s sons (the eminent
novelist, Mr. Walter Besant, was born at Portsmouth, as also were
Isambard K. Brunel, the engineer, and Messrs. George and Vicat Cole,
Royal Academicians), but they were debarred by the conditions of
Dickens's will, which expressly interdicted anything of the kind. It
states:--

"I conjure my friends on no account to make me the subject of any
monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever. I rest my claim to the
remembrance of my country upon my published works, and to the
remembrance of my friends upon their experience of me in addition
thereto."

Before leaving Portsmouth, we just take a hasty glance at the Theatre
Royal, which remains much as it was during the days of Mr. Vincent
Crummles and his company, as graphically described in the twenty-second
and following chapters of _Nicholas Nickleby_. Of that genial manager,
Mr. T. Edgar Pemberton, in his _Charles Dickens and the Stage_,
observes:--

"Every line that is written about Mr. Crummles and his followers is
instinct with good-natured humour, and from the moment when, in the
road-side inn 'yet twelve miles short of Portsmouth,' the reader comes
into contact with the kindly old circuit manager, he finds himself in
the best of good company."

Mr. Rimmer, in his _About England with Dickens_, referring to the
"Common Hard" at Portsmouth, says that the "people there point out in a
narrow lane leading to the wharf, the house where Nicholas is supposed
to have sojourned."

FOOTNOTES:

[19] So far as I am aware, nothing has been done to trace the genealogy
of the Dickens family, and it may therefore be of interest to place on
record the title of, and an extract from, a very scarce and curious thin
quarto volume (pp. 1-28) in my collection. Sir Walter Scott was
immensely proud of his lineage and historical associations, but it would
be a wonderful thing if we could trace the descent of Charles Dickens
from King Edward III.

In the _Rambler in Worcestershire_ (Longmans, 1854), Mr. John Noake, the
author, in alluding to the parish of Churchill, Worcestershire,
says:--"The Dickens family of Bobbington were lords of this manor from
1432 to 1657, and it is said that from this family Mr. Dickens, the
author, is descended."

[Title.]

A
POSTHUMOUS POEM
of the

late THOMAS DICKENS, ESQ.,

Lieut.-Colonel in the First Regiment of Foot Guar