ect inspired. The ever gay and lively Boz, always in
spirits, called up many a happy scene, and gave the pen a certain
airiness and nimbleness. There is little that is official or
magisterial about the volumes. Everything is pleasant and interesting,
put together--though there is a crowd of details--with extraordinary
art and finish. It furnishes a most truthful and accurate picture of
the "inimitable," recognizable in every page. It was only in the third
volume, when scared by the persistent clamours of the disappointed and
the envious, protesting that there was "too much Forster," that it was
virtually a "Life of John Forster, with some recollections of Charles
Dickens," that he became of a sudden, official and allowed others to
come too much on the scene, with much loss of effect. That third
volume, which ought to have been most interesting, is the dull one. We
have Boz described as he would be in an encyclopaedia, instead of
through Forster, acting as his interpreter, and much was lost by this
treatment. Considering the homeliness and every-day character of the
incidents, it is astonishing how Forster contrived to dignify them. He
knew from early training what was valuable and significant and what
should be rejected.

Granting the objections--and faults--of the book, it may be asked, who
else in the 'seventies was, not _so_ fitted, but fitted at all to
produce a Life of Dickens. Every eye looked, every finger pointed to
Forster; worker, patron, and disciple, confidant, adviser, correcter,
admirer, the trained man of letters, and in the school in which Boz
had been trained, who had known every one of that era. No one else
could have been thought of. And as we now read the book, and contrast
it with those ordered or commissioned biographies, so common now, and
perhaps better wrought, we see at once the difference. The success was
extraordinary. Edition after edition was issued, and that so rapidly,
that the author had no opportunity of making the necessary
corrections, or of adding new information. He contented himself with a
leaf or two at the end, in which, in his own imperial style, he simply
took note of the information. I believe his profit was about L10,000.

A wonderful feature was the extraordinary amount of Dickens' letters
that was worked into it. To save time and trouble, and this I was told
by Mrs. Forster, he would cut out the passages he wanted with a pair
of scissors and paste them on his MS! As the po