his own historic
research.

The last and most decided, and, we may add, most beneficial, change in
Bulwer as a writer, was manifested in his publication of the _Caxtons_,
the chief merit of which is as an usher of the novels which were to
follow. Pisistratus Caxton is the modern Tristram Shandy, and becomes the
putative editor of the later novels. First of these is _My Novel, or
Varieties of English Life_. It is an admirable work: it inculcates a
better morality, and a sense of Christian duty, at which Pelham would have
laughed in scorn. Like it, but inferior to it, is _What Will He do with
It?_ which has an interesting plot, an elevated style, and a rare human
sympathy.

Among other works, which we cannot mention, he wrote _The New Timon_, and
_King Arthur_, in poetry, and a prose history entitled _Athens, its Rise
and Fall_.

Without the highest genius, but with uncommon scholarship and great
versatility, Bulwer has used the materials of many kinds lying about him,
to make marvellous mosaics, which imitate very closely the finest efforts
of word-painting of the great geniuses of prose fiction.

CHARLES DICKENS.--Another remarkable development of the age was the use
of prose fiction, instead of poetry, as the vehicle of satire in the cause
of social reform. The world consents readily to be amused, and it likes to
be amused at the expense of others; but it soon tires of what is simply
amusing or satirical unless some noble purpose be disclosed. The novels of
former periods had interested by the creation of character and scenes; and
there had been numerous satires prompted by personal pique. It is the
glory of this latest age that it demands what shall so satirize the evil
around it in men, in classes, in public institutions, that the evil shall
recoil before the attack, and eventually disappear. Chief among such
reformers are Dickens and Thackeray.

Charles Dickens, the prince of modern novelists, was born at Landsport,
Portsmouth, England, in 1812. His father was at the time a clerk in the
Pay Department of the Navy, but afterwards became a reporter of debates in
Parliament. After a very hard early life and an only tolerable education,
young Dickens made some progress in the study of law; but soon undertook
his father's business as reporter, in which he struggled as he has made
David Copperfield to do in becoming proficient.

His first systematic literary efforts were as a daily writer and reporter
for _The Tr