Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

of the second war between England and America, 1812.

His father's name was John Dickens, and he held a position in the Navy Pay Department. At the close of the war with the United States, Mr. Dickens removed to London, having received a pension upon retiring. He there became connected with one of the daily journals as reporter of parliamentary debates. As time rolled on, his son Charles became of years sufficient to justify him in marking out a path in life for him; and he chose that of the law, and placed Charles in an attorney's office as clerk. But the study of law was distasteful to the youthful genius, whose talents for writing were early evident. Literary occupations were his delight; and, though he was a diligent student, it was human nature and human life that he preferred to study, and then depict with his glowing pen. He was not the first, by any means, to whose young mind the occupation chosen by a parent was utterly devoid of attraction. The attorney's clerk only found his place when he left off poring over "Blackstone," "Coke upon Littleton," and kindred volumes, weighty with legal lore, and began to picture those scenes which live in the reader's memory forever. God called him to be a writer; and, until he found his place, he was not content.

Yet he did not commence at once to write novels, and to display his marvellous power in delineating character, and creating personages in literature that will

never die. He began, as many a bright star in the literary firmament has begun, by shining first with the occasional beams of a newspaper contributor. He became connected with "The Morning Chronicle,” as a reporter. This was a newspaper of great popularity, under the management of Mr. John Black, who saw at once the ability of the young reporter, and gave him ample opportunity to display his talent for making word pictures, and for calling forth both tears and smiles, by publishing in his paper the "Sketches of English Life and Character;" which were collected and reprinted under the title of "Sketches by Boz," in 1836 and 1837. "Boz" was his signature in "The Morning Chronicle;' and he gave, as the reason for his use of it, that it " was the nickname of a pet child,- a younger brother,whom I had dubbed Moses, in honor of the Vicar of Wakefield,' which, being facetiously pronounced through the nose, became Boses, and, being shortened, Boz. Boz was a very familiar household word to me long before I was an author, and so I came to adopt it." This beginning of his true work showed both the writer and his readers that English literature could claim as a charming story-writer young Charles Dickens.

CHAPTER II.

ADVANCING.

Steadily On.-Sketches by Boz.-Wine-drinking Countries. - Our Next-door Neighbors.-The Drunkard's Grave. - Sporting Papers.

"Though a pledge I had to shiver,
And the longest ever was,

Ere his vessel leaves our river,

I would drink a health to Boz."

HOOD.

"The pen of a ready writer."

PSALM xlv. 1.

S already intimated, Charles Dickens was persevering, and kept steadily on in the path of literature, which to him was most alluring. He held "the pen of a ready

writer;" and he was disposed to use it in

[graphic]

The

the interests of morality and good order. He showed, in the "Sketches by Boz," a faculty of illustration which marked him as one who must be successful. pathos and humor which blended in his tales were even then seen to be remarkable. From those sketches, these pages are enriched by extracts proving the truth of the assertion, which, to the reader familiar with the works

of Dickens, needs no proof. These extracts are far from indicating that Dickens favored intemperance, or failed to see its folly and sin. He had himself the bad habits of an Englishman who is not in favor of total abstinence; but it is not right to say of him that he encouraged the drunkard in his evil course. While the believers in the duty of total abstinence cannot but regret that the great novelist did not use his powerful pen in favor of teetotalism, they cannot but acknowledge that he left on record evidence that he did not approve of a career of intemperance. His testimony in reference to wine countries is often adduced by temperance ➡ lecturers, as conclusive against the wine-drinking habits of many foreign lands. It first appeared in "Household Words," Dickens's journal, and has been copied into "The Good Templar," an American temperance paper, as an evidence that Charles Dickens did not favor the prevalence of wine-shops. These are the words:

"The wine-shops are the colleges and chapels of the poor in France. History, morals, politics, jurisprudence, and literature, in iniquitous forms, are all taught in these colleges and chapels, where professors of evil continually deliver those lessons, and where hymns are sung nightly to the demons of demoralization. In those haunts of the poor, theft is taught as the morality of propriety, falsehood as speech, and assassination. as the justice of the people. It is in the wine-shop the cab

man is taught to think it heroic to shoot the middleclass man who disputes his fare. It is in the wine-shop the workman is taught to admire the man who stabs his faithless mistress. It is in the wine-shop the doom is pronounced of the employer who lowers the pay of the employed. The wine-shop breeds, in a physical atmosphere of malaria and a moral pestilence of envy and vengeance, the men of crime and revolution. Hunger is proverbially a bad counsellor, but drink is worse."

From his "Sketches by Boz," the following is given, as an example of the mingling of humor and pathos so noticeable in his writings. It is entitled,

"OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS.

"We are very fond of speculating, as we walk through a street, on the character and pursuits of the people who inhabit it; and nothing so materially assists us in these speculations as the appearance of the housedoors. The various expressions of the human countenance afford a beautiful and interesting study; but there is something in the physiognomy of street-door knockers, almost as characteristic, and nearly as infallible. Whenever we visit a man for the first time, we contemplate the features of his knocker with the greatest curiosity; for we well know, that, between the man and his knocker, there will inevitably be a greater or less degree of resemblance and sympathy.

« AnteriorContinuar »