was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison, where his wife took lodging with him, while Charles, then a boy of ten, was employed at six shillings a week to cover blacking-pots in Warner’s blacking warehouse.  The hardships and loneliness of this part of his life are told under a thin disguise in Dickens’s masterpiece, David Copperfield, the most autobiographical of his novels.  From these young experiences he gained that insight into the lives of the lower classes and that sympathy with children and with the poor which shine out in his pathetic sketches of Little Nell, in The Old Curiosity Shop; of Paul Dombey; of poor Jo, in Bleak House; of “the Marchioness,” and a hundred other figures.

In Oliver Twist, contributed, during 1837-1838, to Bentley’s Miscellany, a monthly magazine of which Dickens was editor, he produced his first regular novel.  In this story of the criminal classes the author showed a tragic power which he had not hitherto exhibited.  Thenceforward his career was a series of dazzling successes.  It is impossible here to particularize his numerous novels, sketches, short tales, and “Christmas Stories”—­the latter a fashion which he inaugurated, and which has produced a whole literature in itself.  In Nicholas Nickleby, 1839; Master Humphrey’s Clock, 1840; Martin Chuzzlewit, 1844; Dombey and Son, 1848; David Copperfield, 1850, and Bleak House, 1853, there is no falling off in strength.  The last named was, in some respects, and especially in the skillful construction of the plot, his best novel.  In some of his latest books, as Great Expectations, 1861, and Our Mutual Friend, 1865, there are signs of a decline.  This showed itself in an unnatural exaggeration of characters and motives, and a painful straining after humorous effects; faults, indeed, from which Dickens was never wholly free.  There was a histrionic side to him, which came out in his fondness for private theatricals, in which he exhibited remarkable talent, and in the dramatic action which he introduced into the delightful public readings from his works that he gave before vast audiences all over the United Kingdom, and in his two visits to America.  It is not surprising, either, to learn that upon the stage his preference was for melodrama and farce.  His own serious writing was always dangerously close to the melodramatic, and his humor to the farcical.  There is much false art, bad taste, and even vulgarity in Dickens.  He was never quite a gentleman, and never succeeded well in drawing gentlemen or ladies.  In the region of low comedy he is easily the most