signs of insincerity, by the inadvertent
revelation of which all sense of illusion is utterly and instantly
dissipated.

Whatever scenes he described, those scenes his hearers appeared to be
actually witnessing themselves. He realised everything in his own mind
so intensely, that listening to him we realised what he spoke of by
sympathy. Insomuch that one might, in his own words, say of him,
as David Copperfield says of Mr. Peggotty, when the latter has been
recounting little Emily's wanderings: "He saw everything he related. It
passed before him, as he spoke, so vividly, that, in the intensity
of his earnestness, he presented what he described to me with greater
distinctness than I can express. I can hardly believe--writing now long
afterwards--but that I was actually present in those scenes; they are
impressed upon me with such an astonishing air of fidelity." While,
on the one hand, he never repeated the words that had to be delivered
phlegmatically, or as by rote; on the other hand, he never permitted
voice, look, gesture, to pass the limits of discretion, even at moments
the most impassioned; as, for example, where Nancy, in the famous
murder-scene, shrieked forth her last gasping and despairing appeals to
her brutal paramour. The same thing may be remarked again in regard to
all the more tenderly pathetic of his delineations. His tones then were
often subdued almost to a whisper, every syllable, nevertheless, being
so distinctly articulated as to be audible in the remotest part of a
vast hall like that in Piccadilly.

Whatever may be insinuated in regard to those particular portions of the
writings of our great novelist by cynical depreciators, who have not
the heart to recognise--as did Lord Jeffrey, for instance, one of the
keenest and shrewdest critics of his age--the exquisite pathos of a
death-scene like that of little Nell or of little Paul Dombey, in the
utterance by himself of those familiar passages nothing but the manliest
emotion was visible and audible from first to last. Insomuch was this
the case, that the least impressionable of his hearers might readily
have echoed those noble words, written years ago, out of an overflowing
heart, in regard to Charles Dickens, by his great rival and his intense
admirer, W. M. Thackeray: "In those admirable touches of tender humour,
who ever equalled this great genius? There are little words and phrases
in his books which are like personal benefits to the reader. W