eath in 1870 was felt as a
personal loss throughout the English-speaking world.

[Illustration: DICKENS'S HOME, GADS HILL.]

Works.--_Pickwick Papers_ (1836-1837), Dickens's first long story,
is one of his best. Mr. Pickwick, with his genial nature, his simple
philosophy, and his droll adventures, and Sam Weller, with his ready
wit, his acute observations, and his almost limitless resources, are
amusing from start to finish. The book is brimful of its author's high
spirits. It has no closely knit plot, but merely a succession of
comical incidents, and vivid caricatures of Mr. Pickwick and his
friends. Yet the fun is so good-natured and infectious, and the
looseness of design is so frankly declared that the book possesses a
certain unity arising from its general atmosphere of frolic and
jollity.

_Oliver Twist_ (1837-1838) is a powerful story, differing widely from
_Pickwick Papers_. While the earlier work is delightful chiefly for
its humor, _Oliver Twist_ is strong in its pictures of passion and
crime. Bill Sykes the murderer, Fagin the Jew, who teaches the boys
deftness of hand in stealing, and poor Nancy, are drawn with such
power that they seem to be still actually living in some of London's
dark alleys. Little Oliver, born in the poor-house, clothed by
charity, taught by the evil genius of the streets, starved in body and
soul, is one of the many pathetic portraits of children drawn with a
sure and loving hand by Dickens. There are some improbable features
about the plot and some overwrought sentimental scenes in this story.
Dickens reveled in the romantic and found it in robbers' dens, in bare
poverty, in red-handed crime. The touching pathos and thrilling
adventures of _Oliver Twist_ make a strong appeal to the reader's
emotions.

With the prodigality of a fertile genius, Dickens presented his
expectant and enthusiastic public with a new novel on an average of
once a year for fourteen years; and, even after that, his productivity
did not fall off materially. The best and most representative of these
works are _Nicholas Nickleby_ (1838-1839), _Barnaby Rudge_ (1841),
_Martin Chuzzlewit_ (1843-1844), _Dombey and Son_ (1846-1848), _David
Copperfield_ (1849-1850), _Bleak House_ (1852-1853), _Hard Times_
(1854), _A Tale of Two Cities_ (1859), and _Our Mutual Friend_ (1864).

Of these, _David Copperfield_ is at once Dickens's favorite work and
the one which the world acclaims as his masterpiece. The novel is in
p