Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee--
Like summer tempest came her tears--
"Sweet my child, I live for thee."

[Illustration]

CHARLES DICKENS

"To begin my life with the beginning of my life," Dickens makes one of
his heroes say, "I record that I was born (as I have been informed and
believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night." Dickens was born on a
Friday, the date the 7th of February, 1812, the place Landport in
Portsea, England. The house was a comfortable one, and during Charles's
early childhood his surroundings were prosperous; for his father, John
Dickens, a clerk in the navy pay-office, was temporarily in easy
circumstances. When Charles was but two, the family moved to London,
taking lodgings for a time in Norfolk Street, Bloomsbury, and finally
settling in Chatham. Here they lived in comfort, and here Charles gained
more than the rudiments of an education, his earliest teacher being his
mother, who instructed him not only in English, but in Latin also. Later
he became the pupil of Mr. Giles, who seems to have taken in him an
extraordinary interest.

[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS

1812-1870]

Indeed, he was a child in whom it was difficult not to take an
extraordinary interest. Small for his years, and attacked occasionally
by a sort of spasm which was exceedingly painful, he was not fitted for
much active exercise; but the _aliveness_ which was apparent in him all
his life distinguished him now. He was very fond of reading, and in
_David Copperfield_ he put into the mouth of his hero a description
of his own delight in certain books. "My father had left a small
collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access
(for it adjoined my own), and which nobody else in our house ever
troubled. From that blessed little room, _Roderick Random_, _Peregrine
Pickle_, _Humphrey Clinker_, _Tom Jones_, _The Vicar of Wakefield_, _Don
Quixote_, _Gil Blas_ and _Robinson Crusoe_ came out, a glorious host, to
keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, ... they, and the _Arabian
Nights_ and the _Tales of the Genii_--and did me no harm; for whatever
harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it....
I have been Tom Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a
week together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a
month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy