That so abnormal an education can have been entirely without drawbacks, it is no part of my purpose to affirm.  Tossed, as one may say, to sink or swim amid the waves of life, where those waves ran turbid and brackish, Dickens had emerged strengthened, triumphant.  But that some little signs should not remain of the straining and effort with which he had won the land, was scarcely to be expected.  He himself, in his more confidential communications with Forster, seems to avow a consciousness that this was so; and Forster, though he speaks guardedly, lovingly, appears to be of opinion that a certain self-assertiveness and fierce intolerance of advice or control[9] occasionally discernible in his friend, might justly be attributed to the harsh influence of early struggles and privations.  But what then?  That system of education has yet to be devised which shall mould this poor human clay of ours into flawless shapes of use and beauty.  A man may be considered fortunate indeed, when his training has left in him only what the French call the “defects of his virtues,” that is, the exaggeration of his good qualities till they turn into faults.  Without his immense strength of purpose and iron will, Dickens might never have emerged from obscurity, and the world would have been very distinctly the poorer.  One cannot be very sorry that he possessed these gifts in excess.

And now, at last, having slightly sketched the history of his earlier years, and endeavoured to show, however perfectly, what influences had gone to the formation of his character, I proceed to consider the book that lifted him to fame and fortune.  The years of apprenticeship are over, and the master-workman brings forth his finished work in its flower of perfection.  Let us study “Pickwick.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[5] Macmillan’s Magazine, July, 1870.

[6] It was the pet name of one of his brothers; that was why he took it.

[7] Froude’s “Thomas Carlyle:  A History of his Life in London.”

[8] Transcriber’s Note:  The word “time” appears to be missing from the original text.

[9] “I have heard Dickens described by those who knew him,” says Mr. Edmund Yates, in his “Recollections,” “as aggressive, imperious, and intolerant, and I can comprehend the accusation....  He was imperious in the sense that his life was conducted on the sic volo sic jubeo principle, and that everything gave way before him.  The society in which he mixed, the hours which he kept, the opinions which he held, his likes and dislikes, his ideas of what should or should not be, were all settled by himself, not merely for himself, but for all those brought into connection with him, and it was never imagined they could be called in question....  He had immense powers of will.”

CHAPTER III.