the number of
_Macmillan_ for January, 1871, by the anonymous writer of a Reminiscence
of the Amateur Theatricals at Tavistock House,--the remark following
immediately after Charles Dickens's version of the Ghost's Song in Henry
Fielding's burlesque of Tom Thumb,--"Nonsense, it may be said, all this;
but the nonsense of a great genius has always something of genius in
it." Had not Swift his "little language" to Stella, to "Stellakins," to
"roguish, impudent, pretty M. D.?" Than some of which little language,
quoth Thackeray, in commenting upon it, "I know of nothing more manly,
more tender, more exquisitely touching." Again, had not Pope, in
conjunction with the Dean, his occasional unbending also as a _farceur_,
in the wilder freaks and oddities of Martinus Scriblerus? So was it
here with one who was beyond all doubt, more intensely a Humorist
than either, when he wrote or read such harmless sarcasms and innocent
whimsicalities, as those alternately underlying, and overlaying the
boyish fun of this juvenile Refreshmenter at Mugby Junction.

DOCTOR MARIGOLD.

Already mention has been made of the extraordinary care lavished, as
a general rule, by the Novelist upon the preparation of these Readings
before they were, each in turn, submitted for the first time to public
scrutiny. A strikingly illustrative instance of this may be here
particularised. It occurred upon the occasion of a purely experimental
Reading of "Doctor Marigold," which came off privately, on the evening
of the 18th of March, 1866, in the drawing-room of Charles Dickens's
then town residence, in Southwick Place, Tyburnia. Including, among
those present, the members of his own home circle, his entire audience
numbered no more than ten persons altogether. Four, at any rate, of that
party may be here identified, each of whom doubtless still bears the
occasion referred to vividly in his remembrance,--Robert Browning the
poet, Charles Fechter the actor, Wilkie Collins the novelist, and John
Forster the historian of the Commonwealth. Even in private, Dickens had
never Read "Doctor Marigold" until that evening. Often as he Read it
afterwards, he never Read it with a more contagious air of exhilaration.
He hardly ever, in fact, gave one of his almost wholly comic and but
incidentally pathetic Readings _so_ effectively. In every sentence there
was a zest or relish that was irresistible. The volubility of the "poor
chap in the sleeved-waistcoat" sped the Rea